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

if modric does it tonighy hes a strong contender

The team that's best at set pieces is best at football, the rest is just players knocking the ball around to keep people viewing the pitchside adverts

solid post

in off the post

harry maguire should rent out his forehead for advertising imo, that lad's agent needs to up his game

do we think/dare hope that englands performances so far are flat by design or inbuilt limitation to positive effect and can lift withon thst system to appropriately meet whatever challenge, or do we think there's individually a lot more can be asked of certain players and this might burst forth tonight/sunday, or do we think that its all a sham and theyve just played nobody yet

can goalpkeepers win the GB? seems unkind if not unless they have like a separate golden stanchion or something

as someone said above kahns won it

theres also a separate gk award https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Cup_awards#Golden_Glove

golden gloves also a thing right

Yes

Gb and a knighthood for Kane if Eng go out tonight

all speed boys require space to flourish and this can be denied, but kante cannot be denied, he is the ultimate denier, suffocating all build up play, always screening and disrupting and turning negatives into positives. argentina's three goals all came from single killer incisive balls from range. if cavani had been fit mb uruguay could have managed something similar, but otherwise, he's the trouble everyone keeps running into

To answer Darragh: England kind of mono dimensional by design and it's a better design than they've had for a long time. Individuals could've/can play better, even within the limits of their role. That's gonna partly be because of who they've had to play. Would like to seem them really catch fire against proper competition, don't think they will. Don't think they'll have to, even to win the tournament.

Apologies for preferring performances to results in general, that's just me. Don't hate this lot, gently admire them, but they just don't thrill me yet.

Teezus

kinda with you but comfortable in transferring decent amount of credit to southgate for implementing a system that smooths out the distortion between performance range of these players. english players are, tbf, a shockingly flaky bunch til now and as a starting platform its been enough to get this far without totally shitting it

pushing for individual consistent excellence prob a job for after, once the taint is off ENT

Yeah I'm not really apportioning blame, Southgate might well have broken the misshapen Jabani once and for all given time and continued backing. But I rarely really *enjoy* watching Germany in full flow either, and that feels like the model.

Jabulani, hate typing on the phone

theres no way but to commit in toto from ground up, at least this way theres results and no rooney and all that comes with that cunt of personality

and before Rooney, Gerrard, back thru your Robsons and Keegans, long lineage of prima donnas who didn't deserve to be anywhere near prima.

Ramsey dropping Greaves still an iconic moment that dickheads failed to learn a lesson from, and Greaves was ten times the player any if the wastemen I listed were, far as I can tell.

There is an optimum point between baller flair and team organization but it's rare and hard to reach and forced to choose one or the other I:d always go with the latter. This goes double when you look back and grimace at what's passed for a baller in England history

Bryan Robson heroically self sacrificing by getting injured early on in two world cups tho

Yeah, '86 crash out his greatest contribution to his country. Unless we count the untold hilarity of his management career.

meanwhile:

It's in the bag, lads! 🏴⚽️🎉#ENGCRO pic.twitter.com/G7aG6dOTln

— McCain UK (@McCainUK) July 11, 2018

If that's got Ricky Tomlinson's voice on it you may have found the source of all dark matter in this universe

STRAIGHT

Also WTF with the black flag?

i believe there's a well known emoji glitch which transforms the st george into the anarchist international

Bit too much like the Croatia first/away strip dynamic for me. Hang 'em high.

chomsky's comin' noam

surely this McKane has an Irish granny?

Chumpsky another "toil before flair" exemplar

cosine all nv points

still

have to be enjoying it folks? an england wcsf was never expected in as likeable a fashion in yer lifetimes?

Kane's father is for Galway

*from

(but presumably also "for")

I just enjoy World Cups anyway, dunno if a likeable England performing well stirs me much - I like seeing other people enjoying it and bonding over it if they're not cocks. Games I've watched in my local have been fun days. See how tonight turns out like.

not sure if this was discussed upthread but when contemplating the state of african football, this seems v important https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-44736780

🗣 Thibaut Courtois: "I'd have preferred to lose to Brazil in the quarter finals, at least that was a team that wanted to play football. France are just an anti-football team".

🗣 Eden Hazard: "I prefer to lose with this Belgium than win with that France".

🔥 Shots Fired. pic.twitter.com/3dHtKhReG3

— SPORF (@Sporf) July 11, 2018

Ah, can't tell the difference between attacking on the counter and Scandiball, shame.

Worth pointing out that England have mostly faced teams who have opted to either kick them or try to strangle the life out of them. This is fairly self-evidently a sign that the oppositon thinks they're an attacking threat, but I'm not sure how this team will respond to a team really going at them. I'm not sure that would be a great tactic for Croatia b/c they'd be wide open defensively and England can capitalise on that. But I can't envisage many scenarios in which they don't lose to France.

Don't think France will necessarily go after them either tho, why would Deschamps change?

Payling for my lunch today, I see that someone (presumably a shop-based changegiver) has trolled me by giving me a 20 lipa coin from the Republika Hrvatska. I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad omen.

England have a lot of pace and can press but I don't think they're remotely capable of dealing with Mbappe if he's on his game.

By which I mean France will be quite happy to soak up England pressure but they don't look like they can cope with a really devastating counter.

By definition teams can't cope with a really devastating counter.

Then again if what you mean is that England's pushed-up fullbacks leave them susceptible to a counter-attack and France's personnel mean those counter-=attacks have a higher-than average chance of being effective (therefore devastating) then I'd agree.

*If* England win tonight it's nigh on impossible to see them beating France (in open play). But tonight's game could be a v interesting tussle of styles. Hope Croatia bring it, tbh.

southgate doesn't look like he has the necessary contempt to beat this french side, if i had my way england would only leave their half to win corners

have to say this world cup has really opened my eyes up the myriad ways to loathe France

xp Of course France didn't beat Belgium (in open play).

I suppose that, like Eden Hazard, my football sensibilities are so blunted that I too can't really tell the difference between what France did last night and "Scandiball", except in so far as France have better attacking players. But even then I wasn't seeing France being especially clinical or thrilling. I wasn't looking very hard at the first twenty minutes, I was setting some type.

The early part of the game was mostly Belgium but France were swarming all over them by the end. They're both an excellent attacking *and* defensive side, it's not like they're Greece in 2004 or something.

England are winning the World Cup from a 93rd minute Danny Welbeck backheel, his first touch of the game.