No Irish, No Yanks, No Clogs - FIFA World Cup 2018

game's gone lads

ditto rabiot the psychic octopus :'(

it is indeed the good spurs boy and only manager to successfully bring it home, alf ramsey

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/29/59/9f/29599f0d6880ce4fdb314fe22aa79850--ipswich-town-lions.jpg

if you liked possession football on those pitches you REALLY liked possession football

Nobby Stiles, total footballer.

I have suggested before that 1966 feels like it happened at least in part because it was the only time England had a manager who was tactically on point. Venables a possible exception.

Indeed, England went from playing Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews and losing 6-3 and 7-1 to Hungary to playing Alan Ball and Nobby Stiles and winning the World Cup.

v impressed you got that so quick

Hang on, Alan Ball was good!

"Colleagues" felt v Ramsey-ish and I do find him a fascinating and admirable dude

One reason for England's more encouraging than usual performance this time round is probably because the trend towards a very fast, pressing game suits this generation of English players and a lot of them have come up under either Pochettino and Klopp (or both)*. Other recent England squads would try and take a patient, possession-based approach and just end up looking ponderous and/or panicking and reverting to just hoofing it up.

*The main exception here being the United players who look visibly liberated right now.

xp damn... max kudos for that. it is a lovely and distinctive usage. I don't know much about ramsey or football history so it was perhaps more surprising to me

My dad told me how when Ramsey first introduced Alan Ball into the England side, Ball went to him after the game and complained that all Ramsey had had him do was run up and down the wing for 90 minutes, to no obvious effect. Ramsey's laconic reply was basically "well if you don't want to play, that's up to you".

bloody hell, this story:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jul/03/mikel-john-obi-father-kidnapped-world-cup

fucking hell

Hang on, Alan Ball was good!

Alan Ball was always looked down on in Scotland as exactly the sort of red-in-the-face huffin' and puffin' 100% effort footballer England had been forced to rely to do trashy things like win a World Cup. The general consensus in Scotland, post-Ramsey, were that England were hod-carrying hoofers who relied on hard work and physicality to overcome the refined ball playing of 5 foot 5 Scotsmen with beer guts and 20-a-day habits.

That was always the thing in Scotland, you're beating us but you're beating us the wrong way.

"hod-carrying" is such a weird insult -- i for one wd respect neymar ten times as much if he neymared EXACTLY AS NOW, except always carrying a hod

actual hod-carrier before he became a footballer: vinnie jones

from hod-carrier to spear-carrier in 3 moves

Had no idea Switzerland were ranked so highly. Of the teams remaining, only Brazil and Belgium are ranked higher.

Mind you, 5 of the top 10 have already gone home and Chile didn't even qualify

lol @ that finish

The Zlatan - now more than ever

Back pass rule is *the* bug rule change of the past, what, century- the game we know did, in a sense begin in 1992, just not in the way that sky sports would have you think.

big rule change

the bug rule change was key too tho

really bad lack of precision on both sides.

iirc Jimmy Hill said the backpass rule would be the death of the game but unsure what his rationale was beyond an innate conservative fear of change

Sweden's crosses and through balls have been comical

xp
Yeah, that and substitutes.

The other big change (not really in laws but in interpretation) is the criteria for yellow and red cards is much stricter, which does change things quite a lot.

that should be a Pen

The inability to cross a ball is surely not a modern phenomenon.

It just seems that way.

looking back at old games the quality of the pitch and ball seem to be as big a chance as any. the deceleration on passes and lack of bounce is amazing

players had no choice but to hone their hoofing skills

Sweden just looks bad

not sure how zlatan slowly walking around chatting shit would have fitted into sweden's defend, counter and win set-pieces plan

he could have strategically fucked an opponent's wife prior to the game

that sweden miss was hilarious

Switzerland not exactly making them pay for it tho

It *is* Lawrenson. He must have a fucker of a headcold. And he must have been ordered to rein in the dickery.

Very subdued by his standards

banner day for people in the stands, they're catchin lotsa balls

they should let Sweden insert subs from other national teams

aahaahahahahahahaahahahahaahahahahaa

Are you singing "We hate it when our friends become successful" ?

sweden do this better than russia

Cornerfest 2018

Switzerland playing as if they think they're predestined to score a goal

that's Calvinists for ya

Sweden deserved this one. poor on the attack but really disciplined defending throughout

And that's that.