ponsaelius

One of the big issues with Saudi Arabia developing decent players is that they get paid good money at home and there is never any real incentive to try and move abroad. If they did want to focus on making football more central to their modernisation plan then that would be something they'd need to focus on. Work permits would probably be a big barrier to getting young players abroad though - without any government level intervention.

Messi having 92 goals for Argentina now seems to have gone massively under the radar. Considering the confederation he's in and the fact he's spent a lot of football not as a striker - it's an insane record.

Was soft I felt like, much less of a pen than the foul on Maguire that was missed

The worst thing about the World Cup is seeing takes on social media from Americans who only watch football once every four years. At least the equivalent people in the UK end up talking about soldier's wages when we lose, rather than that the US would win if they picked a load of NFL running backs.

Moore is shit but pretty effective at what he does. He's kind of what I expected Chris Wood to be for us.

Dest is basically Yedlin except he thinks he's Dani Alves. Irritating individual to watch.

Fine line between a 5-3-2 and a 3-5-2. Seen lots of teams play pretty good stuff with the latter and the right personnel out wide. But 5-3-2 with the wrong personnel is stodge ball of the highest order.

Bale and Ramsey are busted, mind. Feel like Wales should give up with the football and just get Moore on to hit it long.

Yeah I dont doubt all that tbf - shame that Wijnaldum isn't around as like Depay he is usually electric for the national team. Do you think Simons will get any game time?

Qatar will beat these two based on this. Deary me.

The great Dutch sides over the years have often had weak spots in defence. Talent pool much smaller than than you would think and have probably historically punched above their weight. Now they've got a pool of strong defenders but extremely limited forwards. Packing them all into one team and unsurprisingly it's dreadful to watch.

De Ligt does not play for Juventus.

Amazes me that somebody like Danjuma can't make the squad and yet there's room for all of Luuk de Jong, Vincent Janssen and Wout Weghorst.

5 man defence with a load of PL flops up front. Disgrace to the heritage this.

Dutch need to play somebody interesting. Is Depay not fit? Simons could be exciting too. At the moment very dull set up.

Just looked at this Dutch keepers Wikipedia page. Bloody hell. 28 years of age with only 32 Eredivisie and 8 Serie B appearances.

Of course. But I only ever watch it live once every two years when a major tournament comes round. And amazingly the service never gets any better.

Never ceases to amaze me how bad ITV player is.

There's going to be a massive gap between tickets sold and attendances. Loads of people will have bought tickets but ultimately not have been able to afford to go, while loads of locals will probably simply not bother.

Iranians are not Arabs

Watching UEFA footy you get used to the fact that travelling is generally minimal, pitches are always good, climate and altitude broadly the same. Even the microstates basically have top notch facilities and organisation. It's a very controlled environment that produces pretty steady and dependable results despite the high quality throughout. With other continents there are lots of things that are equalisers - and thats obviously true in Asia. Huge amounts of travelling for the players in the bigger sides (most of Japan's squad play abroad for example), vastly different climates, poor pitches, atrocious referees. It's the same in the likes of CONCACAF. While the USA can raise their game in a world cup when the facilities are top notch - they can get dragged right down if they're not on it and end up not qualifying in the first place. As with Qatar today look at Panama in 2018 and wonder how on earth they got there ahead of the US. I'm not a betting man but I wouldn't go anywhere near betting on a lot of international football. Too many chaos factor involved to be sure.

You'll get games in the AFC where the likes of Vietnam and Thailand will match up reasonably well against the likes of Korea and Japan and be competitive. But they'd get obliterated far worse than Qatar did today if you put them in a World Cup against physical and technical South American/European teams (whereas Japan/Korea have often matched up reasonably well and give a strong account). It's always been a bit of a strange continent for results like that.

Then the hosts UAE 4-0 in the semis and then Japan 3-1 in the final. Clearly in the AFC they are not outmatched physically and are able to impose themselves on games - with club type cohesion providing an equaliser. In fact they may actually have some kind of physical advantage in those games considering the origin of some of their players. Today they were just completely outgunned physically from the off. That further enforced the technical gulf (no pun intended) between the teams.

Kick off times here would have been awful. It's a no from me.

Might be keen to watch. Off tomorrow and at a bit of a loose end. Other plan was just to watch at home.