The Real Football Thread

[BullsFan22]

Gakpo robbed.

It seemed very close. To me it looked he touched it.

 

[Gigs_98]

Southgate is a special case IMO. Man relegated Middlesbrough then got the England job as if England are a Championship team.

But the best managers don't take national teams and while it's very understandable it's also a bit sad.

And then you somehow have Rangnick coaching Austria. Man this really was our shot...

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I honestly think this is just a phase of international football that's gonna pass. I mean the knockouts in Euros and Worlds have been cautious games my entire life, but the fact that it's so f*cking bad this tournament can easily be put down to the fact that argubly the three most talented teams are coached by Deschamps, Southgate and Martinez who are all mediocre coaches prefering these kind of tactics. Nobody felt like there was a shift to super defensive football during the group stages but now that we are constantly confronted with these teams their tactics are more and more in the center of attention.

That being said, man do I hope France and England both lose. Unbelievable how they are playing with these kind of players at their disposal. I know everyone is now on the "they made it to the semis so their tactics must have been the correct one" wave, but if you have a squad this good you should not have to depend on winning a penalty shootout. You cannot tell me England, who needed a late equalizer for the second game in a row, is actually tactically set up in a way that maximizes their chance to win.

Everybody worships Guardiola, but the way he sets up is inherently negative, and predicated on quick, niggling fouls by forward players as soon as the ball is lost in order to prevent any momentum being built up by the opposition; typically they will have been under pressure for a while so will try to get the ball deep from a free kick in their own half, from which Pep's guys can recover the ball and restart.

That works fine when you've got the kind of passers and players he has had at his disposal because you can just keep battering on the door until you finally break through. But once that cheap trick was spotted (seriously, once adjusted for time in possession of the ball, Pep's teams have been the dirtiest in the league in La Liga, the Bundesliga and the EPL, and the main culprits of the fouls have been forward players), but when you're looking at international teams that don't play with each other week in week out and have to build that chemistry on the fly, or simply just teams that don't have the quality of passing and vision that the teams Pep has managed have on hand, it creates a very negative game, lots of sideways and backwards passing, lots of seemingly aimless drifting passes across the defence, and a lot of niggling fouls in the midfield (exacerbated by a ruleset and instructions to referees that do not penalise even the most egregious and blatant simulation, especially if done by star players who 'need protection'. But I'm sure that Jude Bellingham's 95th-minute bicycle kick will be replayed a lot more than the blatant dive when the Slovak defender didn't even put a leg in that should have earned him a second yellow 25 minutes earlier), and largely the best way for teams to nullify the big teams playing this way has been to flood the midfield and stifle them with organisation, leading to a lot of low scoring games, as those teams tend to operate well as long as they are ahead or level, but struggle once they fall behind.

Essentially, the only teams that came here to play football were teams like Austria, Romania and Turkey, and they've all hit against the glass ceiling. Knockout football is a different kettle of fish and sadly it's also one that tends too often to reward negative and frustrating play.

The other thing that you have is that you only need to play well once. Portugal in 2016 and Argentina in 2022 showed that clearly. I don't think you could find a single person who could watch every game in the 2022 World Cup and tell you with a straight face that Argentina were a better team than France across the course of that World Cup. But, they got to the final by hook or by crook (especially by crook), and then it comes down to who was better on that one particular day. And the Argentines were the better team on that one day and they got to go home with the prize. And they won't care one iota that they played crappy football most of the time. Likewise Portugal in 2016.

Hell, likewise Spain in 2010. Everybody talked about what beautiful football they played and have whitewashed their vision of that team like they were Brazil 1982 or something, but they lost 1-0 to Switzerland in the group stage, then in the knockout stages they won 1-0, 1-0, 1-0 and 1-0 (after extra time) while the pundits lined up to sycophantically dribble about how this was how football was meant to be played.

 

[BullsFan22]

Southgate is a special case IMO. Man relegated Middlesbrough then got the England job as if England are a Championship team.

But the best managers don't take national teams and while it's very understandable it's also a bit sad.

He’s been very lucky at these tournaments. First with the draws, at 2018, 2020, 2022, and this year. As soon as they play a fancied team or when they can’t rely on luck as much, they lose. Not one game of theirs has been, ‘wow, they played well.’

 

[ice&fire]

...

Hell, likewise Spain in 2010. Everybody talked about what beautiful football they played and have whitewashed their vision of that team like they were Brazil 1982 or something, but they lost 1-0 to Switzerland in the group stage, then in the knockout stages they won 1-0, 1-0, 1-0 and 1-0 (after extra time) while the pundits lined up to sycophantically dribble about how this was how football was meant to be played.

Brazil 1982 is vastly overrated. If @Red Rick watched the Brazil - USSR of the 1982 World Cup he would break the r, o, b, e and y keys of his keyboard .

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Spain before this Euro's had become a complete meme team of 80% posession 1000 passes/game or whatever and 2 shots on target playing 0-0

The poorly-concealed Athletic Club fan in me wants to credit Nico Williams entirely.

 

[BullsFan22]

Germany was robbed yesterday. Sure, now Spain is the best team left, but that’s hardly something to rave about, considering how poor the quality has been from the big teams.

 

[gunara]

All these years international tournaments have been relied so much on hype and fandom, excitement on the pitch have only been provided by very small number of teams, some of them always went home early. It's almost vain to look for quality.

And being far too accustomed to previous eras of football, including playing and administering an academy, I don't know what is to expect anymore, some things and standards have changed so much. And it's getting harder to asses which changes are justified or necessary with too much information and opinions around, from every level of reliability. Quality - whatever that means - might not be all lost, but characters and distinct brand of football are harder to established.

 

[QueenStagiaire]

Goal scoring? What is this, a club match?

 

[Tim Cahill]

Some poor defending in this game from both sides, it's not what you want to see.

 

[Netserk]

Some poor defending in this game from both sides, it's not what you want to see.

Let's hope we'll see the teams tomorrow deliver.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

If the French keep shooting balls out of the stadium, Vingegaard might end up having a pair for tomorrow's stage.

 

[Tim Cahill]

Rio Ferdinand and Jermaine Jenas, probably the worst broadcasting duo in sports history. I was begging for Carlton to save us by the end.

 

[QueenStagiaire]

Can‘t wait for a second offensive spectacle today. Wait, who‘s playing again?

 

[Samu Cuenca]

If the French keep shooting balls out of the stadium, Vingegaard might end up having a pair for tomorrow's stage.

Spoiler: TDF Stage 11 Spoiler

Seems I somehow managed to predict the outcome yesterday, but then forgot about it when I put money on a Pogačar stage win

 

[QueenStagiaire]

Gareth Southgate in shambles because there are better teams than Switzerland in this tournament. The Dutch are gonna fall asleep and concede a couple goals any minute now.

 

[Põhja Konn]

Nothing wrong with that penalty, Dumfries was needlessly reckless with his blocking attempt. If things like that are being left ungiven, defenders just get a completely unfair and unjustified advantage.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Nothing wrong with that penalty, Dumfries was needlessly reckless with his blocking attempt. If things like that are being left ungiven, defenders just get a completely unfair and unjustified advantage.

Yeah, tackling/blocking in the penalty area always comes with a risk of failing, and if you hit the opponent instead of the ball, it could very well lead to a penalty.

It hasn't killed the game though. It's actually pretty good at the moment.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Thing is the ball is gone and the basically kick each other. In essence Kane kicks Dumfries harder than vice versa. It's just a collision.

The difference is that Kane also hit the ball.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Any Dutchman who thinks that they weren't outplayed pretty comprehensively is as blind as any Englishman who thinks that that wasn't the softest penalty of the several extremely soft penalties England have got across Southgate's run of invulnerability.

While feigning injury has been a long-running problem of trying to win free kicks and penalties, waste time, kill momentum and get opponents carded, VAR has massively worsened it as a problem, of players playing hurt to prevent the game from being restarted and force replays to be shown to get VAR to look at things.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Hit ball first then you can hit whoever you want. Yeah that makes sense.

If this rule was adhered to consistently for the last 20 years, Pepe would have been a Ballon d'Or winner

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Well it's not exactly unheard of that the guy who gets the ball first gets rewarded. I don't think Kane's kick was much worse than Dumfries, so he would also have committed a foul if the latter had touched the ball first.

But if that view makes me a blind Englishman, so be it.

 

[QueenStagiaire]

????
No way England‘s gonna win a title

 

[Dazed and Confused]

The level and quality of football shrinked significantly in the second half, but the Lions probably deserved the win.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

The goal should have been disallowed since Dumfries didn't touch the ball.

England actually played well in parts of the match, but Spain should still prevail on Sunday.