Julius

Too soon?

Brazil really found their stride tonight against Serbia, after a very nervy start to the group against Switzerland followed by a relatively better display without much decisiveness against Costa Rica. I think their stepping up and coming into their own is exactly what was expected after Germany lost to Mexico, but alas, their chance at revenge just wasn’t to be. Neymar went down a lot less tonight, looking stronger all around (as expected, Tite was right in saying that it would take five matches for him to be up to snuff — tonight was his fifth match since returning from injury) and Brazil looked really hungry for some goals against Serbia tonight. If they can carry their evolution on into the knockout stages, there’s no reason that they can’t win the tournament, with some great flair going forwards reminding me of their team from the 2000’s. The Round of 16 is looking like such fun. Uruguay v. Portugal should be a belter of a match in terms of seeing how the former’s defence comes with Ronaldo; Spain v. Russia is going to be very, very loud ; France v. Argentina should put both teams to the sword, and its an early chance for them to prove if they’re seriously capable of going on to win it; Brazil v. Mexico should be a very fiery contest; and Sweden v. Switzerland will probably be a nervy, end-to-end game for both sides. I think that Croatia v. Denmark is the only game that I’d be comfortable predicting the outcome of in the Round of 16 at the moment! It’ll probably be a comfortable one for the Croats, at least based on their group stage form. I don’t expect England to do so well against Belgium tomorrow — beyond the typical pessimism English fans have when it comes to our national team, we really weren’t as good as the scoreline against Panama might suggest. The biggest surprise for me so far this tournament is probably that Belgium only scored 3 against them! Colombia v. Senegal and Poland v. Japan should be great games, and it’ll be interesting to see who we end up facing. I don’t think coming first in our group matters too much when it comes to the first round of the knockout stages, but it’ll certainly mean a lot beyond that. Germany really weren’t deserving of going through, and it’ll be interesting to see if Löw keeps his job. I was fairly annoyed by commentators droning on and on about Sané being left out, but many of the players that featured at the Confederations Cup should have been here for the World Cup, and much of the old guard — Khedira, Özil, Reus, and a couple of others — should have been left out in their place. So yeah, Sané probably should have been here. Neuer did very well to return the way he did at this World Cup after so long out, and I hope that this doesn’t knock his confidence too much, because the blame clearly lies elsewhere. They only took two real strikers, and Gomez seemed keen to spurn every chance that he had, whereas Werner was exceptional in work ethic for his age — you’d think he was one of the veterans. But why was he playing on the wing with Reus playing centrally at times today? Regardless, a big shake-up isn’t needed to the infrastructure of German football after this, but their approach needs to change. There was no chemistry in this side because Löw was so indecisive in choosing his teams in the lead up to the competition (37 different players during qualifying is a waste of a lot of people’s time, and a stupid mistake for a manager as experienced as theirs to make). Their best players by far in their three games were Werner, Kimmich, and Brandt (who really deserved a start today after hitting the post during both of his substitute appearances). Kroos’ free kick against Sweden was superbly worked, but he’s been successfully marked out of all of their games. I’m shocked that Müller didn’t turn up after scoring 5 goals in both South Africa and in Brazil, but again, the blame can’t all go down to only one player not turning up as they have before. Yes, Löw lost the spine of the national team since Brazil 2014 in Lahm, Schweinsteiger, Klose, et al, but that doesn’t mean that the bit-part players who are still around, like Özil and Khedira, can successfully step up to become the spine of the team, because they were never the core of the team. Quite frankly, they didn’t deserve to come to this World Cup based on form and fitness/injury concerns anyways. The curse of World Cup champion continues, eh?

Okay.

Yeah, I think I tried to oversimplify my example and messed it up a bit, my bad. But yeah, to the main point of conversation: I highly doubt that a player like Kroos deliberately passes the ball to a Korean player/to his goalkeeper in that situation

Well done to South Korea, Germany genuinely didn’t deserve to go through. Werner by far was their best player to start all three games; Neuer was very good after a long time out; However, at least from my understanding of the game and offside rules, I don’t think that that first Korean goal (which changed the complexity of the final few minutes entirely) should have stood, and I think that the linesman got it right. Everyone’s making a really big fuss about it coming off Kroos before falling into the path of that Korean player in the six yard box, but that doesn’t matter at all. The Korean player who scored was offside at the time of the last Korean touch — there is very clearly a touch from a Korean player just before it goes through Kroos’ legs — meaning that he was offside, regardless of Kroos’ touch, and the goal shouldn’t have stood. Why on earth the commentators seemed to think that it mattered that the last player to have touched the ball before him was Kroos, I don’t know. The VAR team didn’t help at allby just replaying it going through Kroos’ legs and his awkward touch that sent it towards the scoring player; the incident in question happened before that. It doesn’t matter that the last touch was from a defending player; what matters is that the attacking player was offside when another attacking player last touched the ball. In this case, the Korean player should be considered actively offside until the point at which the ball is next touched by a Korean player and he is an onside position. EDIT: discarded my poor example of offside.

It definitely seems to be the former; if it continues at the current rate, the previous record will almost be doubled, and that’s not much of a coincidence. What makes it even more interesting is that some of the penalties awarded seem dubious when compared to other, clearer claims for a penalty. At the beginning of the tournament teams went 11 games without a red card, the longest red card drought at a World Cup since 1986. We’ve only seen 3 red cards awarded so far in 36 games, which is 1 every 12 games, so if that continues at the current rate, we could hypothetically only see 6 red cards this World Cup. If that were to happen, this would be the cleanest World Cup (in terms of red cards) since 1982! There have been some strange decisions so far, but considering that this is the first major tournament to play host to VAR, I think that it’s being utilised in an efficient manner. In my opinion, the main thing that they have to do going forward is to find a way to streamline its use, so that we don’t end up with more games ending in the same manner that Spain v. Morocco did last night, as it devolved into chaos.

The special and standard edition covers for Thrawn Alliances look superb

An interesting stat I think is worth mentioning ahead of today’s games: Iran’s penalty late on in their game against Portugal last night was the 20th penalty awarded at this World Cup, with Ronaldo’s being the 19th, meaning the previous record number of penalties awarded at a single World Cup finals (18) has already been surpassed. And, as of last night, we’ve only had 36 of the 64 games that the current format of the World Cup entails, meaning that, on average, we’ve seen a penalty awarded in pretty much every other game!

Even if Spain lost 2-1 to Morocco, if the score remained 1-1 in the Portugal v. Iran game, Spain still would have made it through to the knockout stage ahead of Iran thanks to a superior number of goals scored (as they would have been on the same number of points - 4 - and would have had an equal goal difference - 0). It’ll either be Ronaldo or the goal frame

Spain v. Morocco was great, but it became a right mess at the end. Linesmen have been told to keep their flags down in the event that the ball goes in from what may seem an offside position — so that the VAR crew can intervene and assess the goal thoroughly. The chaos that ensued for a good four or five minutes at the end of that game for VAR just goes to show why exactly they’ve been told to do that. Add in the fact that the linesmen actually runs on the pitch (hence why he probably didn’t have a good enough angle to make a call; he seemed to be repositioning his feet at the same time the call was made), and it wasn’t a great time to make such a call. Not to mention the way they messed up stoppage time: the goal was scored prior to the 90th minute, before the length of stoppage time was revealed, and play was delayed by a good four or five minutes for the Aspas incident alone; add in the stoppages accrued prior to the incident and the faffing around during stoppage time and I think we probably should have seen a few more minutes played. I think we would have seen some people from the Spanish NT arguing that if they went on to lose. Aspas’ goal was excellent, but sadly completely overshadowed by the VAR chaos; Morocco were great all around, besides sometimes being overly aggressive; I have no idea how Pique didn’t end up with a yellow card. I don’t think that he should have got one for when Carvajal, from a few yards away, chipped it at his arm (nor should a penalty/free kick have been given), but going in with a pair of studs showing was very dangerous. Something I haven’t seen mentioned about Portugal v. Iran is the Iranian keeper’s save of Ronaldo’s penalty. He’s very clearly stood behind the line, and if I’m not mistaken, the laws of the game state that the defending goalkeeper should be positioned on the line during a penalty kick. Spain looked without purpose tonight, and it’s worrying that their best game was against Portugal. Were they just lazy and complacent in the other two games, or just without the purpose that they clearly had in their group stage opener? Portugal v. Uruguay should be a cracking match (at least on paper), and Spain v. Russia should be a good chance for La Roja to find a bit more purpose and confidence in their playing style. They really need to start being more direct, I think, by going through the middle of the pitch to drag the opposing defenders away from the wings before deploying their speedy fullbacks in the final third with some well-timed sprints. We’ve already seen in the group stage alone that having both fullbacks deployed in the final third during every attack has a lot more drawbacks than it does benefits, because it’s such a big part of the modern game, meaning that everyone’s ready to counter it with a swift counterattacking manoeuvre.

So, Uruguay have won all three of their group stage games for the first time at a World Cup — and without conceding a single goal. Dark horses?

Yeah, I agree. I definitely think that there a few ideas better than the current ruling of coin flip, but alas, this is FIFA we’re talking about Would love to see this Uruguay team come up against Portugal in the Round of 16, as I think their defence v. Ronaldo would be a very interesting matchup to see. Diego Godín has been imperious in this game against Russia.

That’s exactly what I was hinting at; it’s a bit pesky that we’re up against them anyways, and a draw and a balance of yellow cards sees it taken to what is essentially a televised coin flip. There’s no way to balance it in the rules across the board, for obvious reasons, but it’ll be a shame if it comes down to that. What I’m saying is that the pure coincidence that we have our final group game against them should be a chance for FIFA to take the initiative, for fans watching the game and for the sake of stopping potential backlash, by taking it to extra time and/or penalties, should a decider be required (which would seem very unlikely, anyways). However, as I went on to say in the rest of my post, coming second would likely work better in the long run for us than coming first would, which goes against your original suggestion that coming second would see us come up against strong opposition sooner. That’s the point that I was trying to make in the three other substantially sized paragraphs in my post.

I meant by drawing lots to see who wins the group, coming second and then getting a stronger team who knocks us out. Oh right, yeah, it’s odd to me. If we’re already playing Belgium anyways, why not just take it to extra time and/or penalties to decide it? The flip of a coin seems to go against the whole point of having a group stage, and I’m not the fan of the televised gamble like this would bring about. However, it doesn’t make much of an immediate difference where we finish in our group, as the three teams we could end up against in the Round of 16 from Group H (Senegal, Colombia and Japan) have so far shown themselves to be around the same level, with no clear “stronger” team in their group. It’s in the quarter finals where it actually makes more of a difference: if we came first and then went through to the quarter finals, as things stand, we could come up against Brazil or Germany; adversely, if we came second, we’d currently end up against Mexico or Switzerland. The quarter finals is as far as I think we could realistically go to be honest (I’d love to see us go further and push on, though), but, clearly, coming second in our group would be a more realistic way of going further than that, when compared to the likely opposition should we come first. That’s all thrown out of the window if Germany hammer the Korean Republic and Mexico lose to Sweden, though, as coming first would likely see us come up against Brazil in the quarter finals, whereas coming second would then likely see us come up against Germany.

Do you mean by drawing our knockout stage games, or by “drawing” a strong side in the round of 16?

Clutch as hell from Kroos thank goodness!

EZA have passed $50K on Patreon for the first time, meaning that a studio is within reach (so long as this can be sustained). On the one hand, I’m really going to miss Brandon’s garage if and when they move. It’s just so homey! But, in the other hand, I suppose it’s about time he got his garage back...exciting times!

So I guess you’re holding out for a Germany v. Portugal final, huh? I’m a huge fan of Germany’s style of play, but for me, Portugal either turn up in force (like against Spain last week) or quickly fade out of the game (like against Morocco the other day). Besides that Spain v. Portugal game last Friday, the big teams really haven’t turned up so far, which is a bit of a bummer. I’m hoping that it’s just nerves and that they all come out firing on every cylinder when the knockout stages begin. I think Russia have been the most exciting team to watch so far this tournament, and by a considerable margin. It’ll be interesting to see if they’re as outright in their attacking against bigger opposition (like Uruguay next Monday) as they have been against lesser teams.

...who do you enjoy/not hate watching? Because so far in this thread we’ve established that you hate both Messi and Brazil...

Great use of VAR to deny it, but I don’t think that it was much of a dive. He clearly loses his balance, and I think he noticed that the ref saw that there was contact (however small), so he then went on to make more of it once he was down. But no, I don’t think that his going down was necessarily a dive. Thank goodness that Neymar got off the mark and that Brazil won, though. It’s bad enough Argentina are staring down the barrel of knockout stage omission, but this would have been a little nuts. Feel sorry for Costa Rica, because they kept Brazil at bay for 90 minutes, and were clearly just too tired come stoppage time. Also glad to see the effect of the first goal on Brazil’s players and the confidence that it gave them. Coutinho’s and Firmino’s little exchange in stoppage time and Neymar’s rainbow flick were great to watch.

Argentina were an absolute shambles, and their performance tonight was a sorry sight. Not only are they below par everywhere else on the pitch, Sampaoli didn’t build a system to make the most of their attacking players prior to the tournament, and not much has changed since they scraped through to qualify for the tournament. Not to mention that Dybala is a straight swap for Messi in the same way that Higuaín is, in many ways, a straight swap for Aguerö, meaning that they couldn’t offer the Croatian defence a different type of challenge with their substitutions in the final third. Let’s not forget that the silly decision was made to not take Mauro Icardi to this tournament, a player who could have offered such a different dynamic to the others in that he resembles more of a typical No. 9 (in height and pace, and is much more than that in raw ability). Croatia played very well, to no surprise, as the core of their team is completely solid. Both teams were very shaky in the first half, and they both completely failed to capitalise on each other’s early mistakes. Such a strange showing from the referee, might I add. There were some good decisions made, and then there were some very, very ones: waving advantage to Croatia when Rakitic got winded only to rescind it when Argentina were on the break; waving off Vrsaljko’s complaints about having his ankle stamped on, which he did — for a good few seconds, whilst travelling; and Otamendi should have got a red card for pelting the ball at Rakitic’s head at point blank, in my opinion. This is a football match, not a public execution. Argentina’s only realistic chance of going through sees them beating Nigeria next week, with Iceland drawing against Nigeria tomorrow, and then drawing or losing to Croatia next week. And, on the odd chance that they end up level on points with another team for the second spot, they’re basically going to have to annihilate Nigeria and not concede. Part of me wants them to go through, because it’s always horrible to see a footballing nation crash and burn like this on the biggest stage. It was rough to watch it happen to Spain four years ago, or Italy four years before that, and I still can’t that both Italy and the Netherlands failed to qualify for this tournament. That being said, unless Argentina wipes the floor with Nigeria and dazzles us with football that we haven’t seen from them in a very long time, they don’t deserve to go through. Which sucks to admit, but there has been nothing cohesive about their play thus far in the tournament, and I reckon that I could find some complete strangers with more on-pitch chemistry than these guys.

Such a weird game for Spain. They were in total control for the entirety of the match, but there was no-one effectively bridging the gap between the midfield and Diego Costa like there was last Friday night. Some great defending from Iran for the most part, but I can’t imagine them maintaining Ronaldo like they did Costa — for the most part — tonight. Portugal v. Iran should be a very interesting game nonetheless. Uruguay are being weirdly conservative, and though they’ve qualified for the knockout stages regardless of the result against Russia, they’re playing in the exact same way that Simeone sets up Atlético against relatively “bigger” teams — despite having so far played against only relatively smaller teams. Playing in such a way in the knockout stages against the like of Germany or Brazil is one thing, but to play like they did today against Saudi Arabia, especially after their opposition had shown how poor their defence was in their 5-0 defeat to Russia, is nothing but shameful.

That’s a great trailer

Nope, I’m with you guys too. There are actually some games that I’ve purchased digitally that I plan on purchasing physically for the sake of my physical collection. I only really purchase games digitally if it: a) gives me an opportunity to try out a game I’m interested in prior to the physical price being just as low (i.e. I got MGSV Definitive Edition for ~£8 digitally, when it was ~£20 physically), to figure out if I really do want it to be part of my collection. b) is a game only available digitally/had an extremely limited physical run (these are typically indie titles), meaning that physical copies are either extremely rare or considerably pricey. c) is a game that I’ll play mindlessly (and normally on sale), where I don’t really mind that it’s not part of my physical collection, and the convenience of having it already on my console outweighs the space that it might take up on a shelf, as I only play the game sporadically/when in a mood for some aimless gaming. E.g. FIFA I’m the exact same way with books, and my film collection, actually. Beyond the physical v. digital debate there, I also have to consider the format (i.e. paperback v. hardcover; DVD v. Blu-Ray — and soon to probably be v. 4K UHD, too) and my preferred appearance in my collection (cover art, box set v. individual copies, etc.).

We have a release date for all platforms: September 25th! https://twitter.com/SEGA/status/1009104141652713472?s=20