2022 FIFA World Cup Finals

[Webster]

Just because the US lost, don't go crushing my dreams, too

Hey, if the colonists have to leave, the mother country goes too!

 

[PGen98]

Hey, if the colonists have to leave, the mother country goes too!

Never! We shall prove the colonies are still inferior to us!

 

[Webster]

Never! We shall prove the colonies are still inferior to us!

 

[PGen98]

Yep, except in this case they've spent their powder and gone home limp

 

[Webster]

*looks at pic above & deadpans* No wonder we lost to the Netherlands; they boys are still waiting to fight!

 

[PGen98]

*looks at pic above & deadpans* No wonder we lost to the Netherlands; they boys are still waiting to fight!

That's it! Only Pulisic turned the batteries on!

 

[Webster]

Yep, except in this case they've spent their powder and gone home limp

Yeah, the spirit was willing....
The flesh, on the other hand? It was as battered as Christian Pulisic's tallywangers.....

 

[PGen98]

Yeah, the spirit was willing....
The flesh, on the other hand? It was as battered as Christian Pulisic's tallywangers.....

That they were. They were limp and devoid of blood flow...

 

[Webster]

(The Guardian) Arnold: ‘We need a home’ for Australian soccer
Graham Arnold is appealing for government funding and a revamp of Australian football’s landscape as he contemplates his future as Socceroos coach.

Arnold’s contract expired when his Socceroos ended their World Cup campaign with a 2-1 loss to heavyweights Argentina in a knockout bout in Qatar. -- I just want to go away, have a good holiday, have a break and see what happens. I have worked extremely hard this campaign to get to where we have got. I haven’t even thought about it [my future]. I need a rest and no doubt I will have good discussions then with the organisation.

But Arnold is adamant: despite the success of emulating the fabled 2006 Socceroos in reaching the round of 16 at a World Cup, the structure of football in Australia must change. -- We need to spend money and get help from the government to put some money into the game to help develop kids. One thing I would really love to see before I finish up completely in football is [for the government [to] build us a house. We don’t have a home. We have been homeless since I have been involved for 37 years in the national teams. We need a home, a facility like ... the AIS [Australian Institute of Sport], something that the government can help fund for the development of the national teams but also for the good of Australian football.

Arnold, who was almost sacked last March as Australia’s qualifying campaign wobbled, has now overseen the nation’s most successful World Cup. For the first time, the Socceroos won two games at a single edition of the tournament and kept consecutive clean sheets.

And his world No 38 outfit gave Argentina, the world No 3 boasting all-time great Lionel Messi, a serious scare in their knockout fixture. -- It’s probably me, it’s the way I am. Even though we have ... been successful, I feel like we’ve failed tonight. I just wanted to win so badly for the nation and for the fans and for the game of football in Australia. Making the last 16 for me wasn’t enough. I wanted more, but that’s just me. I know a lot of other people might be happy with it but that’s just the way I am.

 

[Webster]

(The Guardian) Messi salutes Socceroos performance after ‘tough’ match
Lionel Messi does not find much complicated on a football pitch. But he did against the Socceroos.

Messi’s mercurial abilities loomed large in Argentina’s 2-1 win which knocked the Australians out of the World Cup in Qatar.

The Argentine captain scored a glorious goal and was acclaimed as player of the match.

But after his team went 2-0 up, the gallant Socceroos made a late charge. “Things got complicated in the end with their goal,” Messi said. “But it’s a World Cup. And it’s never easy.”

Socceroos substitute Craig Goodwin fired an audacious long-range attempt in the 77th minute which deflected into the net from Argentina’s Enzo Fernandez. The own goal sparked the Australians, who had two more golden chances, with Aziz Behich and Garang Kuol coming close to equalisers in a frantic finale.

Messi was not surprised. -- It was a very difficult match, we knew it was going to be this way.

We knew it was going to be a very physical match and they were very strong. We had the game under control and could have scored another one - we were almost punished for it in the last minute.

There were a few scary moments ... it was a tough game, a tough day. We’re through, that’s the important thing.

 

[PGen98]

(The Guardian) Arnold: ‘We need a home’ for Australian soccer
Graham Arnold is appealing for government funding and a revamp of Australian football’s landscape as he contemplates his future as Socceroos coach.

Arnold’s contract expired when his Socceroos ended their World Cup campaign with a 2-1 loss to heavyweights Argentina in a knockout bout in Qatar. -- I just want to go away, have a good holiday, have a break and see what happens. I have worked extremely hard this campaign to get to where we have got. I haven’t even thought about it [my future]. I need a rest and no doubt I will have good discussions then with the organisation.

But Arnold is adamant: despite the success of emulating the fabled 2006 Socceroos in reaching the round of 16 at a World Cup, the structure of football in Australia must change. -- We need to spend money and get help from the government to put some money into the game to help develop kids. One thing I would really love to see before I finish up completely in football is [for the government [to] build us a house. We don’t have a home. We have been homeless since I have been involved for 37 years in the national teams. We need a home, a facility like ... the AIS [Australian Institute of Sport], something that the government can help fund for the development of the national teams but also for the good of Australian football.

Arnold, who was almost sacked last March as Australia’s qualifying campaign wobbled, has now overseen the nation’s most successful World Cup. For the first time, the Socceroos won two games at a single edition of the tournament and kept consecutive clean sheets.

And his world No 38 outfit gave Argentina, the world No 3 boasting all-time great Lionel Messi, a serious scare in their knockout fixture. -- It’s probably me, it’s the way I am. Even though we have ... been successful, I feel like we’ve failed tonight. I just wanted to win so badly for the nation and for the fans and for the game of football in Australia. Making the last 16 for me wasn’t enough. I wanted more, but that’s just me. I know a lot of other people might be happy with it but that’s just the way I am.

Absolutely! They need a real facility to make it work, to give them consistency and regular training.

 

[PGen98]

(The Guardian) Messi salutes Socceroos performance after ‘tough’ match
Lionel Messi does not find much complicated on a football pitch. But he did against the Socceroos.

Messi’s mercurial abilities loomed large in Argentina’s 2-1 win which knocked the Australians out of the World Cup in Qatar.

The Argentine captain scored a glorious goal and was acclaimed as player of the match.

But after his team went 2-0 up, the gallant Socceroos made a late charge. “Things got complicated in the end with their goal,” Messi said. “But it’s a World Cup. And it’s never easy.”

Socceroos substitute Craig Goodwin fired an audacious long-range attempt in the 77th minute which deflected into the net from Argentina’s Enzo Fernandez. The own goal sparked the Australians, who had two more golden chances, with Aziz Behich and Garang Kuol coming close to equalisers in a frantic finale.

Messi was not surprised. -- It was a very difficult match, we knew it was going to be this way.

We knew it was going to be a very physical match and they were very strong. We had the game under control and could have scored another one - we were almost punished for it in the last minute.

There were a few scary moments ... it was a tough game, a tough day. We’re through, that’s the important thing.

They did give them one hell of a match! It was nice to see!

 

[Webster]

from L-R: @Webster, @PGen98 and @Nebulous

 

[Webster]

 

[Webster]

 

[PGen98]

Hell of a match, it was wonderful! Not happy with the first 30 mins or so, but afterwards they were perfect! Need to be even better against France

 

[Webster]

Fox Sports’ US World Cup coverage is an unmissable abomination | Aaron Timms

The broadcaster has offered up a feast of gaffes, stupidity, and unconquerable on-air awkwardness for American viewers to enjoy

www.theguardian.com

The World Cup! A tournament of frenzied emotion, spectacular goals, heroic upsets, and grand displays of athletic daring and skill. Or, if you’re watching it in the US: four weeks of shouting, relentless commercial promotion, disorienting cuts and changes of channel to make way for the college football game, and segments in which Alexi Lalas does pump-up speeches for the US team that no one in the US team will ever listen to; a global exhibition of Clint Dempsey’s ongoing quest to assemble vowels and consonants into an order that resembles words; a month-long celebration of the festival that is Landon Donovan’s personality.

At a time when things are clicking on the pitch for the US men’s national team and America finally has a generation of footballers with the technical quality to challenge the world’s best, there’s been something faintly reassuring about Fox Sports’ approach to this tournament. Whereas the USMNT is now a cosmopolitan ensemble of feather-fine talents, the Fox team is the equivalent of a farmers’ league XI that hoofs it long and hopes for the best.

Four years on from the dumbumvirate debacle of its coverage in Russia, Fox is back, and worse than ever. In a world of so much flux, in which so many human connections seem so ephemeral, Fox’s commitment to a losing team – Squeaky Stuey Holden on the match call, Lalas spouting nonsense on set, and Rob Stone holding the whole thing together with the desperate energy of a dad using his daughter’s 18th birthday celebration as a showcase for his own comedic talent – is something we can all get behind.

From the moment that Stone called Doha “Dosa” ahead of the opening match – between the capital of a small oil state on the Gulf and a fermented south Indian pancake, who’s really insisting on the distinction? – then promptly vanished from Fox’s coverage for the next three days, the US host English-language broadcaster of this World Cup has offered up a feast of gaffes, stupidity, and unconquerable on-air awkwardness for American viewers to enjoy. (The official explanation for Stone’s disappearance was that he lost his voice, but it’s possible he’d simply wandered off in search of a snack.) Things are, I’m reliably told, far better over on Telemundo, but those of us without the Spanish skills to appreciate the full vocal exuberance of that channel’s commentators are stuck with Fox. The only solution has been to embrace the misery.

Off-field controversy has clouded this tournament from the day Sepp Blatter pulled Qatar’s name out of the envelope in 2010, but you wouldn’t know anything about that from watching Fox. The BBC relegated the opening ceremony to an online-only stream, preferring instead to air a long report on Qatari human rights abuses. Fox went in completely the opposite direction, airing the whole ceremony and following up with “a look at exploring Qatar, sponsored by the Qatar Foundation”. Many have taken Fox to task for glossing over the rottenness at the heart of this tournament – its legacy of crass commercialization and death. But to be fair, this is not the first time that a group of Americans has blundered into a country in the Middle East without bothering to fully educate itself about the facts on the ground first. The correspondences between American military adventurism and international sports broadcasting may be faint, but the Fox crew has done its best to bring them to the forefront, applying the can-do spirit of Iraq 2003 to its coverage of Qatar 2022.

The acute ambivalence that many throughout the footballing world – including in America – feel about this tournament has been nowhere on display. Nuance, political context, a sense of proportion about a sporting project built on exploitation and influence peddling: all have been lost amid Fox’s non-stop on-air bonfire of jingoism and untroubled uplift. Even by their elevated standards, Rob Stone and co have outdone themselves this World Cup, chuntering and blundering around their Doha base with all the charm and worldliness of a set of Bush administration foreign policy officials.

 

[PGen98]

The article's not wrong, Fox has been...less than stellar (shocking, right?!) this World Cup, but at least they're broadcasting the matches!

 

[Webster]

(The Guardian) Morocco are through! Morocco 3-0 Spain on penalties!
Hakimi, born in Madrid, Panenkas home, Simon dives the wrong way and Morocco have done it! An African team, an Arab team will be in the last eight at Qatar 2022

Morocco’s defenders deserve all the glory, but so too their goalkeeper, brilliant in the shootout. Amazing scenes of celebration, and their coach receives the slaps to his balding head once more. Spain can only reflect on another day when they dominate possession and can find no end-product, and that includes the shootout.

Nice smile and sportsmanship from Luis Enrique in congratulating Morocco. He knows this one got away from his team. Morocco deserve their win, and with Hakimi’s penalty, they reached the quarter-finals with true panache.

 

[PGen98]

Amazing job by Morocco!!