ponsaelius

Ref has been given ridiculously soft fouls all game like - so it is consistent.

Definitely reminding me of 2010 now for shiteness. So many unadventurous and safety first sides producing almost no chances. In 2010 it was usually a ridiculous shot from miles away with that penny floater that broke the monotony. We're not even getting that at the moment.

A Fernando Santos side against a 5 man defence? Can't wait to waste another 2 hours of my life.

Lack of quality in attacking areas from so many teams has been excruciating. Four 0-0s already ffs

There's no doubt whatsoever that more people playing football from a young age instead of other stuff would drastically improve the standard. Although it's definitely not as simple as more athletes and money = success in football like it is in certain other sports which rely more on pure athleticism or have less global competition (e.g. many Olympic disciplines). There's clearly an intangible cultural element that manages to produce great technical footballers in certain places. E.g. Croatia making world cup finals with a tiny population, while China flounders about in qualifying despite hundreds of billions spent and millions of active players. My point however was more on the absurd takes that you could literally re-train existing athletes in other sports and put them in the US team more or less overnight. Which genuinely exist unironically.

Losing to France in 2018 was no great disappointment, though. That's just falling at their natural hurdle to a better team with better players (after pulling off an excellent result against Brazil in the quarters). By the Euros last year the team was already in steep decline in defensive areas and retained the weaknesses that were always there at full-back. Again they lost a tight game to the eventual winners being on the tough side of the draw. Belgium's team has always been overrated because so many of the players play/played in the PL and were therefore familiar. Martinez has been fine if a bit dull and unspectacular. The exit to Wales in 2016 was obviously a disaster and probably the biggest missed opportunity because so many teams were not at their best and even France were miles away from the current quality and depth they have. If they had had an actual manager in for that tournament, even Martinez, they probably would have won it.

Pretty sure there's no change to KO times?

Has done far better than his predecessor too. Nobody has a god given right to win a tournament, particularly Belgium ffs.

Final ball and composure of Canadians was really poor, all things said. Particularly from Davies and David who you'd expect better. A shame because they're overall play deserved more.

Very frustrating but Canada have been wasteful.

He wasn't offside as a Belgium player played the pass, no?

That's a pen surely?

Love that Atiba Hutchinson is still going. Must be great for a player who's played gamefully for years through the doldrums to catch the start of a golden generation.

Probably started about half and come off the bench the rest. Mostly bench last couple of months. He's really struggled though - seems shockingly out of confidence.

De Ketelaere has been monumentally bad for Milan since joining, mind. Like criminally almost unfathomably poor. Trossard can probably feel hard done by though.

If Germany do win I can see this group being a 6-6-6-0 with an unlucky team.

Bizarre tournament so far. Mix of huge upsets, one sided dominations and total stalemates. Not really had a proper match up between two sides.

Had a meeting so missed the whole second half. Let me tell you, I am spitting.

Some really frustratingly flat/poor performances from teams. Japan are nearly always fun to watch so annoying seeing them set up this way.

Kenyan.

The thing is with a fit for purpose world governing body there should be a real requirement for any host bids to have genuine credentials in respect to minimising carbon footprint. Rather than greenwashing nonsense like 'recycling' brand spanking newly built stadiums and tokenistic off-site mitigation - a sustainable urban goal should be fundamentally built into any bid. That would mean re-using or redeveloping as many existing stadium sites (and their surrounding areas) as possible. Actually requiring governments to invest in transport infrastructure within cities and to link host cities together. Purpose built accomodation which becomes new residential homes afterwards. Etc etc. The World Cup circus could be a genuine chance to leave a proper legacy after it goes - but rarely is because of FIFA profiteering and the political bombast of hosts.

Yeah, absolutely. It's like going from one extreme to the other. To be honest, for all the undoubted issues with this World Cup, the fundamentally smaller scale of it is not necessarily one of them IMO. It's obviously too extreme to have what is basically the equivalent of 7 stadiums in greater Newcastle and 1 in Sunderland. The squeeze has made it impossible in terms of accomodation capacity so you've got thousands of fans flying in and back every day from neighbouring gulf states. That is atrocious in terms of environmental impact. But in terms of actual matchday logistics the biggest (and only real) issues appear to have been at Al Khor - the only one not in Doha and the only one not served by the Metro. It's the bottleneck issue of people literally only travelling there for the match at the same time (as there's nowt else there) - and mostly by car. Other than their brittleness in terms of support the horrendous traffic issues would have contributed significantly to the mass exodus for that opening game. The ideal solution is probably something actually in the middle of this tournament and the next one's extremes. 8-10 stadiums spread across a small handful of cities that are pretty close together and connected by good public transport links. Keeps travelling to a minimum for fans and players, provides enough accomodation capacity, but still has the feeling of a tournament with individual host cities/stadiums that have differing identity/history/architecture (this has clearly been lost this time around). The problem is that the tournament will have now expanded to the point where this middle ground is very hard to find as only big countries/continents can actually have the financial and infrastructural means to host. And even if they could feasibly do the smaller scale approach the political pressure would always be to spread the games around all regions of said host(s).

Indeed. I will say though that as he has slowed a bit (and got better at free kicks) he started to take the foul more often.

Guarantee loads of people have been confusing him with the other lad who came on at the same time - especially considering they swapped sides about halfway through their game time.