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Semi Finals :Wales/Portugal, France/Germany, and Finals: France/Portugal


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And Wales have been harpooned. But this was a fairly lacklustre match, after a reasonable first half. Even the goals were unexceptional. Wales simply fatally lost concentration. Portugal won't win this tournament. The winner will be whoever wins tomorrow's match, which may actually be a very good game.

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I feel sorry for Wales. I think that if not for the disqualification of Ramsey, they might have had a chance. Bale really, really tried towards the end, but he's not quite good enough to beat the Portuguese defense and keeper nearly singlehandedly.

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It would be an utter tragedy if Portugal won the tournament. Today was their best performance and result, but was still largely underwhelming. Wales and Portugal getting this far with only one or two good matches between them shows the weakness of this format, which is strange when the introduction of new teams in the groups was generally successful.

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:(

Portugal took their chances, Wales didn't. Wales were not outclassed, though Bale was disappointing: too often found in his own half trying to start moves, which isn't where he was needed.

Still, Wales can go home proud.

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I forgot to record today's game.  My regret is tempered by the outcome.  Well done to Wales overall, but that was a thin squad to cope with suspensions today.

I really hope Portugal don't win it.  Ronaldo's ego and their scraping through a relatively easy sequence of games without ever playing very well would make them poor champions.  

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10 hours ago, Corvinus said:

I can't believe Ronaldo is in the final. So disappointed about Wales, but their suspended players were definitely missed. The dragons are going home.

you will not believe, but he is going to get the best player of the year =)
his goal against Wales was like dunk in NBA , lol

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3 hours ago, StefCurry said:

you will not believe, but he is going to get the best player of the year =)
his goal against Wales was like dunk in NBA , lol

At least it would be more deserved than Messi's mvp at the WC. :rolleyes:

I've decided to completely ignore those stupid awards since then.

16 hours ago, Horse of Kent said:

It would be an utter tragedy if Portugal won the tournament. Today was their best performance and result, but was still largely underwhelming. Wales and Portugal getting this far with only one or two good matches between them shows the weakness of this format, which is strange when the introduction of new teams in the groups was generally successful.

Wales getting this far has nothing to do with the format. Portugal getting through the group stage as a third-placed team does, but the rest of it was luck of the draw and them improving a lot.

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28 minutes ago, Criston of House Shapper said:

Wales getting this far has nothing to do with the format. Portugal getting through the group stage as a third-placed team does, but the rest of it was luck of the draw and them improving a lot.

Wales' progress was certainly less to do with the format than Portugal's, but it still had an impact. All it took was one Croatia breakaway/missed penalty for Spain to finish second and suddenly all the best teams were on the same half of the draw. Yes, that could happen in a 16 or 32 team tournament, but the even distribution of teams makes it much less likely. On top of that, a third placed side being able to qualify with three points changed the dynamics of group B hugely on the final matchday. Russia could have gone through with a win and Slovakia were happy with a goalless draw.

There is a decent chance they would still have got to the semis, but a smaller one than with this format.

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1 minute ago, Horse of Kent said:

Wales' progress was certainly less to do with the format than Portugal's, but it still had an impact. All it took was one Croatia breakaway/missed penalty for Spain to finish second and suddenly all the best teams were on the same half of the draw. Yes, that could happen in a 16 or 32 team tournament, but the even distribution of teams makes it much less likely. On top of that, a third placed side being able to qualify with three points changed the dynamics of group B hugely on the final matchday. Russia could have gone through with a win and Slovakia were happy with a goalless draw.

There is a decent chance they would still have got to the semis, but a smaller one than with this format.

The format really isn't the problem here. both sides of the tournament-tree had 3 group-winners, 3 second-placed and 2 third-placed teams. The uneven distribution is due to luck of the draw and some teams seriously underperforming. Germany, France and Italy have played the best so far, but because they were drawn into groups A, C and E, they all ended up on the same side, that's what caused the unevenness, and not the format itself. It's not like this is the first time something like this happened. France just barely made it through the group stages of the 2006 WC, which meant they had to go up against Spain in the round of 16, the rest is history. Sucks for Spain, but it's still not the format's fault, it's the teams that determine how a tournament goes. And when France made it to the finals, noone talked about how they didn't deserve to be there or some bs. In the 2010 WC, France and England sucked, which caused a situation where one of Uruguay, South Korea, Ghana or the USA would make it to the semi-finals, when neither of those teams was (at the time) considered one of the top-teams. At the last Euros we had a group with a bunch of teams that were all terrible (Group A with the Czechs, Greece, Russia and Poland) due to the way teams were drawn with the FIFA-ranking and stuff. These examples didn't have this "terrible" format that is responsible for everything bad in this world, nevertheless the tournaments ended up a little lop-sided because of how teams performed. This current situation is no different. Aside from the three aforementioned teams the knockout-stage wasn't that lop-sided anyways.

I think some people just didn't like the expansion to 24 teams from the beginning and are now blaming the format for everything that goes wrong, without really thinking things through.

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Well, Portugal making it as third placed team from the group stage is pretty much down to the new format. 

Anyway, the answer to the question whether Weigl or Can will fill in for Khedira on the German team has apparently been answered with Schweinsteiger.

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