Copa America Centenario

Omg messi wtf

Congrats JiG!

Man I am gutted for Messi

Yes major grats

ugh gutted for messi too

Post-game Messi apparently said he's retiring from international play?

lost all four major international finals, he's fed up

I felt bad for Messi immediately following the game. Has been unable to bring success to Argentina and has just lost 3 major finals in two years with the country. Even taking into account his missed penalty last night in the shootout - which is a grave error for sure - he's been their best player in those 3 tournaments and often their best player in the finals they've lost. Despite this the Argentinean public have always been overly hostile to him, never really warming to him or accepting him, criticising him heavily for any real or perceived failures, referring to him as "the Catalan" etc. And he had talked about international retirement before, about 5 years ago due to this.

Still think retiring from the national team is the wrong call. Still, he has 2 years until the next WC, could always return.

Delighted with Chile obviously. Last year when they hosted the Copa America they were in great form, the Borghi era was a great success, had retained the good parts of the Bielsa era, but added some more defensive composure. With the home crowd it really seemed like the only time Chile could possibly hope to win the Copa America, and they did. Then the ANFP (national association of professional football) fell out with Borghi, then Pizzi came in, results and form were poor. Came into this tournament not looking that great, started with a defeat to Argentina, should have been eliminated against Bolivia - won with a very soft penalty in injury time and Bolivia subsequently blew a clear opportunity to equalize with the last kick of the ball. But then the dismantling of Mexico was basically peak Chile. And from what I saw of the highlights last night Argentina were the better team, but the grit and fight of Chile kept them alive.

This is the greatest generation of Chilean footballers, and thankfully it's a relatively young squad. Will be together for the next world cup and the next Copa America in 3 years time. Fantastic to go from basically being an irrelevance in South American football to winning the Copa America twice.

agh, and of course it was Sampaoli who had brought chile to their apotheosis, won the Copa America last year, and then was swiftly gotten rid of, the ANFP just likes to go through Bielsista managers at an alarming rate and it can be hard to keep up

sorry I missed this thread. been away from ilx for a few months.

i watched all the Chile games (and attended one) plus a bunch of others. thrilled for my Roja, gutted for Messi nonetheless (really, it's one thing to live in the shadow of that other #10, and another when that 10 is alive and surfaces to gargle his stomach acids at the worst possible times).

one thing that seems to have escaped notice from much of the post-Final press i've read (most of which is about the Argentina/Messi "curse" etc): the work of the Chilean midfield in the final game, and in particular Vidal. Monster game from Arturo.

cheers jim!

jealous you got to a game, altho my tentative plan was to attend the opener against argentina which they lost so maybe I didn't miss out too much, ha.

viva chile CTM!

copa america is on. japan and qatar in it this year. probably not enough interest to merit a new thread tbh.

japan v chile in 2 and a half hours.

Chile lineup looks old

old gold

no we are old and the chances of retaining the championship are slim to none :'-(

most of this team played at the 2010 world cup

Qatar played well and should probably have won from 2-0 down.

Japan starting with a striker who had never played a professional football match possibly suggests they aren’t taking it all that seriously. Makes sense to give their youth team a taste of major tournaments, though.

Argentina were predictably awful.

Not 100% sure but I think when teams have guest spots outside their confederation they typically don't send full power teams. I know USA didn't when they were in the Copa in 2007.

Yeah I think traditionally it's a youth team with a smattering of first team players

I thought that had been changing in recent times.

Watching COL-QAT with a lot of yellow jerseys around me.

Some blue and orange too

Not watching this one, just following from a distance

bit of a barmy tournament so far. highlight must be argentina sitting at the bottom of their group equal on points with qatar (who they have still to play and will almost undoubtedly defeat). uruguay and japan game ending in a 2-2 draw and venezuela holding brazil to a nil nil also quite interesting.

Brazil had three goals ruled out by VAR! The Japan result was a real shock.

I think Qatar might be pretty decent by the time of the World Cup if they continue at this rate. There is less of a reliance on naturalised Brazilians and some of their young players look quite good prospects.

i heard they were quite unlucky against columbia. only conceded in the last few minutes of regulation time

Watching the highlights from this 5-0 Brazil-Peru match.

CHEQUEO VAR

REVISIÓN VAR

Looks like maybe a handball

chile vs uruguay starts now. promises to be a good game.

alexis just tracked someone back there 0_0

hes played well so far tbf

columbia v chile in two and a half hours: colombia the best team of the tournament so far.

heart says la roja de todos, head says colombia

chile were late getting to the stadium so the game is delayed lol

oh my god, an absolute travesty of a VAR decision overturning a perfectly legal chile goal. i am fucking raging.

get VAR to fuck

ok they're VARing another definitely fine goal and if it gets chopped off i am going to literally go insane.

oh and he has, handball. for one of those daft handball nothings (guy had his arm at a 90 degree angle resting on his chest and the ball hit it and his chest without him having any chance to do anything about it

some of these haircuts are super high maintenance.

True.

I'm drunk and listening to Nueva Cancion. My dad messagd me around midnight my time because he turned his phone on when he woke up in anticipation of a message from me regarding the score.

This golden generation might just have it in them

Hope so

we weren't watching the game but then realized it was on because of being able to hear the chileans cheer.

second-half collapse by canada

Don’t you mean to post that on this thread: CONCACAF (soccer)

indeed so

Strange that Argentina was the only team that scored in the quarter finals.

Chile could definitely go all the way. Nobody has been particularly impressive.

Weird that VAR was relatively unobtrusive in 2018 World Cup and so abysmal this year. Probably due to the terrible 6/1 rule rollout that has every nothing called a handball

well that was rough.

peru beat chile 3-0 to go through to the final vs brazil (who beat argentina, likely ending lionel messi's chances of ever winning a trophy with argentina).

brazil of course beat peru 5-0 already the tournament, so, not sure the final is going to be a classic.

nice for peru tho, first final since 1975.

I didn't see this game but I did see Peru v Uruguay last weekend and would never have bet on Peru against Chile after that

Messi sent off for quite literally nothing. Game has gone. pic.twitter.com/3qyJHuXRPn

— Adam ✍🏻 (@AdamSport_) July 6, 2019

Messi and Medel sent off for chesting each other.