I asked out loud beforehand why they didn’t give that to Buchanan…
Or Jonathan David.
Wow, KDB makes the wrong pass. First time for everything.
Yellow for the dive please. In the age of VAR simulation cards should be given significantly more often.
I hope Canada can turn this dominance into goals. Got a horrible feeling that Belgium will show one bit of quality and take the lead.
“ I don’t think the defender tries to foul him” isn’t an argument I really care about, announcer man. But that would’ve been a pretty soft call.
Poor wording on the announcer’s part, but the Canadian attacker thrust his leg toward the Belgian defender to initiate contact and try to fool the referee into calling a penalty. The defender did nothing wrong.
Slow motion replay.
As someone that has a mild rooting interest in Canada, absolutely not a penalty.
Really good first half from Canada I thought, but it did have that feeling of one team not converting on a bunch of chances and inviting a sudden goal the other way.
I would’ve thought David was on penalty duty, but I’m assuming they had chosen Davies before the match. Pretty bad penalty, really. The potential penalty against Laryea seems like something that’s often called, but I usually complain when it is 
. Laryea definitely has his foot stepped on, but he also definitely drags that stride hoping for the contact.
I talked shit about JP Dellacamera the other day, but I think he’s good today. Comments other than just reciting the things that are happening! (or maybe I was in a bad mood yesterday…)
I know Spanish so I can kind of understand written Portuguese. Is the tweet saying that the action was not a penalty and that VAR should be discontinued? That’s my basic understanding of it.
He was saying it’s an obvious penalty and that there’s no excuse for not giving it since there’s VAR. And that the ref should be fired / not work any more games this tournament.
My world has Canada been poor at finishing. 20 shots and only 3 on target.
Everything they’re doing in the final 3rd is just slightly off. Passes slightly off, touches too heavy. If they were more on today this game would be like the Spain match.
Sigh. You know, if Belgium had won 3-0 one could say they have so much offensive talent plus Courtois too. But this was almost worse. The Canadian midfield won ball after ball at centre, with great aggressive halfback play that provided plenty of chances, with Canada outshooting Belgium by five times or so.
But they were mainly individual efforts, some clever dekes to get the ball to the box, then a blocked shot or half-hearted disorganized pass to someone seemingly surprised to be receiving the ball at all. Belgium sent five guys back to defend and Canada kept them deep in their zone with decent ball possession times. Yet the Canadian offence seemed barely to try to get open or receive a long ball (until the last few minutes) or even help out the guy with the ball directly, except for the odd pass along the wing. Did they have no plans once they made it to the 18 yard line? Apart from one solid header they shot like they had ear infections.
So many shots at the 18. But so few actual opportunities, Courtois was barely tested. The penalty shot was a very mediocre effort. Some referees would have awarded a second penalty shot. As a Class 2 FIFA referee for ten years, I would have. Otherwise, the officiating was very good.
Belgium’s goal was pretty, the goalie had little chance, but on the whole the Canadian defence looked good. If Canada can shoot the ball on net, not guaranteed, they should be competitive against Croatia and Morocco. Heck, they could have won this game by three goals, did play half of a brilliant game - and this is the sad part. I’ve seen better finishing on driftwood. It’s hard to see Belgium winning the World Cup. Canada stands a good chance against 0-0 Croatia-Maroc since they seem to have similar challenges.
Canada played half a brilliant game. With the centre and wings getting open and shooting better they would have been hard to beat. They did so many things well. Perhaps they could take up horseshoes or curling where closeness counts.
Boy oh boy do I hate the “pass it straight into the net, on the ground, 5 feet to the left or right” style of penalty taking. Sure if they guess wrong, it will go in. But if they guess right, they will save it. Give me a “bang it as hard as you can at waist height fairly close to one of the uprights” any day of the week, and force the keeper to guess right AND make the stop. I know it’s not quite that simple, but, boy, it really grinds my gears for whatever reason. Just seems disrespectful… to your opponents, and to the game itself.
That aside, I had a few random soccer-related questions that this seems like a good thread for:
(1) whatever happened to flip throw? Ie, throw-ins where the player would do a forward flip, balancing on the ball, and then throw the ball a huge long way? Are they still legal, but just not very useful?
(2) What about long throws in general? Isn’t it worth it to be able to drop balls into the penalty area from a pretty long distance out? Worth spending a few hours a week of one of your midfielders’ time training and practicing or whatnot? Or, again, just not very useful for some reason?
(3) Speaking of “what ever happened to”, I saw a video maybe a decade ago of a kid who could run down the field just bouncing the ball on his own head, which counted as “dribbling”. What happened to him? Was that made illegal?
(4) Finally, in group-of-4-round-robin-play, has anyone put any thought into trying to ensure that the order of the matches is as competitively fair as possible? That is, reducing the chances that in the final match being played, one match is being played in which there are significantly fewer incentives than the other match, but teams are effectively competing between those two matches?
For instance, if the quality of the 4 teams in the group is 1 (big gap) 23 (big gap) 4, then the group is, to a large extent, purely a competition between teams 2 and 3 to be group runners up. Obviously won’t always happen that way, upsets exist, etc. But, that’s the outcome to bet on. And in that case, isn’t it best that 2v3 is on the final match day? In particular, if the situation ends up being “either team winning this match moves on, but if it’s a draw, team X moves on”, then I think it’s good for the competition as a whole if both teams know who X is before the match begins. And we also don’t want a case where a team is already locked moving on and effectively locked winning the group, and thus has no incentive to beat team 3, even though they DID have an incentive to beat team 2 when the played them, etc. Is this a solvable problem?
Kudos to the German team’s protest photo. Well done.
I hope other teams come up with their own version.
The protest was getting their heads handed to them?
If they actually cared about the matter, they should have worn the damn armbands and taken the yellow cards.
LGBTQ+4ever. Unless we get a booking in which case sorry.
They were there to play soccer. While I’m sure you would have fallen on your sword in saintly protest they managed to stand united and make a statement to the world.