Saudi Arabia beat Japan, China beat Vietnam.
Japan is doing surprisingly bad this qualification cycle, in fact, as it currently stands they wouldn’t qualify. This is a team that normally qualified for past World Cups with smooth sailing and with plenty of time and room to spare.
China is desperate for its second World Cup appearance after having only appeared in one in the last 70+ years.
Nation’s League is of little interest to me, but that France/Belgium match yesterday was a barnburner.
Germany has won four in a row under Hansi Flick, though today they started off shaky in their WCQ, giving up a terrific goal to Romania before pulling it back in 2-1.
Timo Werner, though. I keep wanting him to pull out of it, but he’s hard to watch.
More CONCACAF today and Wednesday. Mexico, USA, and Canada don’t play each other in these two match days, so there’s an opportunity for the three of them to increase their lead. It looks like an important week for Panama in particular - home for the US today, and away to Canada on Wednesday.
USA at Panama
Canada at Jamaica
Honduras at Mexico
El Salvador at Costa Rica
France wins the nations league on a very clearly offisde goal. I haven’t seen video yet, but it looks like Spain was screwed out of a PK as well.
At first sight, Mbappé clearly was offside at the moment the pass was played. But in between, a Spanish defender got involved and slightly deflected the ball, and according to some new rule I didn’t know, this voided the offside position, so it was a legal goal. This had to be explained to me by the TV commentator after obviously having been informed by his staff, who first was as baffled as me about that call. Silly new rule.
The rule is that the ball has to be deliberately played. I don’t see that applying. To me that means an intercepted backpass, not a ball deflecting (which is explicitly offside in the Laws of the Game) off a defender.
Well, I think the same, but there have been so many slight rule changes in the last few years that I have lost track. Don’t ask me about hand balls…
ETA: though I have to say that I first misunderstood your post. Actually, the Spanish defender didn’t accidentally deflect the ball, but straddled and gave the ball a slightly different direction. This never has been a reason to not call offside, but if this is a new rule, so may it be.
This is the goal in question:
(sorry, rather bad video. But I saw it from different angles where you could clearly see that the Spanish defender in fact touched the ball)
Pretty bad result for the US against Panama. Canada drawing to Jamaica is good though so the US will drop from 1st to 2nd, although only 1 point ahead of the playoff spot and zero games played against Mexico so far.
Beyond the raw point damage they also looked bad with the second half mostly consisting of launching long balls and praying. Sure, 4 of their 5 higher profiles players were out, but still.
The “deliberately played” exception to the offside rule has been around since 2013. I think it was intended to protect the attacker in the case of a clumsy back-pass, but in any case, the examples I’ve seen have been really difficult to interpret.
This one really doesn’t seem like a great example of it, but I’m having trouble seeing the actual intent of the defender’s action.
Well, if you’re 53 like me, a rule change in 2013 might as well be yesterday 
. And such a situation is so rare that I might have never seen one before this game.
lol. I’m 58, but I certainly get it.
Panama took their chance today, so things are quite bunched up now. Canada-Panama is even more important than before. Canada now has three home games in a row, so they better make the most of them.
Germany is the first team to qualify for 2022. I’m feeling a lot better about the younger players we have available than I did four years ago, and Flick has certainly got them on track.
Starting with five wins in a row surely is a good thing for Flick, but we haven’t played one of the big guns yet and don’t know where we stand now.
That’s fair. I’ll admit that, besides the wins, much of my optimism is just Loew being gone, and Flick’s restoration of the 4-2-3-1 (even if Germany doesn’t have a great 9…though Werner is at least scoring now against weaker sides)
grumble grumble Canada slackers drawing against Jamaica grumble grumble
Can I please get through this qualifying without mental trauma? US down 1-0 60 seconds in. If they lose this they’re in bad shape going forward.
Creating chances and I think the most likely outcome is the US come back to win, but jeez.
Three cheers for Sergino Dest!
A draw is still really bad, but yeah, that was a nice goal.