That team could defend which is beyond this lot. I remember Tim Vickery commenting, at the time when we bought Juan Foyth, that had he stayed in Argentina and played a full season of senior football, he probably would have made the World Cup squad because there are so few options at centre half. That and Lanzini is a huge miss from their team. That says pretty much all you need to know.
While the official line may be Messi and Aguero can't play together, I can't help but wonder if Aguero's getting the Tevez treatment - either he plays or Messi plays, and the argument tends to end there. One thing that has to be said about whichever poor sod is in charge of Argentina after the World Cup, the team needs to be torn down and rebuilt: Mascherano's clearly played in one World Cup too many judging by the sheer volume of errors he's made so far, Higuain seemingly can't score in tournaments, Biglia surely won't be playing four years from now, Messi and Aguero will be in the twilight of their careers by then, most of their back four are north of thirty, and if the entire nation of Argentina can't produce three goalkeepers better than Caballero something's gone horribly wrong.
If I didn't know better, I'd swear the VAR group are trying to learn from their mistakes. On third thought, I think we should definitely use VAR where it can help: offsides calls and (the already in use) goal line decisions. As to the rest, I think my fear it will turn football into another game where you're afraid to cheer until the VAR judges give their okay slightly outweighs my certainty that Spurs will tend to benefit from more accurate calls of any kind. I wonder: could you have one or more video judges watching the game and helping the on-field officials make the call in real time? If we do use VAR, I agree we need to have a rule book rewrite, to do what can be done to make decisions clearer. We also need to have a good definition of what constitutes a definite error, and VAR judges trained to follow that definition. Of course, I'm sure the football powers can be trusted to do a good job with this.
VAR in one form or another is here to stay....... So hopefully the process will be improved. Can't help thinking from the experience of the WC so far that there is an urgent need to impose more discipline on the pitch and impose a limit on 'appeals' - one per side / per half - and they have to be formally made by the captain, as in cricket. Ref and off-field options remain of course.
While most people were watching Argentina/Nigeria, did anyone see Lovren's dunderheaded decision to deal with a harmless Icelandic cross by flicking it away with his arm, thinking nobody would notice because his arm was behind his body? It was an even dumber penalty to concede than Mascherano's.
Lots of fouls from South Korea again so far in the first half hour. I don't understand why they're so aggressive.
Six minutes of extra time for Germany???? Not sure they deserved five minutes in their last match so here we go again.
