World Cup 2026
- Thread starter jamesdeluxe
- Start date
The slow motion was what made it look bad. The ref on the field didn't make ANY call in real time. Pundits seemed nearly unanimous that it should have been yellow in review.
Of my many grievances in this thread, reffing is the area needing the most attention. It's preposterous to expect one person -- often from 40 or 50 yards away -- to make accurate calls on fouls.
The end of Portugal - Croatia must really have made James' day!
The Croatian player who fielded this ball was not offside when the original pass was made but was offside as the ball grazed Croatia #20's head as shown above. The ensuing goal would have tied the game in the last minute of play. The ball then grazed Portugal #13's head but did not negate the offside because his contact was not intentional. But I guess it doesn't matter whether the offensive player's (#20) contact (very marginal, only confirmed by the microchip in the ball) is intentional or not.
The Croatian player who fielded this ball was not offside when the original pass was made but was offside as the ball grazed Croatia #20's head as shown above. The ensuing goal would have tied the game in the last minute of play. The ball then grazed Portugal #13's head but did not negate the offside because his contact was not intentional. But I guess it doesn't matter whether the offensive player's (#20) contact (very marginal, only confirmed by the microchip in the ball) is intentional or not.
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I'm running out of ashtrays to throw at my TV. I really wanted Croatia to win.
The whole issue of determining a player's intentionality in a variety of situations (part of the red-card brouhaha in the recent U.S./Bosnia match) is maddening. I return to my point that they need a hockey-like blue line and goal crease to prevent offside calls deep in the offensive zone. The only "offside" would be if a player steps into the crease without the ball already there.
What's really infuriating is how the sport's purists explain away the sundry inconsistencies and other rules nonsense with bollox like "that's what makes it the beautiful game!" or "futbol is like life -- sometimes it's unfair or unexplainable!"
And yes, I plan to continue to grumble up through the final match at nearby "New York New Jersey Stadium," which is getting awful reviews from attendees and players. One British journalist called it a “roofless, mall-neighbouring, soulless concrete bowl.” I can't dispute that although complaining about it not having a roof is a first-world gripe.
ChrisC
Well-known member
They cannot change the rules.
How is FIFA to remain more corrupt than the IOC (International Olympic Committee)?
FIFA members need various methods to fix soccer matches and accept bribes (see Qatar host / 2015 scandals).
Weather forecast temperature for Philadelphia for tomorrow's game is 100/80.
At least it's not today in NYC (101/85).The rule that the incidental contact has to be intentional for the defensive player but is irrelevant for the offensive player seems weird. In this case the defensive player contact was obvious and the offensive player contact was so slight that it had to be confirmed with a microchip in the ball.
In general I like the microchip in the ball. It pinpoints the time that the offensive player is passing the ball. That is the exact time in the replay when other offensive players are determined to be offside or not. If a ref has to be looking at forward players to see whether they are offside, it seems unlikely that same ref will get the timing exactly right about when the pass was made. But I suspect in the prior era refs would hesitate to nullify goals unless they were quite sure of the offside. Now they pass the buck to VAR and I suspect more borderline cases are called offside.
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I wonder if they'd push the kickoff back to 8 pm?
East Rutherford, NJ will be a more tolerable 88 with possible rain and thunderstorms for Sunday's match.
Last night's Argentina/Cape Verde was the best match of the tournament. ARG was obviously the more talented team but CPV put up a great fight.
Yes, that overtime was amazing. During the overtime one of the commentators thought Argentina was wearing down more in the Miami weather (91/78). That is the unusually stable summer climatology that I experienced for nearly 3 months in 2020.
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Meanwhile, @Sbooker's people engaged in civil disobedience -- impeding the orderly transaction of cheap goods in a Texas suburb:
www.fox4news.com
WATCH: Australia soccer fans take over Walmart near Dallas Stadium
A horde of Socceroo fans stormed an Arlington Walmart ahead of Australia's World Cup match on Friday at Dallas Stadium.
Weirdos.Meanwhile, @Sbooker's people engaged in civil disobedience -- impeding the orderly transaction of cheap goods in a Texas suburb:
WATCH: Australia soccer fans take over Walmart near Dallas Stadium
A horde of Socceroo fans stormed an Arlington Walmart ahead of Australia's World Cup match on Friday at Dallas Stadium.
Right on schedule, a well-known sports columnist with an article conveying these same sentiments verbatim ^^. Seriously mate, can't you come up with a more original premise?
Due to the recent non-functioning WP gift articles, I'm copy/pasting the text but please let me know if the link above works.
Penalty kicks are arbitrary and beautiful — just like life
Dumb luck decides the World Cup’s most thrilling moment. It decides a lot more, too.
Penalty kicks, to people who love soccer, are something of a necessary evil. They’re not reflective of the sport itself — as others have pointed out, they’re like baseball replacing extra innings with a home run derby, or settling NBA overtime with a dunk contest — and their result is mostly arbitrary. It’s a terrible way to decide the best team in a hard-fought match.
But you have to end the game somehow: In a sport in which scoring can be sparse, you can’t let the players just run around out there forever. They could end up playing all night. At the very least, a penalty kick provides an answer, even if it’s an inconclusive one. Eventually someone has to win.
But as exciting as penalty kicks are — and the World Cup knockout round led off with some truly jaw-dropping ones, from Paraguay’s stunner over Germany to a wild Moroccan victory over the Netherlands — I think they’re more than just some cheap thrills to finish up a game that otherwise might never end. I believe penalty kicks are the closest thing sports has to a metaphor for life. Penalty kicks reflect the randomness of life — in all its ridiculous glory — better than anything else I’ve found in sports.
If you don’t mind getting a little nostalgic with me, look back at the most pivotal moments in your life. Maybe it was the moment you met your spouse. Maybe it was when your children were born. Maybe it was getting a job opportunity that changed your life. Maybe it was a time when a friend, or a mentor, or even a great work of art altered the way your mind works, opening a whole new world of possibilities. Maybe it was your first great piece of pizza.
Whatever that pivotal moment was … how much of it was luck? Fortune? Chance? That you just happened to be standing at the right place at the right time? This doesn’t mean you lacked autonomy or agency, that you just sat there as life happened to you, that you did nothing. Such moments are pivotal because of what we do with them, how we react to them; our lives are what we make of them.
But they had to happen to us first. And we don’t have a lot of control over that. I didn’t choose to meet my wife; we just were at the same engagement party for a mutual friend. When that opportunity presented itself, I was ready for it, and so was she. We took advantage of it, and now we have two children and a house and careers and all the things that we’ve built out of that moment. But that moment, the moment itself? We just happened to be in the right place at the right time. It was dumb luck.
And nothing in sports is more consistently decided by dumb luck than a penalty kick. Sure, there is skill involved, like there is skill in everything: You have to be able to kick a ball hard to score, and you have to be able to block a hard-kicked ball to stop someone from scoring. But the reason penalty kicks are so exciting is that you can do everything right and still lose, and you can do everything wrong and win.
The penalty taker is guessing which direction the keeper will dive; the keeper is guessing which direction the penalty taker will kick. They’re both just flipping a coin. Some keepers are better at stopping penalty kicks than others, and some penalty takers are better at scoring than others. (This is famously, and oddly, one of Lionel Messi’s few weaknesses.) You can be in the right position to succeed, you can try your best, you can practice every possible move, but the result is mostly out of your control.
But the reason you are there, in a position for dumb luck to deliver you a win, is because you have put yourself there. I know it is super cool to quote Woody Allen these days, people love it, he’s never been more universally respected and beloved, but I’ve always thought one of the smartest things he ever said was “80 percent of success is showing up.” What he meant was that all the successes we have in our lives are simply a product of putting ourselves in the correct position — by putting one foot in front of the other and being available when life aligns exactly right. It won’t always align right: Most of the time it doesn’t. But the only thing you can control is being ready in those rare moments when it does. That’s what being alive is.
And that’s why I love penalty kicks. Every time a keeper guesses right, every time a penalty taker gets just the right bounce, every time one team has all their dreams come true simply because a ball landed one millimeter to the left of where it could have landed for no other reason than the random whims of the universe — it reminds me of my life, and your life, everyone’s lives on this planet. Successful people like to claim they make their own luck, but that’s not quite right. It’s that when luck finds them, they run with it.
Is Paraguay a better team than Germany because they won in penalty kicks? What does better have to do with anything? They won because they put themselves into position to win, and then the fates did their work. It was just dumb luck. Isn’t that what life is all about? Isn’t it wonderful?
Here's the AI summary of the article's comments, which make the exact same points that I did upthread (see the underlined)
The conversation explores various perspectives on the use of penalty kicks to decide soccer matches. Many participants express dissatisfaction with penalty kicks, viewing them as an inadequate way to determine a winner, akin to a coin flip or a game of chance. Some suggest alternatives, such as reducing the number of players on the field or eliminating the offside rule during extra time to encourage scoring. Others reminisce about past methods like the golden goal rule or NASL-style shootouts. A few commenters defend penalty kicks, arguing they require skill and mental fortitude, and are preferable to other arbitrary methods like a coin toss. The discussion also touches on broader themes of luck and skill in sports, with some seeing penalty kicks as a metaphor for life's unpredictability.
ChrisC
Well-known member
Here's my gift article:
I have subscriptions to NYTimes, WSJ, and sometimes WashPost.
ChrisC
Well-known member
Miami Hard Rock Stadium (Dolphins) is a terribly designed stadium for its climate and typical game times. (The Miami Marlins Stadium is not much better, but is oriented to the ocean/Miami Skyline and can get a sea breeze some evenings).
My parents have lived in the area since the 90s, and I have attended:
- 2 Super Bowls (49ers-Chargers, Saints-Colts)
- Numerous Miami Dolphins games (usually only to see the New England Patriots (Tom Brady)), but the Dolphins are so terrible that one can get cheap last-minute tickets.
- Miami Open Tennis. Relocated from Key Biscayne to Hard Rock Stadium in 2019. The temporary seating is highly problematic.
Concerts at night are fine, just steamy and open to rain.
Super Bowls are fine since games are in the evening.
Tennis sucks for 50% of the stadium
See the map above; it's set up for the Miami Open Tennis Tournament. There is a Tennis Court in the middle. All of the very expensive seats on the north side face south or southwest into the sun (YELLOW SQUARE), which can be hot even in March! For mid-day Men's or Women's Finals, everyone leaves their seats as soon as it's over. For a doubles final match, the tournament allows anyone sitting in the sun to relocate to the shaded south side (open seats), acknowledging the problem.
1 PM NFL Football Games suck for 50% of the stadium.
The Visitors Side is the North Side, and September and October games are still 90F+ and hot sun (RED SQUARE). Even with 10th-row tickets (sometimes only $50-70/ticket), it's unbearable by half-time, and one retreats into the AC or shaded areas. Although there are roofs, the sun angle can get most of the seats due to the autumn sun angles.
These are okay-to-bad game times for the long summer days (June/July).
These seats are really expensive. At least tickets on the north side are getting dumped; Either blazing sun or an afternoon thunderstorm. $10-20k for 2.
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has a retractable roof like Houston, so I suspect it's rarely open air for MLB games. We saw a game in Houston mid-July 2021. When we drove by it the next day we could see the roof was open to let the sun shine on the grass.
