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You know it was all fun and games to have 17 subs out of 22 players in that Belgium vs England match, but suddenly their main team will not have played an actual soccer match for the whole tournament before facing Japan or Colombia. They are not extraordinary opponents, but they can play, so I...

The main impact of age is the mental and physiological tear and wear. While he has some back issues that came and went, a small ankle issue years ago and a minor knee surgery, he is by and large in great shape and probably will still be for several years. Stamina, strength and coordination are...

@Brando got almost everything wrong, but, credit to him, he at least attempted some predictions! Here be the table for the round of 16: URUGUAY vs PORTUGAL FRANCE vs ARGENTINA BRAZIL vs MEXICO BELGIUM vs JAPAN SPAIN vs RUSSIA CROATIA vs DANEMARK SWEDEN vs SWITZERLAND COLOMBIA vs ENGLAND

Someone did not get the memo!

Belgium making sure to be ahead in the card count! The game is not unpleasant though. The subs want to shine.

The climax of the absurd was reached in stoppage time when the polsih team wanted to sub a player in (just for the honor / stat line), but since play was not going to ever stop with the japanese defenders meekly passing the ball while the polish players were just standing there, a polish player...

Tonight's match might also be a lot of 'fun' because the two halves of the draw are very unbalanced as far as big name teams are concerned and it's the loser of tonight's match that will end in the supposedly favorable half. The only hope for an actual contest to happen is if Lukaku and Kane...

Would I have been the ref of the Poland-Japan match I would have given some yellows to the japanese team for lack of sportsmanship as they stopped playing at the 85th minute. I am not sure what was in their mind too because they fielded a b team when not qualified and instead of trying to tie...

The first two albums that sprung to mind were the aforementioned OK Computer by Radiohead and the now 20 years old pillar of IDM the untitled 5th album of Autechre (usually called LP5). Some tracks are more difficult than others though. Thinking a little bit more, I would like to add a concept...

They'll probably crash and burn at some point while currently dubious "big teams" will get better, but I'll put a little coin on Croatia.

Use headphones. Be careful with the volume.

I would not know I watched the game on RTS not SRF! There is only one RTS commentator I like (Jean-François Develey) who is very good for games not involving the swiss team because he keeps a kind of dispassionate ironic distance that is very entertaining. In the duo today was former player...

Switzerland just pissed the bed. The one who shit the bed was the french ref' who found not one but two phantom penalties in stopage time. The VAR sent him packing on the first one as it was offside in the first place, but I guess they were still high-fiving during the second... On the up side...

Just saw a quick recap on the metro. Is it fair to say Germany had more opportunities but that South Korea was more opportunistic? Anyway, I predicted Germany could be in trouble against South Korea after seeing how the speed of Mexico put them in trouble time and time again, but since the...

Talking about Neuer and hands shaking... that free kick... palms are sweaty and almost mom's spaggetti! That's the only thing I saw in the first half though... might catch more of the 2nd ...

The only indirect free kicks in the box I have ever seen is for keepers grabing with the hands intentional passes from a teammate. Those are pretty funny :p

We'll note that a majority of the fine people in the VAR room thought a penalty should have been given for the semi-missed header that bounced on the defender's arm... luckily the ref' on the pitch said nope.

In a soccer match, if both teams are happy with a 0-0, the end result is pretty likely to be 0-0....

I'll keep an eye out for this, because it's not the feeling I had.

The problem with the dubious VAR calls is that, before it, the ref' always had plausible deniability / benefit of the doubt. You could always wonder if maybe from his view point / at normal speed / with sound / with natural stereoscopic vision the potential foul looked worse / better than how it...

The problem with the VAR is that while it corrects some things that would have been unfair, it also creates additional judgement calls that also can be unfair. This Iran vs Portugal match will be a point of reference as to why that stuff will be gone or severely changed. You had everything in...

Just hope the swedes and mexicans have the brilliant idea to remove their jersey in their goal celebrations!

So... Group A: Russia vs Uruguay for the 1 and 2 spots. Egypt and Saudi Arabia out. Group B: Spain, Portugal and Iran fighting for 2 spots, Morocco out. Group C: France is through (#1 if they win or draw), Denmark and Australia indirectly fighting for the other spot, Peru is out. Group D...

It will be interesting to see Belgium and England when they will face teams that are able to somewhat defend. Obviously that will not happen when they will face each other... on top of that, it will be a match with limited stakes (group H being homogeneous), unless the big teams in the previous...

To add a little pressure on the german team: there is not a single 0-0 in this World Cup so far!

I was just teasing you :p And to be fair I was about to write that SK is a good team that just can't score... and they scored!

Q the anti prophet strikes again!

To add to my above post, I checked the 23 players of Senegal: 8 are born in France, 1 in Spain, not a single one plays in Senegal (and only one of the keepers plays in Africa).

To paraphrase an analyst that talked about that recently, there are three eras in african football. There is an era when the players played in their national championship with some great players going to european clubs after being noticed in international competitions. This gave us teams that...

When two teams that can't defend face each other, it's entertaining. How unlucky can Tunisa get with their injuries though? They lost their keeper against England and now two defenders in a half!

A dumb thing to do, but for these guys whose life has been heavily influenced by the balkanic clusterfuck (both Xhaka and Shaqiri are from the albanian minority in Kosovo and their family fled the war to Switzerland in the '90s), it's probably a bit difficult to forget about it when they play...

My understanding is that the referee cannot call for the video, it goes the other way around. There are several refs behind monitors looking at the match (how many exactly I am not sure as I have heard conflicting reports). When there is a call that seems kinda fishy to them or might have been...

Pretty cruel ending for the serbian team, but amazing counter attack by the swiss team.

To be fair, the Costa Rican who stayed unconscious on the ground because Marcello touched his forehead was also pretty scummy. Karmic justice though: if they tried to play instead of trying to run the clock down, they might have been able to defend the 0-0 and certainly would not have faced 6...

I only saw the Portugal match today and had not seen their epic 3-3 against Spain. I was shocked at the number of bad passes they produced when attempting to attack. They seemingly always passed in the feet of people expecting the ball in the space which, obviously, resulted time and time again...

I don't know if it exactly applies to Lewandowski, but there is a type of player that are called in french "renards des surfaces" so roughly... boxes foxes? Basically they are players that are good at exactly one thing: through a mix of eagle eye, insight, ruse and explosive first steps, they...

Good luck trying to predict what will happen in this group! As for Columbia being as good as Japan while one man down, let's not be silly, it's just that all plans made by both teams got out the window 3 minutes in. Japan suddenly was unsure if it needed to play or preserve the win, chose to...

For reference, Switzerland played Panama in a friendly match back in march and they won 6-0. I dont want to rain on Belgium's parade, but I suspect both England and Tunisia will look good when playing Panama.

Will we use the "It's an RPG so it's the game of the month for two months" pseudo-rule? Because I have yet to start :( (Yakuza 5 takes time!)