ha, yes, I suppose that is true! I guess then I want my drama over three weeks and not thirty years ;)
England vs Belgium Round 2 tomorrow. The first game was pretty boring because it was both teams playing to lose, essentially. I was hoping this would be a final, but hey, we still get the rematch. The question is if either side really cares about winning the 3rd place game, I guess.
Narrator: They don’t, not really.
Channeling his inner Hope Solo.
Goalkeepers! :(
I must be in the minority, I’ve always liked him. And he pretty much turned the game against Japan when he came on…
Third place gets a medal at least, right? Right? C’mon. Doesn’t someone want a medal?
I said I hated deciding a game on penalty kicks - and I do. It’s a skills competition. I mean, I get why it’s there, but there should be a better way to do it. One way would be to restore (?) the golden goal. Don’t play all 30 minutes in OT - if someone scores, the game ends. That’s far better than letting the other team tie it up and go to a skills competition. I mean, I don’t think the NBA Finals should be decided with a free throw contest, or the World Series with a Home Run competition, or the NHL Finals with a shootout (thank God that only happens in the regular season - and it shouldn’t be a thing then, either).
I asked my Scottish friend about that once and he said that Golden goal didn’t really work because the nature of soccer meant that the game became even more conservative (ie boring) than it usually is.
Yeah, Golden goals made the game really boring to watch.
I also find the implication that penalties require no skill to be pretty funny. As someone who has been on both sides of a penalty kick, I don’t understand how anyone can say that.
Terrible defending there
In the case of Belgium, it would also be our best result ever in the World Cup. So that’s a consolation prize for not playing tomorrow at least.
England cannot get anything going offensively but look suspect on every counter at the moment. If Belgium wasn’t so wasteful this game could already be out of reach.
I wish they’d try something radical to get rid of tie-breakers, like getting rid of the goalie during extra time. Pretty sure that will break a tie pretty quickly :)
First team to lose possession of the ball for more than 60 seconds
Was so busy yesterday I missed the news that Antonio Conte was finally sacked by Chelsea. Being the Blues manager is like being drummer for Spinal Tap. Somehow, though, they make that chaos work for them.
One of my favorite things was after the Belgium semi-final, their coach did his requisite interview on the field and talked about how important it was for them to go out on a positive result in the Third-place playoff. Because he knew his team wanted a positive ending to their World Cup after the match against France. It was clearly him struggling to find a positive in a tough situation, and I think he handled it pretty well. He just said it was a very important game for them.
After that the itv coverage (BBC…whatever) shifted to the studio, where they have a panel of three former players and a moderator. The moderator asked the players what they thought.
One of them said, in essence and fairly matter-of-factly, “Playing the third-place game is the worst.”
-xtien
Should have been the equalizer. Belgium have been rather complacent over the past 15 minuets.
Well deserved for Hazard, best individual player at the tournament to me.
Most pointless yellow card of all time goes to Witsel for standing over a free kick in the 93rd minute of a dead third place playoff.
How does Belgium look age wise? Will most of these players still be around four years from now?
Edit to add: Or has their window now started to close?