IdleRich

IdleRich
Argentia are winning 2 - 0 against Poland, Mexico are beating Saudi Arabia by the same margin - at the moment Poland and Mexico are level on points, goal difference, goals scored... Poland are second above Mexico as they have fewer yellow cards.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
If Poland get two more bookings then they will be level, if that happens then they decide who goes through.... by drawing lots. Now that is pretty ridiculous.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Belgium are out... was probably last chance for golden generation to deliver on their promise.
Why was Hazard not playing? Injured or too fat?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Are you watching the games now? Half time Spain led 1-0 over Japan and Germany were beating Costa Rica by the same margin... if it finished that way then, as expected, and despite the blip at the start, Spain and Germany would progress.

The suddenly out of nowhere Japan scored twice to put themselves (projectedly) top of the group and meaning that Germany were third behind Spain on goal difference... and then Costa Rica equalised, something that didn't mean that much on its own but put Germany third on points... and then Costa Rica scored again... if it finishes like this Costa Rica will be on six with Japan... Spain and Germany out!
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Fuck Germany scored... so 2-2 in that game. . doesn't help them much unless they get another but means Spain are above Costa Rica for the moment...
 

catalog

Well-known member
I want the forensic architecture group to do a proper reconstruction of that Japanese goal that looked out before it was scored.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
My considered opinion is that it was certainly pretty fucking close...from that angle you can't see any green between the ball and the line, but I feel that if the camera was lower so that it was looking along the line from the goal post towards the corner flag then you would maybe see a gap whichi is hidden in this shot by the curvature of the ball.


.FootballInOrOut.jpg

Either way, they looked at it with VAR and it stood and ultimately it was the goal knocked Germany out of the world cup.

Do you remember the 2010 World Cup? England were playing Germany and doing it very badly, they went 2-0 and looked dead and buried, then they pulled one back... then Lampard had a free-kick and it hit the bar and bounced down, very clearly over the line. But there was no VAR then and the goalkeeper Neuer pulled it back from over the line and somehow the linesman and ref both missed it.

What particularly struck me was what Neuer said afterwards which was something like "the ball bounced in the goal but I scrambled it clear and booted it away and no-one noticed so I didn't say anything" - would you get that in any other sport? Can you imagine a golfer saying "It was in the rough but no-one was looking so I kicked it on the fairway and got down in two?" or, I dunno, some 100m runner - "My doctor had just come up with a brilliant new undetectable drug so I took it and then I could run much faster than everyone and I got the gold medal - yeah!" - but in football you can get away with that apparently.

Of course England were playing shit that day and in the end were well beaten, but there has to be a question if the goal had stood as it should have done and England had, as they deserved, clawed their way back from 2 - 0 down to parity, what would have happened next?

This is a long-winded way of saying that if that cheating scumbag Neuer has been knocked out of the world cup in the first round by a goal that shouldn't have stood cos the ball was out of play then there is a pleasing irony - you might almost say karma - to the occurrence which makes me rather happy.

f18a2bae34ec1f545761366b12636491.jpg


Hmmm, was that one over the line? It's just so hard to say...
 

catalog

Well-known member
I do remember that one, pretty blatant.

That pic of the Japan one does look OK but the ones on the telly looked a big iffy. I'm gonna buy somd newspapers this weekend so I can see some more analysis.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Thanks for the reminder. That was hilarious.

Oh vicious.... pops up out of nowhere to twist the knife on that one. To be honest that one doesn't hurt so much cos England were shit and deserved to lose, though of course, the fact that they should have found themselves somehow level does raise the question of what might have been. No-one i know seems to care much about that one though unlike the Hand of God for instance. The one that had me almost in tears of impotent rage - actually why am I saying "almost" I should be able to admit that I probably did literally cry - was the one with Koeman on Platt in what... was it 93 maybe?. I think one of the single most catastrophically bad decisions I've ever seen in terms of how it affected the match.

For those who don't know, England needed to get at least a draw with Holland to have any realistic chance of qualifying for the world cup. It was also the year when the new rule about so-called "professional fouls" had been introduced. Prior to that, if a player was likely to score then it made sense for the defender to foul him and prevent the goal as the punishment - just a free kick if it was out of the box - was much preferable to conceding a goal.

In other words, in certain circumstances fouling was the right decision, a player could choose to cheat and profit from doing so - surely that couldn't be right. So FIFA introduced this new rule, if a player committed a foul to stop a goal ie if he was the last defender and the striker had a clear run at goal once past him, or if say he punched the ball off the line with his hand or something similar, then the defender was automatically sent off - no ifs, no buts.

So, back to the game, a cagey affair and it's nil nil coming up to half time until a great through ball finds Platt who advances into the Dutch area, he's waiting for the ball to drop and is just about to pull the trigger when..... Koeman helplessly stranded behind him and powerless to prevent what looks like a certain goal panics mindlessly and grabbing a handful of the hallowed England shirt crudely yanks Platt off his feet and dumps him unceremoniously on the floor in the middle of the box. An absolute nailed on penalty, as clear as day, and, as for a professional foul, it is impossible to imagine a less controversial one, this is the most perfect example imaginable of a professional foul, you could show this in a textbook as the most blatant example of what to look out for - except that life is not that easy, no ref would be likely to get a decision as simple as this with the defender not even trying to disguise what he did.

There is only one possible decision, this is one of the few times in football where there is absolutely no room for subjectivity - was Platt in the box? Yes he fucking was. Was he in front of the last defender which was Koeman? Absolutely he was, and his foot was already drawn back to shoot, he was milliseconds from scoring... the rules were clear as day, Koeman simply had to be sent off and England given a penalty. There was literally no other choice that any reasonable person could even consider for a second. So... yeah, Koeman's blatant cheating had momentarily prevented a goal, but as he was just about to be sent off and with England odds-on to score from the spot, the punishment was likely to be swift and just.

Except...

Except... somehow, by some incredible crime against humanity and all that is good and holy, the referee bottled it. In a bizarre act of refereeing insanity, perhaps intimidated by the crowd, perhaps somehow reasoning that the sending off would be a controversial act he feared to take in such an important game... while at the same time somehow failing to understand that not acting would be even worse... perhaps... but no, I simply cannot explain why the referee suddenly chose to not apply the rules. A disgraceful decision that was a betrayal of his training, a brutal assault on the very idea of right and wrong. For some still unexplained reason (had he been paid?) he gave Koeman a yellow, and gave England a free-kick outside the box! A travesty. A horrifying crime that echoes down through the ages.

And then, worse was yet to come, cos Koeman, whose shameful and disgusting cheating had robbed Platt of a goal and who had somehow been allowed to stay on the pitch went on to score the winning goal. So the referee's clear ignoring of the rule meant that England lost a penalty, also played the game against 11 instead of 10... and meant that Koeman was on the pitch to score. So if we say that having Koeman (the captain I believe) removed would have been as bad as a goal, then that decision was basically worth three goals to Holland... the referee simply chose not to apply the rules of the game and did so in such a way as to give Holland a three goal advantage in one fell swoop.

And for me that was the day that my innocence was lost - in fact not lost but brutally trampled on and destroyed, the day I understood absolutely and totally that there was no God, that the universe was cruel and pitiless and that good doesn't triumph over evil. Part of me died that day, the scales fell from my eyes and the path of my life was changed irrevocably and for the worse, the sunny tempered good natured boy who wished the world well and greeted everyone with a smile was gone, in his place was a cold and hard calculating person with a heart of stone and I was not the only one. A generation of English people were morally destroyed, in fact anyone who professed to care about morality, wherever they came from must surely have felt the evil rotten stench of this abomination.

.... well, anyway, what I'm saying is that on balance I reckon that the ref probably got that one wrong.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
This is a long-winded way of saying that if that cheating scumbag Neuer has been knocked out of the world cup in the first round by a goal that shouldn't have stood cos the ball was out of play then there is a pleasing irony - you might almost say karma - to the occurrence which makes me rather happy

Apparently I'm not the only one, I just saw this comment on the Guardian

"Germany got dumped out by Japan in reality, so happy days for Japan yeah!! The fact is was a dodgy decision in the Spain game that scuppered their chances has me remembering a certain Lampard goal, I'd call it karma."
 
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