soccer soccer soccer

[soccer10k]

3 hours ago, soccer10k said:

Trump is backing Argentina. Drake also placed a huge bet on Argentina.

Which means Spain is going to win.

Trump curse strikes again.

Pretty lame effort overall by Argentina even before the red card. Spain was the best team this tourney and deserved winners. Glad it didn’t go to PKs too and that the winning goal was a nice one rather than a goalkeeper error or something else lame.

[JHBulls]

My God, how embarrassing is Trump. Get out of the way Grandpa. 

[CaliforniaRaisin]

So glad Spain got that goal because I was convInced Argentina would win in PKs despite having 0 SOGs.

Also glad it was that racist POS Enzo Fernández who got the red.

[Derwood]

4 hours ago, soccer10k said:

Trump is backing Argentina. Drake also placed a huge bet on Argentina.

Which means Spain is going to win.

Trump curse for all the losses 

[Irrelevant Dude]

Someone please explain to a soccer neophyte:

Messi was mostly a non-factor.  It looked like he had no room to do anything.  When he did get the ball, Spain was right in top of him immediately. 

Is there anything he could have done differently, or was it just that Spain was a much better overall team in terms of talent, game plan, or both?  Would things have been any different if this was 31 year old Messi instead of 39 year old Messi, or would it not even have mattered with how the team was being defended? 

In general, was Spain just that much more talented at almost every position, or do they have superior coaching/strategy?

[soccer10k]

  

2 hours ago, Irrelevant Dude said:

Someone please explain to a soccer neophyte:

Messi was mostly a non-factor.  It looked like he had no room to do anything.  When he did get the ball, Spain was right in top of him immediately. 

Is there anything he could have done differently, or was it just that Spain was a much better overall team in terms of talent, game plan, or both?  Would things have been any different if this was 31 year old Messi instead of 39 year old Messi, or would it not even have mattered with how the team was being defended? 

In general, was Spain just that much more talented at almost every position, or do they have superior coaching/strategy?

It's a style thing. Spain plays a heavy ball control game. They've got good defenders and a good goalie, but they prevent teams from scoring by possessing the ball and then when they lose it, they don't just retreat back defensively. Instead, they try to win the ball back immediately. Also, Argentina tends to struggle at winning the ball back when they don't have possession. Kind of a problem against a team that possesses the ball well. That's what made England bunkering and not even trying to possess the ball so confusing in the semi.

In their semi, against a much more talented French front line (France had 20 goals in 8 games, Argentina had 19 but had 4 in extra time and France played a tougher group of opponents), Spain shut them down too. France had 0.04 xG in the first half and 0.31 xG for the game. xG is expected goals, which is basically how good your chances are based on where your shooting from. For example, the xG of a penalty kick is around 0.75,

It seemed as if Argentina knew Spain's strength and knew their own weaknesses and probably just hoped they'd be able to get a few chances here and there. So they maybe played into it a bit and got too conservative going forward. Or maybe the Spanish strengths worked perfectly against the Argentine weaknesses, exploiting them and leading to what happened today.

I was expecting the game to play out sort of the way it did, just not to this extreme. Like nobody figured Argentina would have 0 shots through 90 minutes. On the other hand, Argentina scraped by against Cape Verde (1-1 in regulation, 3-2 after extra time), needed 3 goals in the last 12 minutes plus injury time against Egypt, 2 goals in extra time against a 10 man Switzerland and two goals after the 85th minute against England just to get here. So maybe we should have seen this coming. The other day I heard Argentina compared to the 2024 Chiefs team that won like 10 1 score games, had an awful point differential for a 15 win team, made the Super Bowl and then got their ass kicked by the Chiefs. This might not have been an ass kicking by the score, but in every other facet of the game it was.

[Brian707]

Chiefs 2024 is a perfect analogy. 

Patriots this past season too.

Soccer novice here too. Had this match gone to penalties I thought Argentina might win. It was their only hope. Its like an inferior hockey team getting outshot 47-12 but their goalie stands on his head and they win 1-0

[bukie]

Oh well, back to MLS and the Chicago Fire, who somehow seem to be the best run sports franchise in Chicago right now, with their new stadium deal, currently 3rd in the standings and just signed Robert Lewandowski (if you don't know, Polish striker that scored tons of goals for Bayern Munich and Barcelona). So, that should be fun to watch at least.

[UMFan83]

21 minutes ago, bukie said:

Oh well, back to MLS and the Chicago Fire, who somehow seem to be the best run sports franchise in Chicago right now, with their new stadium deal, currently 3rd in the standings and just signed Robert Lewandowski (if you don't know, Polish striker that scored tons of goals for Bayern Munich and Barcelona). So, that should be fun to watch at least.

The cost of Lewandowski was apparently the MLS's current Golden Boot leader, Hugo Cuypers as he was just transferred to Monterrey.  A lot of Fire fans are pissed about this trade off.

[bukie]

6 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

The cost of Lewandowski was apparently the MLS's current Golden Boot leader, Hugo Cuypers as he was just transferred to Monterrey.  A lot of Fire fans are pissed about this trade off.

Damn, hadn't read yesterday's news, and was excited to have that two-forward combo. Guessing Cuypers didn't want to share offensive time with Lewandowski.

[sneakypower]

been a great day for schadenfreude