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Fifa World Cup Russia 2018

unrated said:
Im baffled by Sampaolis substitutions, why not bring in dybala or Aguero for di Maria instead of Meza? Surely they have more experience in high pressure situations such as this one?
Click to expand...
Not sure i agree with it but the rationale is height. When a team pulls back chances are you'll end u throwing high crosses. Guys like Aguero are kinda useless for that.
Dybala could be an option thou, as his mid range shooting is more than ok, but i still understand why Meza. It's not like we have many options for that to be honest.

Regarding the penalty, i think it was very harsh by any standard. You give me control of the VAR room and i will find a similar situation in any corner kick from any game.
Regarding the other one (Rojo, ref said no penalty), i think it wasn't but that's not really the issue. The problem is yesterday they awarded a penalty that was a copy paste from that one (Iran vs Portugal). The problem is consistency.

I haven't screamed this loud in probably, say 20 years. Quite happy of our bracket to be honest. I'd take France over Denmark (not cuz they are better, but France's style suits us better. Better offense but more caos mid/back). Happy to face Uru or Portugal after that.
 
unrated said:
Im baffled by Sampaolis substitutions, why not bring in dybala or Aguero for di Maria instead of Meza? Surely they have more experience in high pressure situations such as this one?
Click to expand...
Not sure i agree with it but the rationale is height. When a team pulls back chances are you'll end u throwing high crosses. Guys like Aguero are kinda useless for that.
Dybala could be an option thou, as his mid range shooting is more than ok, but i still understand why Meza. It's not like we have many options for that to be honest.

Regarding the penalty, i think it was very harsh by any standard. You give me control of the VAR room and i will find a similar situation in any corner kick from any game.
Regarding the other one (Rojo, ref said no penalty), i think it wasn't but that's not really the issue. The problem is yesterday they awarded a penalty that was a copy paste from that one (Iran vs Portugal). The problem is consistency.

I haven't screamed this loud in probably, say 20 years. Quite happy of our bracket to be honest. I'd take France over Denmark (not cuz they are better, but France's style suits us better. Better offense but more caos mid/back). Happy to face Uru or Portugal after that.
 
Cruz_del_Sur said:
Not sure i agree with it but the rationale is height. When a team pulls back chances are you'll end u throwing high crosses. Guys like Aguero are kinda useless for that.
Dybala could be an option thou, as his mid range shooting is more than ok, but i still understand why Meza. It's not like we have many options for that to be honest.

Regarding the penalty, i think it was very harsh by any standard. You give me control of the VAR room and i will find a similar situation in any corner kick from any game.
Regarding the other one (Rojo, ref said no penalty), i think it wasn't but that's not really the issue. The problem is yesterday they awarded a penalty that was a copy paste from that one (Iran vs Portugal). The problem is consistency.

I haven't screamed this loud in probably, say 20 years. Quite happy of our bracket to be honest. I'd take France over Denmark (not cuz they are better, but France's style suits us better. Better offense but more caos mid/back). Happy to face Uru or Portugal after that.
Click to expand...


The match against France is going to be tough, I've considered France potential champions right from the strart, who wouldn't with a team that consists of Griezman,Dembele, Mbappe in attack, Pogba, Kante in mid and guys like Umtiti and Varane in defense with Loris as their goalkeeper. That's some serious talent there. Can't judge France based on the dead rubber vs Denmark.

But with that said I think the Knockout style games will favour Argentina more than the groupstages. They like to be more patient in this WC very often passing back, but in the group stages they were under some kind of pressure to speed the game up at times especially when things got desperate to try and win the game as that's essential in the group stages.

Now they can just play and know that the game can't draw. Yes they would want to avoid the penalty shootouts but so would the other team and based on this reason I think Argentina has a very good chance to progress.
 
Potential first big casualty in the group stages about to occur in three minutes...

Edit: As soon as I switched back to the blog feed, Korea scored. Two minutes for two goals from Germany, end of the road for them.

Another edit: If I am correct, that is the third World Cup in a row where the defending champions were knocked out in the group stages.
 
saulan said:
Potential first big casualty in the group stages about to occur in three minutes...

Edit: As soon as I switched back to the blog feed, Korea scored. Two minutes for two goals from Germany, end of the road for them.

Another edit: If I am correct, that is the third World Cup in a row where the defending champions were knocked out in the group stages.
Click to expand...

Correct. In fact that's 4 of the last 5 World champions who have gone out in the next WC at the group stage (France, Italy, Spain and now Germany).
 
I honestly don't think the BBC have had such an excited week this century. Between England playing well and Germany going out the joy in their faces was amazing. Didi Hamann has aged about 15 years since the start of the competition as well.
 
English broadcasters and pundits excited by England doing well and Germany doing badly.

giphy.gif
 
Hectic stuff! Dare i say that this is the world cup of upsets and penalties? We now have two world cups in a row as proof... If you win the cup fire your coach and start again because you need a fresh start.

Steve hansen will argue my point, but my hypothetical counter argument will be that he was not the head coach at the first cup win.
 
A number of good teams either never made it to the tournament or have been eliminated. Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Australia.......New Zealand.
 
Can we stop getting overexcited, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with going out in the group stages of a World Cup
 
Every Time Ref said:
Can we stop getting overexcited, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with going out in the group stages of a World Cup
Click to expand...

You could argue there is if you've never done it before. (Then again Ireland got out of the group in all of our 3 appearances so it might not be that great haha.)
 

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