Apparently the state of Pernambuco, site of one of the stadiums, is refusing to allow the cup to be played there.
How about for the UEFA Europa Conference League next season? 
Thursday nights will never be the same.
Is there a sort of participation trophy vibe going on here? So much for going “you are SO Europa”. Now it’s “You are so UEFA Europa Conference League Trophy”? A bit clunky.
Huh, I hadn’t heard of that until just now. If I was a fan of , say, Southhampton or Besiktas, I might be excited for that, but most fans of the global brand teams already think the Europa league is for losers. I’m a bit skeptical about the excitement they can drum up.
Canada qualified for the last round of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying after an all-time own goal:
And, to be fair, a couple more normal goals as well.
Mexico and the US are probably likely to qualify, and there could be a good battle for the third spot.
Costa Rica has generally been the 3rd (or 2nd) best team in CONCACAF for a long time now. They looked pretty bad in the nation’s league though. I still expect them to qualify, but maybe Honduras pips them for the third slot. Not real optimistic about a fourth place team winning their playoff.
Maybe Jamaica too, I guess. For Canada, it’ll be nice to have a bunch of meaningful games to watch, and things might break well, who knows. So much more fun to watch with players like Davies around.
Welcome to the Octagonal, Canada and the Fonz.
When I first saw that clip pop up in my feed, I thought it was one of those minor football leagues that often produces silly moments for YouTube. When I realized what match it was from, I felt really terrible for the keeper….
It’s really too bad, as the keeper had played well, and at that point Haiti only needed one goal to get back to even. But in the end Canada deserved the win.
It’s being shared among South American football fans as proof that the Concacaf doesn’t need more than 2 places in the World Cup.
If a confederation should lose a spot it’s 100% Asia. CAF is ahead of CONCACAF in deserving to lose a spot too. I would say that if the field was really balanced towards strengths then CONCACAF would probably have 2.5 or 3 instead of 3.5 though.
Well then good news! This is the last WC where CONCACAF will have 3.5 spots. 
Argentina is trying to play a counter attack against Paraguay with Messi, Aguero, and Di Maria up front. Yeah, I dunno.
Many of us in Argentina right now are torn betwen wanting to win this cup (and finally win something!) and wanting to be eliminated ASAP so we can get rid of Scaloni and get a manager who at least has managed before 
Aren’t you on the longest unbeaten run in like 20 years? I’m pretty impressed by them defensively given that’s been a glaring weakness for a while now. I can’t trust any team that starts Otamendi though.
Yeah “unbeaten” in the sense that we have tied with everyone we play, usually due to defensive mistakes after we start winning, mostly attributable to the manager’s poor choices on tactics and players (see Otamendi, Nicolas).
That said the team is showing flashes of promise (this the hope of finally ending the drought) and maaaaybe we could hope that Scaloni is learning, the problems with that are:
- Why should be lend our beloved national team to a begginer so he can learn how to manage teams? Is not like we lack managers! half the teams we play have argentinian managers (not to mention that we could do the unthinkable and hire a foreigner for once (the horror(!)).
- Even if Scaloni learns to be a decent manager, that is not enough. Argentinians of my generation and the previous one, old enough to see the 1978 (I was a baby for this one), 1986 and 1990 WCs have very big expectations for our team, “decent” is certainly not enough. We demand the victories we were used to damnit! (and if someone can restore our hair and waistline too we would be grateful too)
- There are 44 million Argentinians, each one fancying himself or herself a football manager, you can’t expect to hire a nobody like Scaloni and satisfy us, we would grumbre if Guardiola, Mourinho or God himself were our managers (we grumbled in 2010 when He was, in fact).
Still think this?
I was looking for this thread to eat crow!.
I still don’t like a lot of things, but he broke the curse, I’m on the Scaloneta from now on.
That was an intense match. Congratulations to Argentina, they muscled their way to the win.
Fine saves by the Argentine keeper, too. Brazil had plenty of good chances to equalize.