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

it's not like i care as such it's just jarring to be reminded of yr own complicity in the circus

we are all co-commenspirators

2022 is gonna be a laugh innit

Honestly, I think it will probably be fine from a fan perspective.

Russia was

the move to nov/dec has rescued it, but that'll be an unbearable circus itself when the time comes

Never want to see a head of government on the pitch again.

a literal head maybe

It'll be fine until European clubs/leagues suddenly clock what it means for them and then there will probably be a few hissy fits.

predict it will be the best World Cup ever until the 2034 one on the moon

call me a stick in the mud but world cup shd stay on the world imo

sick of this small earth mentality

if football is ever going to expand its popularity the World Cup needs to be staged in exciting new markets like Qatar and the Moon

British Virgin Islands 2038 should be a corker too

wcexit

feel like usa/canada/mexico is paving the way for uk/scotland/ireland in the next world cup after that tho

jorge valdano w/ an annoyingly overstated but broadly otm summary of the shifts in tactics this wc https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jul/16/russia-2018-claustrophobic-football-crowded-tiki-taka-world-cup?CMP=twt_gu

The thought of the World Cup in croke Park has me a little torn but I’d actually love to see if.

feel like usa/canada/mexico is paving the way for uk/scotland/ireland in the next world cup after that tho

All six nations seeded, every single group is a clusterfuck.

Three world cups in a row have taken place in BRICS countries (hey, remember that term?) but they've all been won by countries from western europe. This is my geopolitical macroanalysis of the last eight years of football.

valdano piece was v good, if purple. love "the bat", haven't heard that before.

lol @ literal bros being least offensively bro-ish ppl on brooklyn podcastsphere left

ach wrong thread

Unsure that France deserved to win, except that I know that people think there is no such thing as deserving to win. If there is, then I'm not sure they did.

Part of their quality seemed to be 'having a lot in reserve' and 'never unleashing their full power'. But if you go through a whole tournament keeping it in reserve (except a few minutes against Argentina and maybe yesterday) ... then ... that full power might as well not exist?

Put another way - it must be a long time since a beaten finalist played as well as Croatia.

The politicians on the pitch all seemed to me dreadful.

Politicians have sometimes tried to make a bit of capital from it before - like Chirac at the final in 1998 - but this took it to a whole other level which was sinister and dangerous. It's as though Putin dragged the others into his own way of operating (and they were happy to do it - Macron as culpable as anyone).

Possibly the best tournament ever, though.

france were all round the best team by a considerable margin, dunno if that = deserved to win but it works for me

"love "the bat""

is that a reference to gabs batitstuta?

Who was better than France over the course of the tournament? Only team that didn't seem flawed in one significant way or another.

I think the best team does tend to win the WC - the only one you can perhaps argue with is Italy in 2006. *Maybe* Brazil might have beaten France in 98 with Ronaldo fully fit, but that was an extremely good team in any case.

Can't decide if, had England reached the final, I'd liked to have seen May there getting drenched. As has been pointed out her apparent disinterest in football might be one of her more redeeming features.

heh

Maintenant parlons de Giroud qui, une fois le match terminé, rate un but SANS GARDIEN pic.twitter.com/95dtqrUjtt

— colman 🇨🇵 (@ColmanLegrand) July 15, 2018

It's as though Putin dragged the others into his own way of operating (and they were happy to do it - Macron as culpable as anyone).

Putin most dignified of the bunch tbh

So he did finish the tournament with 1 shot on target

he missed!

Was looking on my phone, it was small. Lol Giroud.

Yes I was thinking more of whether FRA deserved to win the match, on the day, given how well CRO played.

Over the tournament, it is true that FRA overcame significant opposition - blasting away ARG, dispatching a very dangerous URU (albeit with no Cavani - I didn't see that match anyway) and a superb BEL - and getting past a terrific CRO. So on that basis, they do appear to have achieved it the hard way.

I still think I never saw them play that impressively except vs ARG, maybe a very brief spell with the 2nd-half goals yesterday, and also vs BEL where I thought they looked better than other people seem to have thought.

FRA were very lame for most of their matches against AUS and PER, and it's said that the DEN match was a non-event. So they certainly hadn't given much notice of greatness prior to knockout stages.

BEL lost to FRA but are they a significantly flawed team? You might think: Martinez - poor defence. But they only shipped the one header to FRA - there's no general evidence of defensive frailty in the BEL team. I still think they were maybe the most all-round exciting team of the tournament, with some of the outstanding individuals (Courtois, Vertonghen, Hazard).

I couldn't say CRO looked flawed either at the end - but then they did look limited vs DEN and RUS and for 40 minutes vs ENG. Yesterday may have been their best performance of the tournament.

What this FRA seem to have most is strength in depth - a sense of gears they're not using.

> feel like usa/canada/mexico is paving the way for uk/scotland/ireland in the next world cup after that tho

the next euros will be partially in the uk - it's being spread all around europe, no single host country

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Euro_2020

xp i think we all judge france vs some perception of what we suspect they may have left in a tank of potential, not that they havent won deservedly against each opponent in turn but that nonetheless they havent hit 80% for anything more than a ten minute spell here or there (and may never given Deschamps' preferred method)

this is contrasted to croatia squeezing every last ounce out of their team, whereas ive not really been too impressed with their actual play bar (similar to france) a few minutes here and there since the knockout stages

Even if France only played well for very short periods (which is a very big if - what you do off the ball matters as much as what you do on it) those short periods were some of the most devastatingly effective I've ever seen. They conserved energy in the group stages while doing everything they needed to do, but I don't think any team in the world would have been able to deal with those Kante/Pogba -> Mbappe rapid counters.

You have to go back to 1958 for the last time a side scored four goals in 90mins of a World Cup Final.

croatia got a lot of mileage out of their midfield being better than everyone else's, until they met france and it wasn't

(xp) Brazil did it in 1970. The second time that final's been overlooked on this thread in the last few days!

yeah they were fairly comprehensively outplayed in the end, and tactically questionable in the way they went after France and allowed them to play their counter

4 goals is a great achievement, but most people seem to think one of them was a pen that shouldn't have been given.

Many people also seem to doubt the free kick, though I don't see the problem with that.

I think the doubt cast over those two important goals is a factor in judging the performance. If they were all clearly valid and not poor refereeing decisions then it would be inarguable.

The last two French goals were very good. Pogba's slightly similar to the superb Japanese goal in following such good hold-up play. It would have been more spectacular if he'd scored from his first shot, yet I find it more impressive, in a way, that he could immediately shoot effectively with the other foot.

Of course one of CRO's goals was simply from a dreadful error. Perisic's, though it looked a tremendous strike, seems to have been affected by a big deflection.

One of Cro's goals emanated from a free kick they earned where the player clearly flopped too

dont say flop

the ref decisions were good

if not, then perfect refereeing sees croatia out against england after a mountain of yellows

but happily they were good decisions and croatia conceded two goals that counted

Scoring from a free kick that might not have been a free kick, who cares?

No-one remembers those.

pinefox brought it up re: France. I certainly don't gaf.

One of Cro's goals emanated from a free kick they earned where the player clearly flopped too

Uh, no it didn't. It was a pretty classic cynical foul by Kante. Ran across the player and clipped his heels while trying to make it look accidental

I think Tom was having a joke about England's 1990 semi-final fail Neanderthal.