There’s something beautiful about watching the main man in a ‘lesser nation’ do his thing.Originally Posted by Serj
There’s been a lot of dons over the years who just seem to turn up in international football and do their thing
Definitely! All hail Sir Waistcoat.
England have a good chance of winning.
Not predicting it will, but wouldn't be too surprising.
They'll go out in the quarters / semis once they play somebody good.
Not. A. Chance. Dunno when they'll go out, but they'll go out.
It's been too long. A group stage calamity beckons.
Drunk turtle with a flare sticking out of its bum.
There’s something beautiful about watching the main man in a ‘lesser nation’ do his thing.
There’s been a lot of dons over the years who just seem to turn up in international football and do their thing
lol if this gets ruled out.
Using snicko to show him handling it
SloVARkia.
AmazingUsing snicko to show him handling it
Such a shit decision. I could understand if Lukaku handled it before scoring but it’s a different phase ffs
I thought those insanely incidental handballs had been done away with, or is that a divergence between the premier league and UEFA? I seem to recall the latter being much more mongy on the handball issue.
Europe love an extremely questionable handball. If it touches your arm/hand for any reason & your arm wasn’t pinned to your body it’s a foul.
Injuries have caught up with De Bruyne. He looks ridiculously slow and lethargic these days
Saudi beckons with Lukaku
I don't think I'd have given it either, but I can see the argument that he gains an advantage from it.
And sometimes even when they are pinned to your side <insert picture of Baggio dinking the ball into some Chilean sap's hand in 1998>.
I'm with Sutton, that was a scandalous decision. I also don't for a minute believe there is some vibration detecting chip in the ball.
Yeah, I'm still sore about the one against Livramento in Paris.
Only if you are insane.
It must have scraped his fingernail, the difference it would have made to the path of the ball would be less than negligible. It would have been non-existent. As bad as the toenail offsides that we now have to tolerate.
It looked to me like the ball changed course. Not dramatically so, but still.
So the rationale is that his arm is near [lol at the vaguery there] or above shoulder level?
It categorically wasn't above shoulder level.
Is that then going to be a penalty if it happens in your own penalty area? Batshit.
Raucous celebration in Antwerp right now as Belgium win the 'gave it a go' trophy. Scenes. Yev getting the flag tattooed on his arse.
I didn't say tries, I said entertains me.
I didn't say give it a go, I said entertains me.
Belgium were great entertainment tonight.
I got Slovakia in my classes sweepstakes and cheered the goal like an actual fan.
There does seem to be some heavy leaning into the sod the performance it's all about the win narrative, as if we haven't witnessed play shit and win/draw against lesser opponents before finally playing shit against anyone half decent and losing a millions times over already.
Yep, completely this.
I've no aversion to shitty football if it's the best available option to maximise your chances of winning and you actually win, but if you don't when you have this attacking talent at your disposal then really, what's the point?
At an international tournament, I'd favour results. Friendlies and qualifiers are where I want the performance to be good. Usually the two operate in tandem, though. For as sketchy as we looked last night, we had a solid defence and took our chance. There was a performance in there, just not in the attack-minded sense.
And hanging on by the skin of your teeth can be entertaining. Like a horror movie.
And it's also a massive shifting of the goalposts. Coming into the tournament all the talk was about how we have these wonderful attacking players, it's coming home, yada yada yada. The attacking players mostly play well below par and the response is then "we won, what more do you want?"
I did for decades and I still would, but given we still haven't won anything (and almost all of us know deep down we're not going to win this tournament), if the football is shit it basically becomes an exercise in wasting my time.
I don't even think it's about the type of football, it's about doing it well, even if it's total Allardyce shite. That, for some reason, seems to be totally out of England's reach.
Anyway, we move onto Denmark, who don't look particularly good, so a good performance and a tidy win to see us more or less top the group after two games would make last night go away.
Shouldn't be that difficult to achieve, should it?
Yeah, very fair point. Last night definitely wasn't horrible football executed well, it was just horrible football.
In more important news, prepare for possibly the biggest gulf in national anthem quality at the entire tournament.
Yev if we win it and we don't hit the heights of 1970s Brazil, please do a ten paragraph rant while the rest of us celebrate.
Upamecano is still somehow starting over Konate so you might be getting an assist or two from him
Belgium
Sounds like youthful optimism to me.
Christ Maxi Wober, forgot all about him. Come on, you useless cunt.
Where's Pogba?
Banned for 3 years or something.
Banned for life
Banned how?
Just googled it. Doping? Really? He was the laziest player out there. What the fuck was he doping for?
Four years for doping.
Dembele
Is there something about Ousmane Dembele that I’m missing? Worse than 1-in-4 at club level, and a tiny 5 in 44 at international level. I could understand if he was some kind of maverick dribbler or assister, but he seems more like a Walcott style player who’s never going to contribute meaningfully to a team’s success.
That was sublime by Sabitzer.
ffs, Baumgartner should have buried that.
Oh man what a glorious chance that was.
Austria better than what I thought they would be, but then the expectations were very low.
France same shite as usual. They'll still probably go quite far, if not win.
lol.
Lmao. Still shite I see.
He was always the shining example of a brainless, unproductive dribbly boy when he was at Dortmund & Barca, but he does seem to have put it together a bit more at PSG, although that might just be due to the drop in the relative quality of opponents he’s facing. His main appeal is definitely mostly just pace, a bit of flair & being strong on both feet.
France seem to be at the in-between point with their wingers. They have guys like Olise & Barcola coming up but for now it’s still Dembele, Kingsley Coman & the like.
Every time I've seen Barcola he looks like he's allergic to the goal.
He’ll fit right in with all the other French wingers then.
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