Prodigal Son
World Cup 2018
Is anyone actually going to watch it? There seems to be next to no excitement or hype around the tournament itself and most people are just discussing whether or not the traveling fans are going to make it out alive given what happened when just a few Russian hooligans got loose in Marseille a couple of years ago.
i corpse therefore i am
I have tried a few times in recent years to recapture my childhood passion for football, mostly because loads of my friends are obsessed with it and I'm curious as to what I'm missing, and jealous of the passion, and jealous of the bantz. I might try again with this world cup thing.
Beast of Burden
I will get sucked in as with every big tournament. However after the Euro 2016, which was a rather boring event football wise, my hopes are not too high. That coupled with the plague of current popular sports - namely the focus of reporting more and more on those useless "celebreties" and "VIPs" surrounding big sporting events like flies - will keep me very seelctive.
Darned cockwombles.
I yearn for a Mexico 1986 but we're never going to get it again. The Champion's League final will be better than the entire World Cup; watch that and save yourself a month.
I spose Messi's inevitable failure to lift the WC will provide a decent sideshow though, and endless is he is the best player ever now arguments. France will prob win it - Griezmann, Mbappe and Dembele is a Champions League winner-level forward line (even though they can't all play together, probably).
Prodigal Son
The problem I have with international tournaments is the quality of the football, I'm a big fan of the tactical side of the game so watching a bunch of teams that rarely play together isn't ideal.
re: Messi - I think it's arguable that club football, particularly in Europe, has overtaken the World Cup at this point so I don't think he has to win it, but it would be good if he did. The four year cycle and lack of opportunities to win it obviously adds to the mystique of the tournament, but he's been doing it against the very best for almost a decade now anyway and the top club sides are better than the top national sides. Having said that, national teams are much more evenly balanced given they can't chuck money around and sign whoever they want like clubs can so maybe the World Cup does still have the edge. I don't think his legacy will be damaged too much if he doesn't win it though, Cruyff never won it and nobody argues with his place in history.
Darned cockwombles.
Quality is poor, definitely. I thought Italy-Spain in the last European Champs was the best international game I've seen in ages. Conte obvs a good coach.
Messi - lack of intnl success seems to tarnish him a bit among Argentinian fans. Unfairly really. I guess the suspicion is still that he flounders/would flounder a little outside Barcelona. Doesn't mean he's not the best, but means he'll always leave it open to doubt.
Cruyff was far more memorable/effective at international level, even if he didn't win the prizes.
Prodigal Son
Chile and Spain have probably been my two favourite NTs in recent times, Chile were just ridiculously entertaining and aggressive, Spain were basically Barca minus Messi.Originally Posted by baboon2004
Yeah, Cruyff was more memorable at international level, but that Dutch team were probably better than the Argentine team surrounding Messi. They wouldn't even have qualified for the tournament without Messi and he's somehow dragged them to three consecutive finals so it's difficult to gauge.
Darned cockwombles.
That's true about Cruyff, Holland 1974 were better than almost anyone ever. And yep, Messi's performance vs Ecuador (?) was epic. But maybe the complaints vs Messi are more that he never put in a Finals performance like Maradona's against England and Belgium, as much as not winning the Cup.
Not WC but pretty epic too https://www.theguardian.com/football...ger-steps-down Zidane is a master of knowing when, both on and off the field. Jumps well before he's pushed, foils the Real sacking machine, only Real manager in living memory to outwit Perez.
Last edited by baboon2004; 31-05-2018 at 02:07 PM.
Beast of Burden
...on the other hand, international football is so deeply corrupt one shouldn't support it - from an ethical point of view.
Wild Horses
I hate to be a buzzkill - I may well sit and watch a game myself when it starts - but the Russian airforce is still carrying out daily massacres in Syria. I posted what was the most recent one in the Syria thread, and am just now reading details of another one which happened yesterday. There's a photo circulating of a kid with his head blown off.
This is a timely piece: https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...d-cup-is-toxic
'If you wonder how you would have reacted to Hitler’s 1936 Olympics, look at how you are reacting to Putin’s 2018 World Cup and learn something about yourself and the nature of sport.'
Last edited by DannyL; 10-06-2018 at 11:52 AM.
Darned cockwombles.
Being moralised at by Nick Cohen is a bad place to be, so I'll forget the article and take the point directly from you.
And of course it's a good point. The World Cup should never have been held in Russia, but the game (as with all sport, but most particularly FIFA and the Olympic Committee) is deeply corrupt and amoral. 2014 in Brazil was pretty damn controversial too, given events of the year before and the execution mentality of the Brazilian police.
While I completely agree with your point re the insanity of holding a WC in a country that is murdering civilians in Syria on a daily basis, then what winds me up about the article is the projection of racism so that it is the property solely of other cultures/countries which happen to be politically opposed to 'us'. Of course Russia is an incredibly racist place, but if we are serious about racism then should sporting events be held in America, or Italy (though the ways in which racism manifests may be different - not so much in Italy tho)? No they shouldn't. I can't stand the one-eyedness of the article - it isn't hard to be equal-handed about these things.
Things would only realistically change if the individual football associations took a stand and withdrew their teams- which for different reasons, it briefly appeared vaguely possible that the FA (obviously dealing with lots of racism scandals of its own at home) might do earlier in the year. The World Cup could lose millions of fans and still run quite happily, given that 1 billion watched 2014's final, but if a couple of the really big teams withdrew (England and France?) it might start looking much less viable.
And the bit about Danny Rose - it's all very well for Nick Cohen to bring Danny Rose's safety up in a vacuum where the only racists live in Russia, but the fact is that England's black players don't have the luxury of deciding whether to go to the World Cup or not. Given the persistent racism meted out by the English media to Raheem Sterling at every available opportunity - in England - can you imagine what might happen to any black English player who decided not to go on the very reasonable basis of safety?
It's just more complicated than 'Russia is bad' - England itself has a very bad racism problem, which makes dealing properly with the (even worse) racism of foreign nations virtually impossible.
Last edited by baboon2004; 10-06-2018 at 02:03 PM.
Wild Horses
I don't disagree....
https://mobile.twitter.com/astroehle...68867393867776
More here of a similar sort:
"Football star @MoSalah with the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov (r), infamous for torture & extrajudicial killings. #WorldCup hasn't even begun & it's already being used to boost the most vile of criminals."
Darned cockwombles.
That's bleak. Football really is irredeemable. I'd be interested to know if Salah was aware of who Kadyrov was at the time of the photo.
Apparently (as you'd expect), Fifa were asked to withdraw Grozny as a base for the Egypt team back in February. Nothing happened. Egypt's own record on LGBTI issues involves cases of torture, seems to be getting even worse recently https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/22/...ational-outcry
Prodigal Son
Chaos reigns.
The Spanish national team has been plunged into crisis after the coach Julen Lopetegui was sacked just two days before their opening World Cup game against Portugal in Sochi, with director of football Fernando Hierro named as his replacement.
The president of the Spanish Football Federation, Luis Rubiales, insisted that he had little choice but terminate Lopetegui’s contract as a matter of principle after the coach negotiated with Real Madrid behind their back. The sacking comes in response to the news, released on Tuesday afternoon, that Lopetegui had agreed to take over at Real Madrid when the World Cup ends.
Beast of Burden
incredibly bizarre move by the Spanish football federation
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