Lots of fun in the second half. Suarez scored a penalty that was awarded and retaken because of VAR, plenty of edgy challenges ensued, Cavani had one disallowed for offside and Venezuela pulled one back after a Uruguay defender’s mistake. Also treated to a Venezuelan defender using a gumshield of all things. You’d think Suarez might deserve one more. Bentancur came off on 73 minutes. Hard to read too much into his game tonight because of the nature of the game - and the fact it was basically over at half time. But he took his goal well and had some good touches in midfield.
Man ain’t scored in his previous 46 games for Uruguay, signs for Tottenham and bags in the first minute for his country. The Conte effect and he’s not even had a session with him yet. Incredible.
Pape Matar Sarr in the final, might keep an eye on that one. Probably won’t play mine but would be fun if he did.
Has he actually played in the tournament? ...which is a more difficult question that it sounds, given there's at least three Sarrs in the Senegal team
I’m not sure he has. Got Covid at the start and I imagine it was even more of an uphill struggle to get gametime after that, given his age.
Well I guess we now know the answer to the question "What sort of idiot would schedule an international match to take place in Minnesota in the first week of February?"...
This resulted in two Honduras players having to go off at half-time with hypothermia. Should throw the book at the US for this completely avoidable bullshit.
Its been cold enough here in the North East of the states the last few days, why they thought playing in Minnesota would be a good idea, who knows. They should play winter games in Florida or something, there’s also enough stadiums that have closing roofs here that could be repurposed for a national team game. By all means play around the country but be sensible about it. That goes for summer games as well.
Off the top of my head, the only stadium in a rational locations they couldn't use was the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, as that's hosting the Super Bowl in a couple of weeks as well as hosted the NFC playoff game at the weekend - while the MLS season doesn't kick off for another three weeks so any of those stadiums could be used In other words, the following non-frozen locations had a stadium fit to host an international football match due to hosting either and NFL or MLS team Glendale, AZ Carson, CA Los Angeles, CA Santa Clara, CA San Jose, CA Fort Lauderdale, FL Jacksonville, FL Miami, FL Tampa, FL Atlanta, GA New Orleans, LA Charlotte, NC Nashville, TN Arlington, TX (which isn't being used until WrestleMania in April) Dallas, TX Frisco, TX Houston, TX Sandy, UT And it does have to be said that, when you look at their home games in the qualifiers, hosting the game in St Paul looks either lunkheaded or suspect vs Canada, Nashville vs Jamaica, Austin vs Costa Rica, Columbus vs Mexico, Cincinnati vs El Salvador, Columbus vs Honduras, St Paul vs Panama, Orlando
Now that's taking winning by any means necessary a tad too far. 3-0 win though... clearly worked. Gotta feel for Honduras though, they're bottom of the world cup qualifying table and had to travel to freezing conditions just to get spanked. Would've been more convenient for them to have just forfeited the match.
He may have only featured off the bench in the semi final but congrats to Pape Sarr, AFCoN winner at 19 years of age
"It's the best day of my life and the best trophy of my life." "I won the Champions League and some [other] trophies but this is the special one for me. This is more important for me." - Sadio Mane. This means more.
