Actually, that’s not true. Any one of the remaining matches—including the championship—could end in a draw. Hell, ALL of the matches could, theoretically. All that needs to happen is for both teams to have the same number of goals after extra time.
Of course, if that happens they’ll go to Kicks From The Penalty Mark (commonly called a “penalty shootout” or just “penalties”) to determine which team advances. But those penalty shootout kicks don’t count as goals, therefore they don’t add to the score, therefore the final score is even and there’s no winner of the match.
A match that goes to “penalties” is recorded as a draw even though one teams “wins” in a practical sense in that they advance to the next round (or win the tournament if it’s the championship game).
However, when it comes to points toward your international ranking (i.e. the FIFA world ranking), in most international tournaments you do get more ranking points for a draw + penalty shootout victory than for a “regular” draw during the group stages . But you get *less *ranking points than you would have if you had won the game on goals rather then drawn after extra time and gone to penalties.
Which in turns leads to the trivia question, what is the smallest number of goals a team can score and win the World Cup (or Euros)? The answer, of course, being
0 - you don’t count penalty shoot-outs, so you could draw all your group games 0-0, progress in second (or third, in this tournament) with your three points, draw all your KO games 0-0, and win them all on penalties.
Out of 300 minutes of football… yeah, really only the Shaqueri goal. You did feel that with the other 4 teams it was mostly because the players couldn’t play much better, while in the current game it seems the players are just too scared of being eliminated.
The penalty shout was decent, especially compared to the how penalties that have been missed in the group stages.
While a snoozer of a game, Croatia deserved to win it. At least they tried at times. Current Portugal has to be the most overrated side in Eropean football. I hope Poland crushes them.
It only became rubbish when they expanded to 24 teams; and at this moment the defenses are too well organized and are smothering the offenses. There is still exciting footie being played in the Copa America.
Gemany looking strong, Belgium have woken up.
France played one good and one poor half
Poland underwhelming
Portugal and Wales tedious in the extreme
Can Italy v Spain produce a classic? (answer no, probably not)
Can Iceland defend for 120 minutes or can England actually convert some of their multiple chances?
I hope so, but I expect tough possession play by Spain against 11 defending Italians, maybe after Italy having scored early, but no spectacle. But I hope that Spain advances, Spain-Germany in the quarter final has the potential to become a real classic; it would be interesting to see which side can command the game with their similar philosophy.
