World Cup General Discussion Thread - 2030 The Jokes On You

Possibly right. I remain unconvinced about VAR. It will inevitably screw us over during this tournament.

 

Not sure about that. The image on the graphics seemed to be taken at the moment the ball was challenged, not when played. Looks bent AF to me.

 

I had no idea Tommy Mooney was the Qatar coach, he needs cancelling.

 

Zzzzzzz…..

 

Under what circumstances did you think this would be a cracking spectacle? It's interesting nothing more.

 

Get in line big boy.

 

What a dreadful 2nd half. It seems like half the stadium didn't bother coming out for the 2nd half too.

 

The ball is challenged here and there's no offside with the player challenging - Player A (because as you said - he was on when the ball was played from the FK). The issue is with the knee sticking out (Player B) who isn't the player that was challenging for the ball. So the second that ball is touched by Player A, Player B becomes offside

 

Of all the charismatic Welsh men, believe me there are loads, the BBC selects one of the most wooden, Ashtree WillowYams, to be one of their World Cup pundits. The Welsh Danny Murphy.

 

Both! A lot of local fans dressed in local garb (plenty of drip on display from them if I may say so myself!), and plenty who left early!

 

Oh the irony..

 

Who cares?

 

Women don’t like football.

 

Yeah, so is that photo with Player B's leg offside taken when thenball was played or when the challenge happened?

 

Did I say I thought it would be a cracking spectacle?
Apparently the game featured the fewest shots on goal in a World Cup match for 40 odd years per BBC.
I hoped it might be vaguely interesting if Ecuador could be bothered to score 6 or 8. Sadly they were happy with a 2-0 win and Qatar were happy with a 2-0 defeat.
Had it on in the background while doing other stuff but just wandered off in the end.

 

The only reason I can think of is that Torquay sent Barnet down to the Conference on the last day, but that was over twenty years ago! If that’s the case maybe something about the Torquay fans that day riled the Barnet ones, similar to Leicester by all accounts when they sent us down.

 

Well, he hasn’t chosen it, has he? It’s his job.

I have some sympathy with the last sentence but I suppose you might argue that two wrongs don’t make a right ie if he thinks that the “values” are morally correct, they are still correct irrespective of the environment in which they are being articulated.

 

Cracking match, enjoyed every minute. Really hope Qatar carry on with their free-flowing football and get to the quarters.

 

Qatar are absolute trash and have no business in a World Cup.

Next game they will be fed to Sarr, I can't wait.

 

One of the worst arguments people use is to suggest that in order to stand for something you must stand for everything. It's just whataboutery by another name. The aim is often to just shush people from expressing points of view that some people find difficult. They'd rather the silence.

Southgate stands for something. Now, you might not agree with him and that's your right but he's entitled to stand for something and use his platform to talk about whatever he likes. And then his employer can either tolerate that or not. That's how it works.

The players and coaches didn't choose to hold the World Cup in Qatar. That's down to FIFA, who should have been held accountable by the individual federations. Once that decision had been made, the moral decision for the players and coaches was to go and speak up for the things they believe in.

There's a difference between Southgate – the actual manager of the team – going to Qatar and say Gary Neville, who found himself on BeIN sat between John Terry, Richard Keys and Andy Gray. Kind of hard to argue from his moral ivory tower in that situation. He actually had a choice, for one thing.

 

Hear, hear. Well said.

 

+1. Far better expressed than I managed.

 

Christ on a bike, there's one lads night out I'd give a miss. Bang on about Neville.

 

Is it Southgate's job to promote his political views at every opportunity? The fact that, for instance, the England players took the knee to show solidarity with the black community and yet overlook the exploitation of migrant workers in Qatar is, to me anyway, the most shameless hypocrisy. Or do only some black lives matter?

 

Played as it's coming off his head with the other players leg offside.

 

A pub with no alcohol ie pointless

 

Recipe please

 

I agree it might be better if someone indicated that that gesture extended to solidarity with that community.

But I don’t think the team, or Southgate, are the problem here. Any blame lies firmly with the national associations.

 

You can’t just chuck ‘whataboutery’ at every opposing point of view though. It’s the second time you’ve done it in this thread, and to me, it’s a convenient way of shutting down any other viewpoint.

In my opinion, Morgan’s views that if you want to shut down a tournament in Qatar because homosexuality is illegal, then you’ll have to turf out 8 other teams before we even start the moral debate, had some merit. Just because it was Morgan doesn’t change that.

There’s plenty of Watford fans, for example, who are up in arms about the homophobia surrounding this World Cup - but were they as angry about our star player/hero backing another player refusing to play in an anti-homophobia football match?

That being said, your points do have a lot of merit too - however, I’m firmly in the position that the FA could have boycotted the tournament, players could have backed out and the BBC (after a 40 minute sermon on Qatar earlier) could have broadcast from the virtual tournament in Salford like they did during COVID. Money and exposure, as usual, talks.

Hypocrisy surrounds this tournament. Hopefully we’ll get through the first week and only talk about the football.

 

You're right. Morgan did have a point. However, all he did was use one argument to undermine another rather than broaden the scope and context of the debate. Did he name those other eight countries, or did he just say: "You can't mention x unless you also mention y"?

To my mind, it just isn't a good debating technique but it's a persuasive one because it appears, on the surface, to be common sense. I just feel it's an inherently dishonest approach because the intent and effect is to shush. A mature starting point for Morgan's view would at least to have acknowledged that the greater hypocrisy is FIFA pretending the game is for all and then taking the Qatari money rather than criticise people for speaking out on the bigger issue but fail to mention some other associated (but no less significant) issues. You see it all the time and the net result of his argument is, "Meh, anything goes."

The objections to Qatar are numerous and another tactic is to isolate and minimise each of those objections rather than look at the entire charge sheet and admit that, yeah, this absolutely stinks.

The BBC has said their people are there to report not support. A stronger line would have been to send only their reporters and, as you say, make do with the ex-footballers and pundits watching the games from Salford. Having said that, it's then much more difficult for the pundits and commentators to say anything about the situation because they are open to the obvious accusation that they are not there and so they don't know what they're talking about.

 

Interestingly, his full name is Ivan Benjamin Elijah Toney - Or IBET if you use his initials.

 

Couldn’t give a toss, won’t be watching.

 

It'll be interesting to see what happens with the One Love armband initiative.

FIFA unveiled plans yesterday for their own armbands bearing messages for a variety of causes during the tournament and in the past few hours there have been fears that the players who wear 'unauthorised' armbands will be booked.

It's a curious one this, because football's authorities have long had a rule about political messaging. Players are booked for displaying a message on an under-shirt when they've scored, for example. So there is a precedent here.

Nevertheless, FIFA is on sticky ground. The 'keep politics out of football' argument doesn't work if what they really mean is, 'keep *your* politics out of football but ours are fine'.

 

It wasn't a great game and there may well be other technically poor matches which will happen when the format is increased from 16 teams to 32 .