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

uru-por is tie of the round. totally uncallable and could just turn into a massive shithouse-off/heel-off

col-eng is a banger too

i count 4 excellent matches in the 1/8 finals. more than expected. It's hard to call Belgium favorites, but they have a great game, and seemingly a working game plan. (though this hasn't been tested to good opposition yet) (i mean England weren't bothered)

Brazil is like Germany, they'll certainly grind past Mexico, but Belgium aha!

ARG
POR
BRA
BEL
SPA
CRO
SWE
COL

same reasons as everyone above and i also want/am maybe ready to predict a BEL-CRO final (i'll be wrong)

BEL-CRO final would be fantastic imo

sounds like a sticky one

lol!

No world cup final is gonna be fantastic ud have to be fucking methuselah to remember a watchable world cup final

but I've seen about 180 mins of brazil and they don't seem that convincing. beat serbia (utterly uninspiring); costa rica (lol);

why costa rica lol? Seems like unpleasant eurocentrism & goldfish like ignorance tbh

Colombia are doomed if they do that thing teams often do against England of confusing a Great Footballing Nation with a Great Football Team

Has this ever happened?

Brazil won a tough group reasonably comfortably in the end. I like the look of the Swiss, unusual to think of them as a 'flair team' but they will be against Sweden. Which inevitably means they'll lose.

Before we started, I'd have said Mexico wd have a decent chance against Brazil in the second round... now, I worry they'll be totally deflated by the last group game, and shamefacedly having to be bailed out by Korea. Otoh, perhaps they'll prefer to play Brazil, who will probably try and impose their own game, perhaps allowing for lethal counters, rather than Switzerland, who would surely set out to stifle them as Sweden did.

No world cup final is gonna be fantastic ud have to be fucking methuselah to remember a watchable world cup final

― Neuer write off the germans (Bananaman Begins), Friday, 29 June 2018 22:40 (yesterday)

78, 82 and 86 all great. Since, not so much. 98 memorable for the wrong reasons, 06 also.

Costa Rica played with 11 men behind the ball for pretty much the whole game, they were extremely organised and difficult to break down. Suspect a lot of other teams would have drawn that one 0-0.

1966 was good

yr pal,
methu$elah

(i didn't realise i'd watched it till years later, when i asked my mum -- we didn't have a TV then. she said "yes, the whole watched it, on the staff TV -- but you read a book the whole time")

obviously germany was robbed

FRA-ARG: 2-1aet
URY-PRT: 3-1
BRA-MEX: 1-1, MEX pens
BEL-JPN: 4-1
ESP-RUS: 3-2
HRV-DNK: 1-0
SWE-CHE: 1-1, SWE pens
COL-ENG: 1-3

FRA-URY 1-2
MEX-BEL 0-2
ESP-HRV 0-1aet
SWE-ENG 0-1aet

URY-BEL 2-3
HRV-ENG 1-3aet

(URY-HRV 3-4)

BEL 3-1 ENG (0-1 on 85min, then Stones (og), Pickford fumbles De Bruyne daisy-cutter, Batshuayi in off post DYS)

Golden Boot: Kane (9); Lukaku (8) subbed on 75min in F

(ISO3166-1 forever, except "England/ENG" doesn't exist)

Jeez guy

If all that happens then we'll presumably nuke Brussels

Also, have two nations ever played each other twice at a World Cup before?

Yep e.g. Brazil and Sweden in 94, Brazil and Turkey in 02

Most of these are too close to call, unusually so for a second round even if it's more because nobody's looking strong enough to win the whole thing. Still
a bit of a shame there's no Costa Rica v Greece battle of upsetters too though.

France seem uninspired compared to two and four years ago but win on penalties AET 1-1
Uruguay beat Portugal 2-1
Brazil to beat Mexico boringly and unconvincingly 2-1
Belgium to thrash Japan, De Bruyne and Hazard run the show - 4-0
Russia beat Spain undeservedly 2-1
Croatia struggle to break Danes down but Mandzukic nods winner in extra time 1-0
Swiss have been better than I expected and perhaps 'due' a QF appearance - penalties AET 0-0 tho
Been too long since England won a knockout game and feel it must be time esp. with James unfit, ideally a 3-2 classic

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dg7heq3WkAEzymk.jpg

he's ready.

Most famous instance of meeting twice in same WC surely Hungary v W Germany; 8-3 in group stage, 2-3 in final.

Apparently, 5Live just said ARG-FRA had never met in WC before? 1978 group stage, late Luque goal, come on.

Arg
Uru
Bra
Bel
Spa
Cro
Swi
Eng

Fra
Por
Bra
Bel
Spa
Cro
Swe
Col

Sweden, ultimately, to win the thing.

just reading some discussion about VAR over and the Express and Star and i've come to the conclusion that there's a kind of gammony rhetorical outrage about diving and all of the non-violent assault forms of gamesmanship and i just don't give that much of a shit, at all. NB cheating is bad, yeah.

anybody fancy a sweep on what minute Maradona dies?

whichever minute maximally trolls online ENG fans, i imagine

86 then

You heard it here first, speculative ghouls

Do you think Danny Murphy is deliberately mispronouncing 'Umtiti' to prevent himself from laughing?

shocker

Rojo you cock

this kid is why football

holy shit, that run

ball had got away from Mbappe a little bit, that was just dumb

I don't think I'll ever forgive Rojo for just ruining the goal of the tournament.

yeah, he might not have scored had he not been fouled

Whichever Argentina midfielder allowed Mbappe to just run through the middle of the pass and pick the ball up there was a moron as well.

still rooting Messi though. the blame he takes for his national team's failures is stupid af

It was definitely a lower chance than the penalty but it looked to me like he had a pretty clear path if he wasn’t fouled.

Amazing run.

yeah I mean the yellow was a right call for that reason

Di Maria is awful

omg what

mbappe is the best player in the world

Terrorizing Argentina.