Soccer 2017-2018

Pepe giveth, Pepe taketh away

wilkxus said:

Likewise I get uneasy feeling I am underestimating the English who looked to be slacking on purpose to get the easier half of draw. From what I've heard English do have low expectations on their shoulders and so might just click better than their usual underwhelming performances.

Whats teh feeling like in England for your chances?

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Too optimistic after the smashing of Panama, people's hopes are up and expectations are high. They won't ever learn

Merrith said:

Suarez gets grazed in the back and holds his head like he was shot.

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Practises being a faggot with Cavani during training.

a c i d.f l y said:

Ronaldo gaining my respect this game.

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Portugal in general is for me. They've looked the better team. One bad mistake by Pepe in the back is only reason Uruguay has anything this half.

Uruguay players sure like to dive

We’ll I was a few days early but Messi and Ronaldo can finally share that plane ride home.

Portugal can have some regrets on that one, because it was absolutely winnable. They did not get robbed or anything as Uruguay gave a great team effort and turned something like 3 opportunities into two goals! That's some cold blooded realism right there! For my money, Portugal had two problems that lead to its elimination: the first is how static their attack was. There was almost no pass made ahead of running players. Worse, everytime someone tried to put some speed in the attack, like eliminating a defender and making a pass or making a short pass and running, expecting a one touch pass back, the guy who got the pass controlled the ball, waited and made a lateral pass to static player.... Difficult to put a defense out of position playing like this! The second problem is that in the last 20 minutes or so, Ronaldo and the subs (Quaresma, but especially Fernandes) tried to win by themselves, going for long distance shots or trying to dribble through the whole defense. As a result, there was not that much pressure on the uruguayans even if most of the action took place in their half...

If Cavani is injured and will not be able to play against France, I feel you can pencil in the french to go through, because him and Suarez were absolutely critical and not only in the offense. They harassed the portuguese defenders, making their life extremely difficult and often helping Uruguay regaining possession of the ball. Also, they seemingly never lost a ball that reached them, allowing their team to move up the pitch after long passes forward. Cut all that work in half and, obviously, things get a lot harder for Uruguay.

That's two surprising things about this first day of R16: Not a single VAR usage (though I suspect several sequences were reviewed) and 10 goals!

To be fair though, while the Argentina vs France match was very entertaining, it became so because of how poorly both team played. I mean at some point I thought it would end with a 7-5 scoreline! For France the glass half full is that they managed to have some actual offensive animation and that they beat Messi's Argentina, but the glass half empty is that in the process of destroying a very weak team, they still managed to concede not one, not two, but three goals! And I am not sure Deschamps is really going for some vintage play philosophy like "Who cares about defending, to win you just need to score more than the opponent."


Side note: How long do you think Deschamps would have lasted at the helm of the french team if Argentina forced some overtime and won after Deschamps removed Mbappe (probably as a courtesy for Thauvin, who is likely to spend the rest of the WC on the bench)?

I completely lost my shit after France won. I drank alot. I dont remember what happenned.

Szlia said:

That's two surprising things about this first day of R16: Not a single VAR usage (though I suspect several sequences were reviewed) and 10 goals!

To be fair though, while the Argentina vs France match was very entertaining, it became so because of how poorly both team played. I mean at some point I thought it would end with a 7-5 scoreline! For France the glass half full is that they managed to have some actual offensive animation and that they beat Messi's Argentina, but the glass half empty is that in the process of destroying a very weak team, they still managed to concede not one, not two, but three goals! And I am not sure Deschamps is really going for some vintage play philosophy like "Who cares about defending, to win you just need to score more than the opponent."


Side note: How long do you think Deschamps would have lasted at the helm of the french team if Argentina forced some overtime and won after Deschamps removed Mbappe (probably as a courtesy for Thauvin, who is likely to spend the rest of the WC on the bench)?

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We'll have to wait the France vs Uruguay match to say if they played poorly, it rather seemed that both offense were insanely good. Neither team had much chance at the goal, but scored on half of them... Portugal had more shot at the goal than France and Argentina together yesterday, if Uruguay let France have 20 attempt at his goal next week, I don't think it's going to end well for them.

Brando said:

Been camping since Tuesday, only been able to watch the games on my phone when I have service which was hit and miss.



I was able to watch the majority of this game and think you're a bit off on both teams playing poorly. All the goals from open play were really good goals. But this gets back to Deschamps in that France was clearly the better team. Younger, faster, stronger and aside from Messi better. Yet as expected Deschamps sets up his team to be as defensive as possible which basically negates Frances strengths especially vis-a-vis Argentina who are old and slow as Mbappe showed over and over. If you give enough time and space to good players they'll eventually hurt you as Di Maria showed, France should have never been so passive to let that happen in the first place. Deschamps should have been fired after the Euros and with a better manager I'd expect them to win this WC but instead I think Uruguay has a good shot to knock them out next round depending on Cavani's health.

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Next world cup, or maybe even next Euro it's going to be Zidane doing the coaching, and he'll a have nice set of experienced and still young players to pick from. I would guess it's his plan, he resign from Madrid because he achieved what could be achieved, and winning a WC or Euro as a coach is pretty much the only achievement he's missing and a french team could manage it with proper coaching.

Ossoi said:

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I wish. I'm hungover as fucking fuck.