Football (Soccer)
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@mclaincausey almost criminal to allow a free header when you’re playing 5 at the back
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I am not a soccer fan, but I wonder about England's belief that they will achieve anything beyond semi-finals (other than happenstance). I would be keen to hear from more learned colleagues why they ever should have been compared to a team such as Spain.
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Can’t park the bus that long.
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In football even with significant talent disparity you almost always have a chance. But you have to get to the game first. I’m just gutted they went out in such a weak way. I think the entire viewership saw the writing on the wall when they benched Gordon.
Think it, be it.
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Brazil – 5 titles (1958, 1962, 1970, 1994, 2002)
Germany – 4 titles (1954, 1974, 1990, 2014)
Italy – 4 titles (1934, 1938, 1982, 2006)
Argentina – 3 titles (1978, 1986, 2022)
France – 2 titles (1998, 2018)
Uruguay – 2 titles (1930, 1950)
England – 1 title (1966)
Spain – 1 title (2010)Other than Uruguay (who also have two titles), seems like other teams have figured things out in the last six decades.
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Titles don't mean much, considering the teams change... Brazil is a perfect example of that.
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The pressure was relentless, and we could not do anything about it. Goal(s) were inevitable......
"OK face up to it - you're useless but generally pretty honest and straightforward . . . it's a rare combination of qualities that I have come to admire in you" - Geo 2011
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What we missed in both boxes last night
Instead he took players he never trusted to play at all!
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@mclaincausey said in Football (Soccer):
In football even with significant talent disparity you almost always have a chance.
Football is almost a coin flip. If you crunch the numbers, the team which should win only wins ~55% of the time. The scores don't climb high enough to allow skill to express itself in the result. (Compare to tennis, for instance, where the better player wins ~80% of the time, because over hundreds of points in a match the skill disparity can come out.)
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Taking attack minded players off and replacing them with defenders, gave England no out ball and invited pressure.
Between scoring in the 55th minute and Argentina’s second goal in the 92nd minute, England had 12% possession. That is an absolutely damning statistic.
Argentina’s two centre backs were on yellow cards, but rather than keeping the ball and continuing to attack them, England handed the initiative over to them.
Cabo Verde and Egypt both showed how frail Argentina were defensively and scored twice each by attacking them.
Tuchel has much to explain. -
@Giles Yeah agreed, Argentina are no joke when they're on it but for us to be totally passive and invite pressure, make negative mentality moves (bringing on defenders) and then sitting back was a recipe for disaster. We dont quite have the ruthless fortitude to dig deep when the occasion is this big. We did it against Mexico but we failed to measure up to the Argies. I just feel despondent that the momentum was there to own. Just before (I think) that epic Djed Spence tackle, we might have gone 2-0 up (then they countered). After that, we hugged the ropes until we got KO'ed.
Think it was there for us. But we didnt believe it. They always believe. That's why they win World Cups and why we don't.
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@goosehd hopefully that was in the heat of the moment. If he still thinks that in the cold light of day, then he really isn’t the man for the job.
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@IrishHeart I think that he’s going to wake up to a “oh fuck”…
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There’s a saying in Germany - suicide for fear of dying. Yesterday was exactly that. The players went defensive and Tuchel didn’t alleviate the pressure with his subs, quite the opposite. Switching to a back 5 gave Messi acres of space in midfield in which to operate.
If Tuchel doesn’t reflect on his subs he really needs a reality check from someone
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@IrishHeart this is true but the subs came I think something like 20 minutes or so after the goal. So the collapse happened before the subs.
It was still a braindead move but the players earned some blame too.
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@mclaincausey agree that the players do not escape blame, but that method of taking the lead and holding on for dear life has been a running theme in several games, and the coach has done nothing to address it, either in between the games or during the numerous breaks in the game.
We saw similar failings under Southgate, and assumed this was an area Tuchel would help to resolve.
If the tactic is to try not to lose rather than try to win, then eventually you run out of luck.
No complaints, the better team won, just didn’t think England would hand it to them gift wrapped.
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Well I have complaints
Tuchel is a blithering idiot. I agree he fell into the same pattern we saw against Norway and Mexico. But that was Norway and Mexico, not Argentina. Thinking you can park the bus against them was idiotic. The way England looked before that goal I think they could have won if they’d just kept doing what they were doing. Maybe the players just didn’t have it in them to do that but the barrage of goals and domination of possession were clearly unsustainable.
