World Cup: QF: Brazil vs. Belgium, 7/6/2018

[Dr Pepper]

Inability to score is the Brazil’s problem not Belgium’s. Belgium is in the semis for first time since 1986. It’s a great achievement for them.

Yeah I get that, I'm just saying if Brazil had any finish whatsoever, we'd still be watching the game.

Or lamenting having to watch another game of Neymar's Diving Olympics.

But, fortunately for Belgium and nearly everyone else not living in Brazil, Neymar and co. ran out of time and are heading home.

 

[cgf]

This World Cup has been crazy. Great entertainment. Taking losses on bets all over, but it’s damn fun.

I am so glad that something was funky with Bovada for me when I tried to place my pre-tourney bets

 

[HanSolo]

Did you watch the match?

No I just pretended to watch it to impress the ladies.

Yes I watched it. Brazil attacking more with limp attempts until the 70th minute didn't make them the better team up until that point.

 

[N o o d l e s]

Congrats Belgium...great semi coming up.

Cmon England!

France-Belgium
England-Croatia

would look great

 

[JeffreyLFC]

I do believe there was a clear penalty on Jesus that was missed.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

No I just pretended to watch it to impress the ladies.

Yes I watched it. Brazil attacking more with limp attempts until the 70th minute didn't make them the better team up until that point.

It was a rhetorical question because it appeared to be the first match you've watched in your entire life. Brazil didn't have a great first half - and neither did Belgium - but the Brazilians were putting pressure upon the Belgians from the very beginning of the game, even with an absent Neymar. Belgium are fantastic on the counter-attack and had some nice moments through that in the first half, but the entire second half was played in Belgium's end.

 

[robertmac43]

Ronaldu was a pathetic diver when he was younger as well. But he has cleaned up his game considerably. I am hoping that Neymar will do the same thing. I don’t want young kids to watch him roll a dozen times after a tackle.

Back in the day the Ronaldo debate was similar. I think it is a lot of media against him and just the anti-Ronaldo and anti-soccer community talking a lot of time. Maybe we will find that Neymar "dives" less or maybe the narrative in the media will change and he was not actually a problem in the first place.

I'm sure if young kids do ever dive though it does in fact mean it was Neymar's fault... almost for sure

 

[cgf]

No I just pretended to watch it to impress the ladies.

Yes I watched it. Brazil attacking more with limp attempts until the 70th minute didn't make them the better team up until that point.

Brazil could've been up 2 with a little more lucky before Belgium even connected on their first counter...and they didn't only start playing at the 70th minute, even if that was when they started to spend the most time in the "redzone"...

 

[Do Make Say Think]

It was a rhetorical question because it appeared to be the first match you've watched in your entire life. Brazil didn't have a great first half - and neither did Belgium - but the Brazilians were putting pressure upon the Belgians from the very beginning of the game, even with an absent Neymar. Belgium are fantastic on the counter-attack and had some nice moments through that in the first half, but the entire second half was played in Belgium's end.

Belgium was up 2-0 after 45

They had a very solid first half

 

[Firsov99]

The diving issue is a reaction to the refereeing issue, so by focusing on it rather than the cause of it, you are changing the discussion. Let's let VAR erase ****ty refereeing mistakes, then it will be easy to erase diving & embellishment.

But now referees become scapegoats. So we can take it even deeper and find the cause in whomever is above the refereeing department and blame the sport officials who didn’t allow VAR before. These are all links of the same problem.

 

[robertmac43]

very solid

They were all right...An OG and one unreal finish. But Brazil still had the better chances in the first 45

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Belgium was up 2-0 after 45

They had a very solid first half

They got a lucky bounce and scored a nice goal on a counter-attack but were consistently under assault, even in the first half. Brazil just played a lot more urgently in the 2nd half, but they still put more pressure than Belgium in the first half. They had 10-11 shots in the first half.

 

[cgf]

But now referees become scapegoats. So we can take it even deeper and find the cause in whomever is above the refereeing department and blame the sport officials who didn’t allow VAR before. These are all links of the same problem.

True, and replacing the corrupt dinosaurs in charge of footballing bodies across the globe would help even more, but we don't have to go that high up the food chain to fix this problem in football if VAR is eventually implemented effectively...unlike some of the other issues...

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

Just to clarify because it's not mentioned at all on the U.S. broadcast, that one penalty was not given because the ball was going out of play when Kompany made contact. I don't think they doubted there was contact, I think the VAR guys thought it was either out of play when it happened or close enough at least not to call for a review (i.e. no flagrant mistake by the ref).

 

[robertmac43]

The diving issue is a reaction to the refereeing issue, so by focusing on it rather than the cause of it, you are changing the discussion. Let's let VAR erase ****ty refereeing mistakes, then it will be easy to erase diving & embellishment.

Amen, it's just a waiting game at this point.

 

[robertmac43]

But now referees become scapegoats. So we can take it even deeper and find the cause in whomever is above the refereeing department and blame the sport officials who didn’t allow VAR before. These are all links of the same problem

But VAR is a thing now so this should correct itself. Bacially just making the general claim that diving is too prominent in soccer and then pointing at Neymar in this WC is extremely lazy to me and does not help anyone's cause or push the discussion at hand

 

[hersky77]

How firmino didn’t start over Jesus is mind boggling. The dynamics of each match changed when bobby came on.

 

[HanSolo]

It was a rhetorical question because it appeared to be the first match you've watched in your entire life. Brazil didn't have a great first half - and neither did Belgium - but the Brazilians were putting pressure upon the Belgians from the very beginning of the game, even with an absent Neymar. Belgium are fantastic on the counter-attack and had some nice moments through that in the first half, but the entire second half was played in Belgium's end.

It was actually the first time I ever turned on a TV. I'm 6 and what is this. If you want to have an actual discussion about the game we can do so without shit eating condescension, bud.

 

[Firsov99]

Back in the day the Ronaldo debate was similar. I think it is a lot of media against him and just the anti-Ronaldo and anti-soccer community talking a lot of time. Maybe we will find that Neymar "dives" less or maybe the narrative in the media will change and he was not actually a problem in the first place.

I'm sure if young kids do ever dive though it does in fact mean it was Neymar's fault... almost for sure

Honestly I don’t care what media say. Truly. Because I know (just as well as you do) how manipulative it can be. I watch a lot of soccer, and this is my opinion. Could I be fundamentally wrong? Sure. But I just don’t see a premise to change my stand on this at the moment.

 

[YEM]

Inability to score is the Brazil’s problem not Belgium’s.

yep
this is a Brazil team that took 93 minutes to score against Costa Rica.
they weren't impressive throughout the tourney, and deserve to be boarding a plane back to Rio tomorrow​

 

[Firsov99]

True, and replacing the corrupt dinosaurs in charge of footballing bodies across the globe would help even more, but we don't have to go that high up the food chain to fix this problem in football...unlike some of the other issues...

I’ll just blame the players then for diving ;-)

 

[cgf]

I’ll just blame the players then for diving ;-)

I've gathered that that's your position no matter what...but players dive & embelish because of a real problem and if they stopped diving that problem wouldn't just go away. The only thing that eliminating diving without addressing the underlying problem would change would be that we'd lose a few more great players to unpunished fouls that ruined careers

And personally, I'd rather football not go back in that direction...even if van Basten was a

 

[Savi]

Holy shit

I'm barely alive at this point

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

Players always dove and players always will dive. It's got little to do with 'unpunished fouls' and a lot to do with 'getting an advantage whichever way you can'. There's no absolute resolution to it and to be honest with you, as long as the big calls in matches are reviewed and the days of securing a winning pen with a dive are over, who really cares. I feel no particular need to convince the 'there's too much diving' crowd to be bigger fans. No skin off my nose.

 

[Firsov99]

But VAR is a thing now so this should correct itself. Bacially just making the general claim that diving is too prominent in soccer and then pointing at Neymar in this WC is extremely lazy to me and does not help anyone's cause or push the discussion at hand

VAR isn’t going to correct everything, but it will certainly help. It will get more refined. And, yes, there is a general problem, and Neymar is a great example of how glaring it is.