World Cup 2022 - Team and Match Discussion

Martinez gotta earn his corn now.

Not sure Eden Hazard is still the man at this level. Maybe bring on the brother or Trossard?

Seems Kenny Cunningham and Shay don't know the rules. That VAR literally cannot check those, that's it out of their remit to give a pen for an event that takes place after the whistle is blown.

BBC saying it was checked as the ref had not whistled and it was decided the defender won the ball.

That's what I think Lineker said before showing an angle of the defender getting the slightest touch

Whatever the result tonight, I think Canada have a great chance of going through. Would love to see them nick a point here though, at the very least.

The lack of end product from Canada is starting to be much more obvious now. Just don’t have that bit of quality where it counts, whereas Belgium have it in spades as bad as they’ve been tonight.

Must be exhaustion. They have been going at full tilt for the whole game.

Openda is having a good season. I can see him putting the game to bed.

That tackle should be a sending off. He scissored him out of it.

Fingers crossed that Canada still have something left in the tank for the remaining two matches. The likes of Alphonso Davies was out on his feet with about 20 minutes to go, but that could have been due to his recent hamstring injury

Both Croatia and Belgium looked like jaded, past-it teams today. Can't see either of them doing anything even if they make it out of the group...

Star power BS and bias towards attacking players as usual.

Averaging 2.75 goals per game for first 12 matches. Fair enough, we're less than 20% of the way through but that's the highest since Spain 82. No doubt skewed by England's 6-2 and Spain's 7-0 but big scorelines like that happened in other World Cups too.

Without researching I'd say the one 0-0 in Russia 18 was a big outlier.

I found a list of the average amount of goals scored per WC. Italia 90 stands out as the worst by a good bit. USA 94 - France 98, and Brazil 2014, all had more goals than Russia 2018.

But I think another poster said the problem on the pitch is not really goals. The problem with this WC is a lot of teams play the same style globally. And cancel each other out. It does not make for great viewing at times.

I don’t know about other posters, but I find when there is a contrast of styles that makes for a more entertaining match. It is less likely to happen in world football today due to the globalisation of football- foreign coaches etc.

Breel Embolo scoring against the country of his birth sounds like a good trivia question.

Swiss should have won by a couple more

Pleased to see Hwang Ui-jo start for South Korea. He was impressive in a really dire Bordeaux team last season.

This Korea v Uruguay match is fairly lively, not many chances yet though - plenty of energy. I am not sure who I should shout for though? I like Son. However, I like Godin, Valverde. But Suarez is a bit of prick, great player though.

Plus Uruguay remind me of the Dubs with the colours and style of play - good technically, high work-rate but can have a bit of edge at times. I see Godin as Jonny Cooper!