The General Football Thread

Just reading a book by Tim Parks called "A Season With Verona" - I can highly, highly recommend it. Best football/travel/cultural book I've read in an age.

 

That`s what I was originally told. It seems a bit more logical than the double tide phenomena.

 

Scorchio, first Barbecue of the year!

 

RIP Alan Miller
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/57353362

 

It's been interesting watching the Canadian men's team using Alphonso Davies in the same role he features in with Bayern: as a nominal LWB who has the freedom to go wherever he pleases. I have no idea whether that's better than just using him as a winger, if playing competition where Canada won't have 75% possession, but it certainly causes lesser sides fits...just scored on the end of a lovely team goal against Suriname where he made an unopposed run from deep on to a throughball from Jonathan David, and he has spent as much time popping up as a number 10 as he has a fullback.

Edit: and Davies decides to play CAM, plays through David, who scores. I could really get used to this thing where Canada has talented footballers.

 

Canadian football update: a composed 1-0 win in Port-au-Prince -- in the extreme heat and gummy synthetic pitch -- against Haiti means that Canada has a fairly straightforward path to the Octagonal: they just need to not lose their 'home' match played in the US in a few days.

This is obviously very exciting, because if they survive that match, it means many more Canadian football updates, and I know that you all care very deeply about Canada's chances of making the 2022 World Cup.

 

The Canucks or Les Rouges, what's the popular nickname?

 

"Did you know that Canada has a national soccer team" is probably the most common.

 

If you fine folks want to see the single most incredible own goal you'll ever witness, it just occurred in the Canada - Haiti match. I feel for the poor (Canadian-born) Haitian keeper, who was drafted in for this one because their regular keeper was unavailable, in his first ever competitive international start...he had actually been pretty good up to that point, including making a triple save against Jonathan David.

 

This afternoon at 2pm at Ashton Gate, Bristol, Hartlepool United face Torquay United in the National League playoff final. If the Championship playoff final is regarded as the most lucrative single match in the English football pyramid, this one must be up there, as the winner will return to the Football League. Torquay went down from the EFL in 2014 and Hartlepool in 2017.

 

Incredible scenes there with Torquay's Keeper equalising in injury time....come on you Gulls!...

 

Good UEFA have scrapped the away goals rule in CL and EL. Should see better 1st leg games now.

 

Worse second legs though.

The beauty of the away goal rule is that you very rarely had tied matches in the second leg meaning someone always needed to score. You'll get more ties where teams settle for et and pens now.

 

I never thought I'd see the day when Lionel Messi became a free agent.