2026 World Cup - General Discussion & Non-USA teams thread
- Thread starter Tom McAndrew
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England-Croatia is the match of the day. Modric, my favorite player.
on paper, it certainly looks to be the best match of the day. But the beauty/joy of the World Cup is that any match has the potential to be really good. We're still in the zone of 1st matches of the '26 World Cup, so you never know when the underdog/low ranked team will play an amazing match, or the favorite/high ranked team will stub their toe in their opener. Obviously, there are many other ways things can go for either team, and a game can be a blowout. But more often than not, there are things in the game that are pretty darn entertaining and/or captivating.
Portugal dominating possession, and scores 6 minutes into the match. This could be a long day for DR Congo.
1-1 at the half. The drama…
Watching the replay, that was piss-poor defense by Portugal there. Dang, awful.
So much for my earlier statement. Portugal is still controlling a lot of possessions, but DR Congo got better as the 1st half played out, and then they got the equalizer in stoppage time. smh
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He’s a genius. Still love this line by an English writer: “During the 2018 World Cup, Ronay described the Croatian midfielder as resembling a ‘small boy dressed up as a witch’"
Nope, former PA official, serious foul play endangering the safety of an opponent. Straight red from my pocket. Serious foul play is a red card offense.
If you saw Messi walk onto a field, not knowing him, and he didn't initially display any skills to tip off his tremendous talent, you would never expect this man, by his stature and build is a worldclass futbol player.
He amazes me how under control he plays, no wasted motion, and as great as he is he is unselfish on the pitch, willing to pass to set up his teammates. 38 yrs old, amazing he is still an incredible player.
The feature that Tom Rinaldi did on him was great. A older gentleman (perhaps his youth coach), when interviewed, described Messi as a young boy as one who played like a grown man. In the early film of him playing as a kid in Argentina, being much smaller than the other kids, you could see he was already way ahead of any of those kids. Move quickly and skillfully.
I didn’t see enough of the match to form an opinion about how well/poorly Ronaldo played, but, for lack of a better term, he’s an all-or-nothing player. A Modric or a Messi, they’ll impact a match in a hundred different ways. Ronaldo doesn’t have that ability.
As I’ve said in so many words, choosing me as your go-to man for soccer talk would be like going to Shelton Cooper for dating advise. But I do get things right from time to time!
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Shucks? Does your last name end in "ic"? We're all rooting for the mother country here.
Sorry, I can’t root against Modric. You should have heard me just now.Shucks? Does your last name end in "ic"? We're all rooting for the mother country here.
Plus I was in Croatia last year. I got a lot of mileage out of my “Modric is my favorite” spiel.
You can disagree, which is fine. But it's not an obvious "nope."
Multiple things on the play.
- IMHO, it was the poorest reffing job I've seen so far in the WC. I've watched @ 2/3 of the games. This ref gave 2 yellows that did not, IMHO, deserve a yellow, and called several fouls that were pretty ticky-tack. So in that context, if a red was going to be issued on the play, then this ref would have been the most likely so far to issue it, but he didn't
- there were two paths to a red card: DOGSO, and serious foul play. The problem with the DOGSO path is that this took place around mid-field (generally, too far away), and there was another defender relatively close to the play, and closer to the goal. So it didn't qualify for DOGSO. As for serious foul play, you can make a case for that. IMHO, it was a hard foul, but it wasn't egregious enough to be serious foul play. The defender hit the attacker in the chest with his shoulder, which was the foul. The defender also threw his arm up to grab the attacker, and the arm appeared to hit the attacker in the throat, which I believe is why the attacker took time to recover/get up from the foul. You can make a case that the arm hitting the neck added to the hard shoulder to the chest makes for a red card. Perhaps I have a higher threshold for a red card. I know that I don't give them out if I have any doubt about whether it should be a red or a yellow
If you were a USSF ref, then you know that in the training sessions for recertification, or for the training sessions to upgrade, refs are not always in agreement as to what the call should be, or what the card should be, when a video is shown. In part, that's because the videos are rarely of great quality, and in part because the plays shown are often on the edge between a couple of things. If you were a PIAA ref, then you know that the same scenario plays out in the chapter meetings where training takes place.
I doubt that I'll change your mind as to what to card should have been, as you seem to be pretty set that it should be a red. Likewise, you won't change my mind, as there is no way I'd give a red on that play. As my post indicated, in real time it did appear to be close to a red, but I felt that yellow was the correct call. We'll have to agree to disagree.
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Dang, another last-moment-of-first-half goal to tie! Gotta love soccer. Freaking awesome match.
A nice set play by England. The Croatia players seemed livid, as two England players basically took out the Croatian players closest to where the corner was delivered, which freed up Kane.
I thought the yellow was consistent with how it's called across the globe game after game at the international level.
If that's a red, then most CONCACAF games would end 10v8. (slight bit of exaggeration, but not much)