Off Topic World Cup 2018

don't think we've seen the world cup winners tonight , VAR , what use is it , kane was literally wrestled three times in the box onto the turf , nothing doing ?
Some of the old england traits reared , difficulty breaking down stubborn teams , fortunately tunisia went to sleep for kane's second goal . Still the first twenty minutes they looked good , trouble is it's a ninety minute game

 

To be fair i think Southgate prefers Rose over Young but he is not fully fit.
Sterling for City plays on the half turn and gets at you from the off, for England he just pops it off all the time, why?

 

To be fair young played well kane took his chances LOFTUS CHEEK was insperational
Vardy would have been a better choice than rashford but Southgate has rose above all his predisesors .
BOOOOOOM

 

Thought 14/1 last night looked good having not played, now they ain't world beaters.

 

I'm not a fan of Sterling nor Young. Not a great fan of Walker either. Rashford should start matches. Lingard was a bit disappointing tonight and Dele Alli seems a bit weak but they have a bit of class about them. I thought Henderson played well and I didn't notice Trippier doing much wrong. Loftus-Cheek (what a lovely name for a footballer) did OK for the short time he was on

Thoroughly enjoyed the first 20 mins despite the frustrating misses

Hopefully, for the next games, we can have a referee who isn't blind

 

Uruguay, Spain, Portugal must be buying money on wednesday.

 

Best England manager for me for some time. Sacked due to non footballing reasons after he got us to the semi finals of Euro 96 and we were a post width away of getting to the final. Has to be the nearest we have come to winning a major tournament since 66. Some thank you gift that was from the stiffs at the FA! Ridiculous...

 

What a shocking example of finishing in front of goal with the exception of Kane thank goodness. It was like their football boots were tied together! Unacceptable at this level but great to start with a win. Hopefully they will improve in that department.

 

"World Cup: Japan fans impress by cleaning up stadium":

Good lord, cleaned-up their section of stadium with trash bags they brought in themselves. Probably section was in better shape after they left than when they first arrived before the game started?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44492611

 

OK, OK, finally dawned on me, sorry, it's obvious what you mean. A bit bloody early for me...

 

Good God what is the modern (?) football supporter becoming?

I look back with happy and warm (?) memories of Hampden Park in Glasgow before it was modernised and shrunk. I remember being in attendance with my father, grandad and English friends who, through links to Manchester City, visited us every two years with tickets for the Scotland versus England game. I would be in my early teens and can remember the early morning nips downed by the grown ups (?) before we set off for Waverley Station to catch the rattler to Glasgow Queen Street and then the local train to Mount Florida. A bag of crisps and a can of juice would be my bribe to wait outside a local 'boozer' while my supposed elder and betters, from both sides of the border, got more tanked up on many 'Hauf an' a Hauf's' . Finally it was time to make our way to the dump which doubled as Scotland's national stadium. We parted company from our English friends who had 'posh' tickets while short and skinny me, my Dad and Grandad would troop off to the 'Rangers' end.

I now come to the point of this post.

The terrace was formed with dirt and wooden sleepers. When alcohol was spilled the dirt became a mucky, cloying and smelly mud which moved from your footwear up your trousers. There were the joys of impromptu and temporary 'bars' set up on empty beer crates however these oddities were balanced by the feeling of hot urine running down your, thankfully, enjeaned leg!

When Mr Keane denigrates the 'prawn sandwich brigade' I do not concur; thank f**k for modernisation, comfort plus Weissbier and Bratwurst a la the Allianz Arena in Munich.

 

Well done to the Japanese, putting plenty of others to shame.

If only the youth of this country were instilled with decent behaviour instead of how to moan when they cannot have the latest £600 iPhone, universal free internet access and everything else handed to them on a plate. Of course, that is not the parents’ fault...

 

Fortunately, I missed the Portugal v Morocco game on the BBC as apparently Vicki Sparks was the first female commentator on a live World Cup Finals game. No word whether the Beeb awarded her a medal or a cloth cap.

If she was as bad as she was when she ‘commentated’ on the women’s match the other week, people will have been hitting the mute button on their remote controls in droves. They should send her to work on radio for a while with some of the men so that she will learn to actually describe what is going on rather than just naming the players two seconds after they have passed the ball to someone else.

Hopefully she is not on the same money as one of the half-competent men doing the same job. She might be a nice lass but she has got the job thanks to political correctness not ability, in the continuing race to lower the glass ceiling to a height where women can break it in every sphere of live without merit.

 

Portugal win but the highlight must be PEPE DIVE got to be the PANSY of the tournement award . What a way to mar yourself , team and Country in front of the watching eyes of the World . He deserves a ban in my opinion as its gaining an unfair advantage like drug taking !

 

Was terrible but that's Pepe all over isn't it. He's a quality defender but an absolute clown! I found it quite cringe worthy that Ferdinand, Linekar, Fabregas were all talking about cheating and diving whilst sat next to one of the worst the game has ever seen in Didier Drogba

 

That's some top-drawer thinly veiled chauvinistic bullshit right there. Well Done.

If you'd left it at "Vikki Sparks is a **** commentator" I imagine most on here would've agreed with you.

 

There is nothing thinly veiled about it all and I stand by what I wrote. She got the role because of some feminist/#MeToo policy rather than talent or ability. She has been a perfectly competent match reporter on Final Score for at least a couple of seasons, performing the same role as her male colleagues. She is clearly not qualified as a commentator at the top international football competition and they were in too much of a hurry to have a token woman to think of training her properly. When she decides to switch to brain surgery, she can start with you.

Both ITV and the BBC have female pundits, Eni Aluko and Alex Scott, on their World Cup panels for no other reason than to have female representation. I am surprised that the Asian, gay and disabled communities have not lodged a complaint about lack of representation.

Next they will want football changed to twelve a side so that each team can consist of six men and six women; as feminists refuse to accept the absolute biological fact that the genders were not created equal.

Giving women roles simply because they are women is not furthering their equality cause at all; in fact it will only damage it as they make easy targets for us chauvinists.

 

100% correct QM.
Aluko has been okay on the panel giving her views, but I was surprisingly impressed with Scott on the game she was giving her views on.
As for the commentary, it was very very poor, tokenism at the ridiculous best. I think a lot of people on twitter commented they muted that game.