The Soccer Thread (Version 13) — Winter World Cup Edition

Guess the Cup is not coming home.

 

For England, a familiar one.

 

I would suggest the World Cup would look great on NBCSN but, well…

 

I stopped watching as soon as the match was over. Is this something they really said? Or implied? About a win in a quarterfinal game? Where they scored both goals during normal action and didn't give up any? Is there something wrong with that? They get paid for this?

 

The French players ran over to the corner where their fans were cheering. As they jumped up and down with the fans the studio team called it a "sheepish" celebration because they had to be embarrassed after not playing very well. It was absurd.

 

Can't fault Kane. Yes, a bad shot, but there have been many missed PKs in this tournament. England had a lot of other chances and couldn't convert, got nothing despite dominating the game for minutes at a stretch.

People who know a lot more about soccer than I do probably know, but I'm at a loss to understand why Grealish doesn't play more. He's England's most creative offensive player by far (IMHO).

 

The only people who think penalty kicks are gimmes have never taken a penalty kick in an actual match.
I can't even imagine the pressure Kane was under. He was totally alone with the weight of a nation on his shoulders and all the world watching.
The only thing close could be the pitcher's mound in the bottom of the 9th with a 1-run lead, the bases loaded and two outs in Game 7 of a World Series.

 

Oh, Grealo. Here's my relatively uneducated answer to your question based mostly on his Villa days.

First of all, Jack is almost comically dumb. Just this week I've seen YouTube videos of him being shocked by the size of a live camel and being totally unable to place his hometown, Birmingham, on a map of the UK. Unless he is driving drunk (which happened a couple years back), it rarely hurts anyone. In fact, it's downright entertaining some of the time. Now, he may be a football savant, but I kind of suspect complex systems take a while for him to grasp.

Second, Jack is kind of an And-1 mixtape player in a triangle offense world. He is a wizard on the ball and can do legendary things in situations where he can take on defenders. But in an international setting, there are fewer bad defenders to pick on.

And third, England has too many attacking options. With one forward spot basically locked down by Harry Kane, he's fighting for starts with the likes of Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka and Marcus Rashford, all of whom have been in blistering form at certain points of recent years.

So, the tl;dr: He's better as a big fish in a smaller pond, because his isn't the game that really plugs well into systems, if Jack was bright enough to understand them in the first place.

And all that said, I'd take him back at Villa in a heartbeat (and saw such a move lightly rumored recently).

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/63541407

 

World Cup: France manager Didier Deschamps admits his side 'GOT LUCKY' in England win | Daily Mail Online

 

Yeah, could be. All I know is England sure seems to play better on offense when he's out there.