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2018 Semi Finals - FRA vs BEL & ENG vs CRO


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25 minutes ago, Soylent Dropbear said:

Positives and negatives for England. I think the main thing Southgate has achieved at this tournament is getting the squad in the right frame of mind; making sure they're relaxed, together and happy.

Not so keen on his tactics though. For long stretches, the prefered formation left us looking clueless going forward. Five at the back, but one of the wing-backs is scared of going forward (and it's the actual fucking winger, no less.) We spend far too much time passing it about among the back three and then having Pickford pump it forward, and this has been the case in pretty much every game.

And then there's the blind loyalty to players, like Dele Alli, who's been broken since the 20 minute mark of the first match, or Ashley Young, who's been utterly ineffective throughout.

There's his reluctance to make substitutions, where he makes even Klopp look decisive.

 

And then there's Harry Kane, who lumbered about the midfield like a zombie for most of the second part of the match. Fuck knows what was up with him today, but knowing Southgate he was probably goosed but left on the pitch to play on anyway.

I'm a soccer noob, so I could be dead wrong, but the one negative that really leaped out at me was it didn't feel like England had much of a counter punch. Most of the goals came on set pieces and PKs. 

As for Kane, I'm guessing he was just exhausted and the moment and pressure probably got to him. He had the weight of a nation on his shoulders. 

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1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

The only people who give a shit about 3/4 is FIFA and the tv companies, the players couldn't give 2 shits.

How can you say that man?!?!? If Lukaku gets a hat trick and Kane fails to score the golden boot belongs to Belgium!!!

35 minutes ago, Soylent Dropbear said:

Ashley Young, who's been utterly ineffective throughout.

You mean the Ashley Young who was the key provider for the opening goal against Sweden?

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Not a big football fan by any means, it's the first Semi Final they've reached in my lifetime, Southgate seems like a good egg, and the fan behavior has been considerably less moronic than it has in the past. I'll take it. Rematch for 3rd place here we come :P

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Croatia really earned that.  They were ragged in the first half, lucky to see half time only 1-0 down because of really poor finishing by Kane and Lingard, but then they found their rhythm and bossed the remainder of the game.  They got their equalizer, chased a winner with several near misses when they must have been exhausted, weathered a brief regroup by England in ET, and then took control again to find a winner.  Rebic was dangerous early on before fading, Perisic had his best game, Modric has been great all tournament.  Vrsajlko had Young pinned back, Brozovic gave them the right balance in MF, Lovren was rock solid (and took advantage of lenient refereeing).  Subasic was slightly at fault for the goal but solid after that — he hardly had a save to make.  I don’t know where they found the energy to bounce back after half time.  If it had been the Russians doing that I would have been suspicious.

England can go home with their heads high.  They played a great tournament, exceeeded expectations and only lost a close game.  They’ll regret that they sat back and conceded the initiative.  With so many attackers, and only one real MF, they’re not well suited to sitting back.  They struggled the whole time to create much from open play but they got a lot from set pieces.  I think that was their highest scoring WC ever, albeit assisted by a poor Panama. 

A few players faded today.  I think fatigue and injuries were catching up with Kane and Alli for sure.  Throughout the tournament Kane was ruthless with penalties and he was invaluable in winning so many fouls against Colombia, but other than that he did very little and looked like the most toothless golden boot winner I can remember.  Dele Alli started really well today but faded to nowhere.  Southgate may have been too loyal to player struggling with injury.  Sterling did his usual: good movement, threatened behind Vida, but no final ball whatsoever.  Rashford had better final ball when he came on but didn’t really get traction in the game.  It’s a pity Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain got that late season injury and missed out, I think he would have done well for them in place of Alli.  Trippier had a great tournament, the peak of his career so far.  Young didn’t.  The three CBs and GK were all good throughout. 

I hope Croatia can beat France but they have to be suffering now with fatigue and injury. 

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One coq on their chest! Jules Rimet is French! 20 years of moderate success never stopped us wanting more! Allez les bleus!

So, England beat all the teams they were objectively better than and lost to the two they weren’t. Seems right. So what was all that fuss ... oh, never mind.  Anyway, by that rationale, football is going to France but it would be lovely to see Croatia take it. Modric and Rakitic have been reliable as always and every game others in the team impress as well.

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Oxlade-Chamberlain would have been useful, especially in that game, though Wilshire might have been even more useful for the sake of keeping the ball better in midfield. We just kept handing it back to them.

Too many like-for-like subs from Southgate when we needed to counter the clearly growing Croatian threat, though he can hold his head high having exceeded expectations so thoroughly.

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21 hours ago, Notone said:

There are also grey areas as in, there was some contact (likesay when the attacker was outmuscled by the defender) but not enough for a penalty. So not a dive, but not a penalty either.

If a player continues to play, then it's fine.

On the other hand, if a player starts bitching to the ref about the penalty or he and his teammates start crowding the ref, stop the game and check it, award penalty/yellow card according to review. If it's a no penalty, even if it was not a dive then the player deserves the yellow for being rude to the ref at the very least.

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England pulled back for the whole second half, and looked lost in the extra time. At one point in the second extra time they showed the stat that England had 1 shot on target up to that point, while Croatia had 7. When you consider that one shot on target came when England scored a goal 5 minutes into the game, you get a better overview of how poorly they performed in attack.

England's been my second choice team in international competitions ever since I started watching Premier League but Croatia was by far the more deserving team in the last night's match

16 hours ago, Davrum said:

If Vida didn't want all these jeers he shouldn't sport such an assault of a hairstyle.

I think the crowd would forgive him that hairstyle much easier than getting into the whole Ukraine/Russia political thing.

15 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

Not saying Croatia doesn’t score if Hendo stays on but that was a really poor sub in hindsight. 

Henderson had a pretty good match, defensively. Not saying he cancelled Modric out completely, but he did keep him very much in check.

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Those FIFA stats are just wrong. Stones had a header cleared off the line minutes before which wasn't included for some reason. Also Kane's miss, which was ruled incorrectly as offside, was on target and would have been given by VAR as a goal had it gone in.

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10 minutes ago, I am Zlatan said:

Those FIFA stats are just wrong. Stones had a header cleared off the line minutes before which wasn't included for some reason. Also Kane's miss, which was ruled incorrectly as offside, was on target and would have been given by VAR as a goal had it gone in.

That Kane moment was weird. The assistant flag didn't go up until the ball went out of play, at which point it clearly should have been a corner. If it was calling offside it would have gone up as soon as Kane touched the ball. I can only assume the assistant thought it was a goal kick and everyone assumed he was flagging for offside.

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Nah, I think the assistant (very, very belatedly) flagged offside. The signal for goal kick or corner kick is different plus the restart was taken outside the six yard box. Of course Kane was not offside. If he scored, VAR would have overruled the assistant.

Lingard also missed a great opportunity. This is something that concerned me about England's lineup from the beginning - both Lingard and Sterling are notoriously unreliable in front of goal which places a massive burden on Kane. 

England competed well in midfield in the first half but once Croatia took control of the midfield it became very difficult for England. The midfield was clearly a weak area, not helped by Ox getting injured, Lallana being injured for most of the season as well which meant he wasn't selected and Alli clearly not fully fit. Also if England want to play out from the back then the back three need to learn how to actually build play from the back instead of aimlessly playing sideways passes to each other. 

All in all there are positives for England. This exit doesn't have the doom and gloom vibe of previous ones. 

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1 hour ago, Dolorous Gabe said:

That Kane moment was weird. The assistant flag didn't go up until the ball went out of play, at which point it clearly should have been a corner. If it was calling offside it would have gone up as soon as Kane touched the ball. I can only assume the assistant thought it was a goal kick and everyone assumed he was flagging for offside.

When VAR is in use, the linesmen are told to wait until the sequence of play has finished before flagging on marginal offside calls. Had he given Kane offside immediately and Kane scored then you can't rectify the situation, but by flagging late it would have allowed VAR to reach the right outcome. The best two examples are Iran's disallowed goal vs Spain and Spain's goal that was initialu ruled out vs Morocco where the late flag allowed VAR to check.

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Yeah, I've no doubt that Kane's goal would have stood under VAR if only he hadn't whiffed two close range attempts at it.  The linesman did well to keep his flag down and allow play to continue until the chance was gone.  I guess he decided then that it wasn't worth a VAR review if there was no goal and went with his initial reaction to raise the offside flag.

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Pretty sure I'm not the only one who missed this completely while watching England vs Croatia semifinal.

In case you don't want to click a link not knowing what it is (perfectly understandable), it's a tweet containing a video of English players trying to score a goal while Croatian team (with Subasic being the only one in Croatian half) is celebrating scoring a goal.

It's the most despicable move I've seen in World Cup for as long as I can remember. Now I'm glad those assholes got knocked out.

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