Eh, saw 5 "The pheasants are beneath me." - SoCal to az "I have very few pet peeves in life . . . " - PeterS "Change is inedible" - fc2
So I'm on Hong Kong in my room on the 23rd floor last night about 10:30PM and I hear a roar of thousands of people like I could not believe. Loud. I'm wondering what the hell was that? Then I realize -- Belgium just scored on England.
It was my friend, Luca Fornetti in Maranello that said, before the tournament started that Croatia would do well. He was right. But, not quite better than the French. Congratulations France, winners of the 2018 World Cup. What a strong team . . . .
Congrats to France! That was a pretty interesting game to watch. The best WTF moment when the French goal tender had a brain fart but I thought Croatia had some really good plays. The hand ball controversy was clearly a handball. For once not a low scoring game and both teams played a lot of offense. And pretty good referring to let a lot of plays keep going.
Watched from a bar here in Ct. Everyone was for Croatia. Who in the 1st half outplayed France anyways. Great cup!
Played for many years as a child/teen but I’ve grown disenchanted watching the game. The flow of the game at this level is interrupted with theatrics every few minutes. Disgraceful plays are so common, they force fans to accept poor sportsmanship as intrinsic to the game. Watched the last few minutes of today’s final only to see a French striker dive on an easy tackle to waste time. Beautiful.
IRONICALLY, if you watched a lot of the matches this year, this was probably the cleanest from that sort of stuff!
Congratulations to France. Hopefully Qatar 2022 will have the same sort of team parity, which IMHO made the group stage matches relevant in a way it's never been before (although one could also argue that it was an "off-year" for most traditional soccer superpowers which made the teams so evenly matched). I'll be sad to see the current 4-team group stage go in favor of a 3-team team group stage in 2026, but I've read there will no longer be ties - each group game will be decided on penalties. Only 8 years away!
^They should move the penalty shot farther out. Why? Because people like to see the goal tender make saves.
Anyone else think Kolinda is smoking hot? http://www.dnaindia.com/sports/fifa/report-world-cup-2018-croatian-president-kolinda-grabar-kitarovic-wins-everyone-s-heart-with-her-super-sporting-attitude-2637606
I've been saying that for years. Virtually the only way the shooter doesn't score is if he makes a mistake.
Yup, certainly a lot of acting going on. Do you think the ref calls it without all of the acting? Or does the acting get the call that wouldn't have been called?
Watched the 1st half of it last night - so far, it is a great game! Hopefully I will get the 2nd half in tonight.
Selling it to the ref is lcd if no damage was done. The actor involved should receive a game penalty and not be replaced. End of problem. Ref could carry an iphone and watch a slo mo.replay to determine the call if they were out of position during the tackle/collision.
There will still be debates as to whether Major League Soccer in North America is really as "Major" as the other four professional sports, but it certainly is in this town! I think the celebration on Monday (in the rain) for Atlanta United winning the MLS Cup (in only their second year of existence) was easily as big as the celebration would have been for the Falcons if they had held on to win the Super Bowl two years ago. And the all-time top eight 8 MLS games in attendance all belong to Atlanta United! They regularly outdrew the Falcons in the same stadium this year.