I didn’t see this. I did notice a fair amount of orange confetti on the ground near the left-hand goal.
I’ve never seen such a large dressing as the giant wad of gauze taped to Zabaleta’s face. It’s a wonder he could breathe. Between Zabaleta’s face, Mascherano’s concussion, and Biglia’s arm bandage, it looked like a casualty ward out there.
That was cleaned up at halftime. Is there a rule about cleaning the field of play during play? I’ve also noticed balls laying around near play and nobody goes over the fence to pick them up.
Are you Dora or Boots?
He surely must be Diego, in honor of Maradona.
Well, usually they just let it sit on the pitch for the duration of the game. I was astonished to find a stock photo already online of just what you mentioned, the workers cleaning up the confetti at half time:
I’ve seen some matches where you can hardly see any green inside the 18-yard box from all the garbage on the pitch.
At this point? who cares!
Pretty impressive by Argentina shutting out Belgium and Netherlands in consecutive games.
Meanwhile Germany couldn’t even shut out Brazil. 
I know all about that now, but the point with Brazil is that the 1986 World Cup is the first one I really remember, so the incident really stuck with me. I have vague memories of filling in the scores on a poster with my Dad in 1982 (yes, I would have been eight) but I don’t remember any of the games.
I only saw that incident for the first time many years later.
Amazingly he is only thirty so he definitely has another one in him.
George Best never even played in the finals, never mind winning a trophy. I was amazed to find out that Eric Cantona didn’t either:
Us England fans get all warm and fuzzy when we remember this happening:
http://img.thesun.co.uk/aidemitlum/archive/01409/SNA198811_280_1409705a.jpg
Amusingly, the guy’s surname is Butcher.
OK, that may be it, from where I was it looked like big orange and white stuff splashed around.
I did not think an Argentine team could play with that sort of discipline. And I did not think Robben would let another chance slip through his fingers in the closing minutes of a major international match.
I didn’t get to watch extra time (forgot to set the DVR on extended recording) but Argentina absolutely deserved to go through based on the first 90. That was some of the best defending I’ve ever seen over an extended period, never mind that they didn’t create many chances.
Yeah, sure, we’ll get right on that.
Why is that surprising? France were pretty uncompetitive from 1986 to 1998, and Cantona wasn’t all that good. He got Ballon D’Or votes in 1993 but otherwise he was a good-but-not-great club and international striker. Remember, Man U were dominant in England while he was there but were a bit pants in Europe. They didn’t win any European tournaments during his tenure.
Re the 3/4 place match. Sure, Brazil, Netherlands teams may not be happy and take it less seriously. But, for unexpected semi finalists such as Turkey/S Korea, Croatia, Bulgaria etc it is an important match.
The fuck? I looked this up and it was in 1989, well into the AIDS crisis. I can’t believe 1) they let him run around looking like Carrie sweating blood on everyone, 2) they didn’t sub him. Were they out of substitutions? Oh, and 3) how he didn’t pass out from blood loss. The pics are epic.
You don’t need a great deal of blood to cover a large area of clothing when it’s mixed with sweat. I may or may not be speaking from experience.
Van Gaal himself said after the game that tournaments shouldn’t have third-place games. Maybe they should just cancel it and give it to Brazil to cheer them up 0.001% (is there a trophy or a medal? I forget.)
Both of you realize Croatia beat Germany (in 1998) 3-0, in the QUARTERFINALS, not the 3rd/4th place game, right?
My Google-Fu is weak. I can’t for the life of me find out when they changed the rule so that you need to leave the field of play if you are bleeding. Anyone know?
I see your point on how good France was (although they did reach the semis of the Euros in 1996) I would not only disagree with you about how good Cantona was but I’d also argue that he was very much good enough to play in the France 98 squad. Jacquet was vindicated in that France won the tournament, but many at the time thought Cantona should have played.
I’m more inclined to agree with RNATB here, Cantona was not in the same bracket as Messi and Best. He was entertaining, charismatic and undoubtedly talented which made him love at Man Utd, but for me the Premier League striker of the nineties who stands head and shoulders above the rest was Alan Shearer and in terms of forwards who were also playmakers, I prefer Bergkamp and Le Tissier from that era. Of course that’s not say Cantona wasn’t among the best in the PL at that time.
He was dropped from France by 1995 in favour of Zidane, which cannot be said to have been a bad decision (though I’d agree that they probably still should’ve found a space for him in their Euro '96 squad, but the fact he wasn’t picked was at least in part Cantona’s own fault for being suspended for 6 months) and he retired from professional football in 1997, so he was never in the running for World Cup 1998.
Ok this meme is too good to not be noticed here:
http://cde.peru.com/ima/0/0/8/5/5/855838/611x458/argentina-brasil-2014.jpg
They have a Pope that will pray for them (Image of Pope Francis)
We have one too… (Image of evil looking Pope Benedict Emeritus)