yeah. Once knockouts have come the teams have been thinking let's not lose rather than how to win. every south American team have been at it. Portugal... the Swedish, Russians... the vast majority. so far the sides attacking have won though mostly France Belgium Croatia England (we did sort of try) Brazil Uruguay and Swedish and Russia have not though attacked but only one was really dour. I suppose if you know you are second rate but can make it tough you do so. the dissappointing thing is amount of time wasting and fouling that's indulged
According to the commentator...a Uruguayan got mounted.... Surely that's a penalty and red card offence?
Although in reality I remember a mate telling there was a defender in the local league that at corners used to try and stick his hand down the opponents shorts and finger their bumholes. It's largely why I played hockey .... and being **** at football obviously...
@organic red @jenners04 call it fickle fate, Karma or it serves you bloody right syndrome but at 2.45 i was pumping my tyre up when a strange noise emanated from the pump & all air just flowed out of tyre. So had to go into town to get replacement pump which is bad enough any Friday but atm it is a nightmare as one of the 2 bridges out of town towards this direction is closed. Got home at 4.10 so strangely i haven't been doing any updates
France are peaking at the right time though. This was their best game. Uruguay tapped out with 25 mins to play.
Fairly easy game for France. Uruguay had nothing offensively in midfield or out wide and with the partnership up front broke...
I agree. That was always going to be a part of it. Even just his ability to hold up the ball and gain those 2-3 seconds for his teammates to set up was sorely missed. Probably one of the biggest losses any team at this tournament would have to endure.
I'm fed up of hearing old players bemoaning goalkeepers punching the ball, because "it wasn't like that in our day." I'm just surprised they haven't blamed it on "PC gone mad," which is the usual catch-all phrase to avoid having to provide any actual data. "We got beaten by teachers in school and it didn't do us any harm. It's PC gone mad!" "We had asbestos in the loft and it didn't do us any harm. It's PC gone mad!" "We got into cars with strange men and it didn't do us any harm. It's PC gone mad!" I wish they'd get a proper goalkeeping coach to explain why this move from catching to punching has become more common in the modern game. You can be sure that they've got more data on the subject than the "it's PC gone mad" brigade. There isn't much out there in the Google wastelands, though some goalkeeping tips mention that obviously a more powerfully hit shot is harder to catch and with the advent of the modern ball, which was made to deliberately move in the air in order to encourage more goals, there's more chance that an attempted catch will be dropped. A parried shot, with spread fingers rather than a fist, has more chance of success, even if it's not entirely accurate. A dropped catch is almost always going to fall into a more dangerous area than a punched one, even if the punch doesn't go that far. I found a chart from January 2017 of Premier League punches so far that season. De Gea - 2 Zieler - 4 Adrian - 4 Robles - 4 Lloris - 4 Karius - 4 Heaton - 4 Foster - 4 Schmeichel - 5 Randolph - 5 Mandanda - 5 Forster - 5 Mignolet - 6 Valdes - 6 Marshall - 7 Courtois - 8 Cech - 8 Stekelenberg - 9 Bravo - 10 Boruc- 11 Pickford - 12 Fabianski - 12 Grant - 16 Gomes - 21 The spread doesn't really show that punching is more or less effective, given that the top six that season were Courtois (8), Lloris (4), Bravo (10), Karius (4), Cech (8) and De Gea (2). Not much consistency there. Maybe it's like zonal and it all comes down to a manager's and goalkeeping coach's preferences.
Just watched the Mbappe play acting and I'm well annoyed. Really liked him up until that point, now I'm having a disliking towards him. Sadly top players like Neymar and Mbappe choose to play act, it brings the game into disrepute.
