Need Croatia to win so my Brozovic FIFA card gets a 5* weak foot upgrade.

Welp…

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Yeah Eastern Europeans!

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

The Croatians look like the henchmen from Taken

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refs protected 'joga bonito' brazil, who still have their moments of uruguay or argentina with straight red double kicks (neymar on brozovic) or antony with an outrageous simulation of a foul that deserved a yellow. that protection can't trump deflected shots for goals or penalty failures.

good for croatia. amazing nation for football. they nearly made the 1998 final and their best midfielder was a 2 pack a day smoker who could only play 60 mins. croatia does have 2-3 weak links, if they had a 10 million population they'd probably be world cup favorites.

bankroll now at $3k, going to play argentina to advance -160 for $500.

sharif does like it...you know he really loves it

I think it's not kosher.

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OMG The Dutch !!!!

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

can't call the argentina x holland match a classic. the last 25 mins of regular time and the dutch comeback, along with argentine superiority in extra time, was thrilling. again, a goof referee who loves giving cards, had to send off the argentine who committed a bookable foul, then hammered the ball straight into the dutch bench. instead, no sending off. what if the ball nailed the dutch manager, 72 with health issues? the dutch angry and messi angry after the match, said the ref had no business refereeing a wc quarter-final - obviously, the 11 mins of extra time didn't sit well with him and argentina.

a huge bummer if i had taken argentina to win in regular time...i took them to advance and the bankroll goes to $3.5k. going to play portugal to advance (-260). going to play $800 on portugal.

kudos to morocco. portugal with a stinker, poor defending on morocco's goal from nothing. morocco being berber arab and muslim, not in for criticism for their defensive play - while in 2004, greece was criticized for playing the same way when they won the euro.

big hit on the bankroll. it's at $1.4k and going to play england to advance (+110) for $500.

What’s the complaint with the way they play defense?

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Happy to see Morocco advance. Portugal is gonna be lost after this. Ronaldo was a big distraction. But they’re gonna have issues after him too.

the thinking behind this is that neutrals want to see offense, not 25% possession and try to get lucky on 2-3 counter-attacks over 90 minutes. personally, i understand the why and how they play. they defended well enough today and needed a massive portugese defensive breakdown (CB and the GK) to score. the portugese couldn't get shots and headers on target and it was one of those days. the argument here is that if morocco plays this way - then a malta should be in the world cup, because they would park the bus and try to score off a set-piece. i am thinking that morocco's dream didn't end today, but it will end in a few days.

greece played the same way in 2004 and half the neutrals jumped on the nice story and the other half wanted them to lose. in this case, fox is blessing morocco as heroic and historic.

yesterday, the dutch made an amazing comeback and messi shit all over them and the referee after the match. in messi's mind, playing high balls, if you have height and are good at it, is something to criticize. the brazilians are the same way, if you can't play the ball on the ground, they tell you that you can't play.

Morocco's got quite the revenge tour. Spain and Portugal for the Reconquista and possibly those colonizing bastards from France next. France has had a bunch of Cotonou players from Africa on the national team. To be fair, most of the Moroccan team wasn't born in Morocco either, lots from the Netherlands and Belgium.

Makes sense. I’m not a huge fan but will watch; defensive soccer can be painful if you don’t love the sport.

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Man, how do you get one of them free kicks? I wish the USA got one.

I still think they should have power plays.

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England’s goalie is one of the most British looking people I’ve ever seen. He’s like a lanky Steven Regal.

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Seems an obvious penalty. Not sure how they missed that real time.

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And then there's the one about the Canadian soccer team that tried to tie it up late by pulling the goalie.

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I strongly recommend you turn on your oven.

Entertaining game. Kane blew it and should thank the Lord he wasn’t born Colombian.

Argentina-France seems like a nice final.

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bad day at black rock. england were slight underdogs - but once again, failed to produce the result. tchaoumeni proved that you can't score if you don't shoot the ball. great shot. santos of portugal will likely get the sack while the moroccan manager is griping about managing jobs in europe. really hoping that france pulverize them on wednesday.

apparently, bernie didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. the story is he is a diva and the staff were close to sending him back home, prior to the england match. walked through a pre-w.c. scrimmage against a qatari club, then was angry he didn't get the start against wales. got a talking to from some of the players and apologized to the team after the wales match. that apology kept him in qatar and got him some minutes against holland in the knock-out match.

not good enough to be a diva.

That story is also quite possibly USSF cover your ass bullshit. I mean there's surely some truth to it, but the Fed, the coach, and the player all look worse for it so of course the USSF was dumb enough to leak it. "Off the record." Nothing's off the record dipshits. Reyna divaing up and down the pitch would have been easily better than Jordan Morris. He made an Insta fake apology though so let's go 2026!

This whole thing just annoys me more and more. “Berhalter told me my role would be limited before the World Cup began” well then GGG Gregg is an idiot. “Was told I was forgiven.” So he thought it was over with, but being a naïve 20yo, the USSF threw him under the bus to cover Ggg's inability to handle possibly their most talented player. I suppose I should have the same skepticism for Reyna's story just as much as the USSF's, but they're proven idiots and he not even old enough to drink legally here.

maybe in some circles they knew nothing of this and the ussf wanted to explain away the manager's decision not to give him big minutes? then again, i'm guessing to the circles that do matter, they knew exactly what was going on. don't follow the usa enough to take a stand one way or another, but it appears that berhalter, ernie stewart and mcbride have all been connected for decades and will be forever, so maybe looking to absolve themselves of whatever blame usa fans are putting on them for qatar 2022.

bad on the player for his behavior, bad on everyone else for 'leaking' this after the fact. when i read that two named veterans had to pull reyna to the side and tell him to behave professionally, doesn't do reyna any favors. he just turned 20? going forward, he should get a pass. at that moment, he had to be dealt with. can't risk losing the team.

This is probably going to fuck his World Cup career. 19-22 is the prime age of a soccer player to show off in a World Cup stage. Pulisic missed his chance in 2018 and now already looks like he’ll be washed up come 2026. Donovan was 20 and was perfectly used in 2002, then bottomed out in 2006.

Gio may not get a chance to shine after all this. Hope I’m wrong though.

I’m not sure what the USSF could have been worried about enough to try and cover up for. The US made the knockouts and lost to a better team. That’s a decent result. Everyone knew they were weakest up front, with or without Reyna, and it was proven true. At the end though they lost because of bad defending, but strangely nobody was really blaming Ggg for that.

bankroll at $900, not interested in playing today's game. feel the game can go either way. going to play france to advance tomorrow.