::shrug::
I’ve seen plenty a handball be called when a player jumped and had his arms were out as they naturally tend to be when someone jumps up. Knowing that, this is a clear cut handball.
There must be some intent involved, at least this was a rule some years ago and that was a good rule. There was clearly no intent to play the ball with the hand in this case. And nobody jumped up, the defender went to the ground and secured his fall with his right hand, which unfortunately deflected the shot.
He deliberately went down and deliberately stuck his arm out to brace his fall. If I were a betting man, I’d say the defender counted on if the ball hit his hand it’d be deemed to have no intent.
But that’s not the rule any more, from what I understand. I guess it’s too hard to know the intent in many cases.
I’m still not sure if that’s a handball or not, but I admit some schadenfreude watching Luis Suarez argue about it. Particularly since this match benefits Ghana.
Meanwhile
I totally forgot the historical connection with Suarez and Ghana. And they could very well be playing each other to advance.
That’s the thing … maybe I didn’t quite catch it because I was little distracted, but I didn’t think he was part of the play. I thought he tried to play it but missed. Does that count?
Directly interfering with the play counts. And even if he didn’t get a foot on it, he did, IIRC, run into the defender while going for the ball.
Round 2 is complete, in that each team has now played 2 matches. Three teams have already advanced: France, Brazil, and Portugal.
I saw I good meme today that said “Sober soccer fans realize how boring game is”
Two teams cannot advance and are playing the third match for pride: Qatar and Canada.
If I’ve done the math right, that leaves 27 teams that could qualify for the knockout stage.
Yes, there are 27 teams fighting for qualification, 3 in, 2 out.
How did a decision like that get put off until the day before the event? I suspect that TPTB always knew that they wouldn’t be allowing alcohol sales at the games, but strung everyone along until it was too late to do anything about it.
I wonder how much beer had been delivered to the stadiums in advance.
You could still drink spirits if you were in the luxury seats. But the average spectator was left high and dry.
Qatar is dead to the sporting world.
A bit disappointed with Canadian coach John Herdman, not just with with his F bomb* (hey, it’s Group F, after all) but also storming off after the Croatia game without shaking the Croatian coach Zlatko Dalic’s hand.
*Which he tried to justify be saying that’s what he said in a team huddle. Being impassioned, being in the heat of the moment, in the World Cup, is all cool and everything, but with reporters, a little self-editing should come into play.
I noticed that starting today (Tuesday), the two games in each group will start at the same time (10 am and 2 pm EST) rather than the “staggered” times of 5, 8, 11 am and 2 pm EST. Is this to prevent teams from performing in reaction to a score that they already know (since the other game has finished)? If so - why not do this for the earlier games?
Have World Cup teams been known to fix/throw games in the past based on known results (when it could have been avoided by scheduling games concurrently)?
650 posts before some American who knows nothing about the game comes along to play the ‘this game is boring’ card. We’re getting better, but we’re not there yet.
Because in the earlier games, there’s still so many unknowns that teams need to play at full strength, and it allows people to watch all the games live if they want to.
But in the final game, it adds to the excitement, and stops teams fielding a lesser team, or dialling back effort, if they know they’re through. There was a famously awful game many years ago between Germany and Austria (can’t recall if it was the World Cup or the Euros) where they basically just passed the ball back and fourth for 90 minutes because they knew they had both qualified (and they are still best buddies).
Remember there’s a lot of football to play in a tournament on this scale - if the manager can rest some key players for games that don’t matter, then they will. This ensures that every game matters.
Read all about the “Schande von Gijon”, the disgrace of Gijon:
This was the event that led FIFA to schedule the final group games at the same time in the first place.
And Germany and Austria being best buddies in football is very arguable. They were, for one time in this shameful game in Gijon, but before and after, this is one of the biggest mutual football rivalries between Germany and another nation, only surpassed by the Netherlands. Austria’s 3-2 upset of Germany in the second group stage of the WC 1978 in Argentina which eliminated Germany from the tournament probably was the biggest event in Austria’s sports history, though they didn’t even advance themselves.
What, no beer but plenty of dope? Whodathunkit!
That is the day I stopped rooting for Germany. Still have not forgiven them. I forgave the Austrians when Spain beat them 9-0 in the qualification for the World Cup in France, but the 6-0 against Germany two years ago still feels insufficient. My wife, who obviously does not understand anything about football, talks about nachtragend (vindictive) and kindisch (puerile).