I said up big, late in the game- say up 30 with four to go, on the opponents 20. Zero chance at a comeback. You call run plays up the middle as these are the easiest to stop, especially when you know they’re coming, in hopes they will stop you and you don’t score again. Most teams will eschew field goals in these situations as that close it would be a 95% chance at more points, versus a run on fourth that should be stopped and result in no more points.
Late in the game, outcome still in the air, different story.
Since you apparently have a hard time understanding, I’ll say it slowly.
First - place - is - better - than - second -place.
Will the US need GD to make top 2? No. Will they need it to win the group? Maybe. Winning the group gives them a better chance at winning the whole thing.
How should they have played, in your mind? You already said keepaway is insulting. They weren’t aggressively going into tackles or gegenpressing. If Thailand basically lets you take free shots from 12 yards out, and you don’t, how is that different than keepaway?
I’m done with this argument. It’s just ignoring reality.
You either don’t read, or don’t comprehend, or don’t know soccer- you are one million percent wrong regardless.
To put it in simple terms, we do not know how the rest of the first round will go, so we do not know who the US would play if first, vs. who they would play if they finished second.
Not the draw, but as an example, lets say the second place team in the US group is slated to play the first place team in a group where the top two teams are France and Guam. The first place team in the US group plays the second place team, France or Guam. Now, everyone would expect France to be first, Guam second, and the US would want to finish first to play Guam in the next round, as they have a better chance at beating Guam vs. France.
Follow so far?
Then let’s say something unusual (but far from uncommon) happens, and France has a bad week, and finished second, Guam first. Would the US really, in this case, want to have finished first in their group, when that means now they will have to play France, when, if they had finished second, they would play Guam?
I would link dozens of cites where this exact type thing has happened, and there has been a big hullabaloo about team “trying to lose” to face a more advantageous opponent in the next round, but I don’t think it would help. Actually at least once per major tournament its a talking point.
not long ago in Olympics badminton there was a situation where people tried to blatantly lose a game to get better seeding. I believe the outcome of that was the people got kicked out of the Olympic tourney.
I said three to four times upthread, I am fine with 12-0. I vehemently disagree with 13-0, as the last goal came in stoppage time when teams routinely stop going for goal when up by at least three, regardless of team, regardless of type match.
Are you arguing that in any random group, it is equally likely that the 2nd place team will be better than the 1st place? I hope not, because it’s an asinine argument.
So if we assume the 1st place team is more likely to be better than the 2nd place, saying but we just don’t know is ridiculous. Sure, maybe there’s an exception in this case. But until you do know, you play like the 1st place team will be better.
I honestly don’t understand why you continue to dig on this. My first reaction when I saw the score was “well, that was rude.” But once I considered how seeding works in the tournament, I changed my opinion. There’s no shame in that.
Those who bleat about “running up the score” are mostly the losing side’s coaches (motivated largely by job security concerns), ninnies in the reporter/commentator set and some fans of the losing team. The players (who supposedly are being “humiliated”) don’t generally seem to care.
As long as you’re giving substitutes a chance to play, let 'em play hard and enjoy themselves, never mind the “unwritten rules”. Stopping games when one team is deemed too far ahead just denies players a chance to get on the field.
And I said nothing of the sort, that a first place team should not in general be expected to be better than a second place team, or that any team after game one in a cup tourney should be looking to finish second with the expected outcome that an inferior team will finish first in another, that would be asinine, agree.
I said depending on the outcomes of other games, the US MAY regret this act of poor sportsmanship, IF it turned out a more favorable opponent would have fallen to them had they not gone for goal differential in this game, and finish first as a result- THAT would be funny.
GD absolutely could matter in deciding first with Sweden, but as you know, depending on how other results go, the US may actually prefer to play the team they would play if second vs. first, so there is a possibility they will regret the excessive goal differential- a very good chance, happens all the time.
Nowhere does this state or imply that a second place team normally would be better than a first place team.
Nowhere does it state a team should be expecting wonky results in other brackets, and therefore try for second, with the expectation there will be upsets and they want to be in second when the upsets come.
The only thing it says is, The US chose goal differential over class. And that I think it would be funny, ironic, poetic justice, etc. IF the US wins the group due solely to goal differential, IF other groups don’t go as planned, and the US as a result plays a harder opponent in the next round, due to their lack of class. Hoping other groups don’t play out as expected and their lack of class actually hurts them, not helps.
Not saying its likely, not saying it will happen, just fingers crossed.
Again, no one was talking likelihood, probability, any of that, I merely said I hope other groups don’t go as planned and that the US suffers for finishing first, as punishment for their lack of good sportsmanship, nothing else stated or implied.
I rarely come to the Game Room but thought this would be… interesting (I wasn’t disappointed).
I have two kids who got their college paid for by playing D1 soccer (one men’s, one women’s), and know a few of their friends who are currently playing professionally. Pulling back and/or playing possession (term used more often than “keep away” but the same thing) gets less and less common the higher level you go, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in a big tournament where goal differential can decide a winner unless they cap the differential at 4 or something. This is the World Cup… it doesn’t get any higher level than this.
They did absolutely nothing wrong. They were continuing to play their best and not get out of the groove as you would want a team to do in a tournament like this.
An example I’ll give is with a game my daughter was playing for an ECNL club and we got way up (4 or 5 to 0) and we started to play possession. After a while we suddenly turned it back on and started scoring again. We (parents) were a bit confused and we ended up with a huge to nothing win. After the game our coach told us that the other team’s coach came over to him and said he would rather have his girls learn to play against a better team than to be embarrassed by a team that obviously wasn’t trying.
