Men's Football FIFA World Cup 2018

[Agger 1,663]

6 hours ago, OlympicsFan said:

Please illuminate us ... 

 

Making it just 1 or 2 is a rather simplistic way of looking at it. It's also very much about tactics. Some of the underdogs managed to be ready and destroy the gameplan of the favourites.

Is it the most interesting kind of football? No

But Iceland being better prepared for the Argentinian team than Argentina was for the Icelandic doesn't mean that we can just say that Argentina was bad.

No doubt they were below what we would expect from a team of their quality, but that was not just Argentina playing bad, but also Iceland being well prepared.

[ChandlerMne 1,037]

Iranians are real gentlemens. Pitty they wont (probably) qualify.

[bestmen 2,818]

the day of 1-0

so at the end POR will lead the Group , and in 1/8 ESP vs RUS

POR vs URU  

[bestmen 2,818]

in the same time IRN is not eliminated 

[OlympicsFan 858]

vor 23 Minuten schrieb Agger:

 

Making it just 1 or 2 is a rather simplistic way of looking at it. It's also very much about tactics. Some of the underdogs managed to be ready and destroy the gameplan of the favourites.

Is it the most interesting kind of football? No

But Iceland being better prepared for the Argentinian team than Argentina was for the Icelandic doesn't mean that we can just say that Argentina was bad.

No doubt they were below what we would expect from a team of their quality, but that was not just Argentina playing bad, but also Iceland being well prepared.

There are different degrees of good and bad, let's say that if teams like Argentina would play at their best, then there would be nothing teams like Iceland could do to get a draw/win (except for getting extremely lucky/bribing the referee). The fact that those small teams still get good results shows me that the big teams are not at their best. If we assume that big teams have about the same individual strength as they used to and are about as prepared for those small teams as they always were, then i have to conclude that most players of the big teams (who play in big leagues) are just not fully fit/very exhausted from a long season. Some people find joy in small teams getting surprising results, but for me my joy when watching football depends on the quality of football i see (e.g. spectacular goals, great dribbling, great passes). So far i haven't seen a lot of those things, so for me the quality of football so far has been poor. 

 

Edit: I don't think there is a non-simplistic way of trying to discuss this topic on here (unless we want to write pages of in depth analysis), if you want to be able to discuss a topic like this on a platform as this one, you are probably bound to make simplifying assumptions.

Edited June 20, 2018 by OlympicsFan

[hoversaBR 441]

Iran 

[hckošice 14,835]

but if Iran will play like in the second half and PortuCR7gal like they played today, Iran has still some chances IMO

[dcro 10,210]

Oh well, they won by an own goal against Morocco. Now they had goal cancelled by VAR. Balance.

[thepharoah 2,405]

That was an intersting match after Spain scored  Hard luck Iran 

[thepharoah 2,405]

I think players that Spain left home could have been really useful at least on bench , i wonder how u let players like Marcos alonso , Morata , Fabregas and Martinez