I've been driving on vacation today. So many thoughts today and I enjoy reading all your thoughts.
#1- Flo Balogun's red card has me feeling so conflicted. FIFA is a corrupt piece of crap. There are 4 guys that should have been suspended and all had their suspensions lifted. I still don't believe that Balo's red was deserved, it was wrong to give it to him.
That said, I HATE how this went down. You inform both teams the day before the game that this was going to happen? Stinks of corruption. I hate feeling like the bad guy and the world was *slightly* starting to respect this squad and in one move everyone hates us again and worse yet, thinks we are cheaters.
Why this bothers me so much is because of a few reasons.
I don't like my favorite team being looked at in a bad light. I had a hard time with Iowa football and the racism thing, even though I knew it was BS. I hate seeing all the negativity. Ultimately, it is what it is and there is certainly a bunch of Euro, Afro, Middle Eastern whining going on but they hated us no matter what.
Second, I would feel a lot better if they just said the refs effed up VAR. Watched in slow mo (which is not permitted for fouls) and since they improperly used VAR for this play, it is being rescinded. That's all I needed to hear. Instead it's crap reasons.
Third, Balogun handled this so well. The team was ready to move on and play for him. If we win, I want noting taken away from the rest of the guys in the squad. There have been fabulous performances by Wes, Tillman, Adams. I don't want anything to overshadow what they have done as a unit. Poch has done really well as a manager.
Fourth, timing is everything. I eluded to this before but why wait until now? It needed to be done within 24 hrs so everyone would prepare.
Short version: I hate being the bad guy but I don't care how they ultimately feel. It's best on best and I want us to win.
#2 Brazil vs Norway was a great game for Norway and kind of gave me confirmation bias. I think Brazil is really in an interesting situation. Their creativity is gone. Joga Bonito is gone. I think they are left figuring out who they want to be? Do they want to be like Paraguay, Chile and Argentina and win hack fests to compete or do they recreate their old style? For Norway, Haaland is freaking awesome. Most thought the round of 32 was the max and get are going to the quarters. Their keeper doesn't get regular minutes in club and he was so good today. (I did pick Norway over Brazil in my bracket... but missed the next)
#3 Mexico and England. Holy crap. Mexico kicked the piss out of them... and lost. England had nothing in the tank and almost got CONCACAFed. I've never seen them have to defend like that before. 5 shot for a team making infinity dollars. Mexico just couldn't find the last goal. I have to give total credit to Pickford. He was my MOTM and that's even with the phenomenal performance by Bellingham.