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FIFA WC 26 - Other Nations LIVE Match Thread ⚽

Geez that game went from a stinker to something decent. Sorry Cro's wanted you to win, seemed offside if the snicko is snickoing
 
LFC said:
oh don't worry I've checked the stats long before your post.
Fact of the matter was in the 2nd Cro created more/busted through the defensive lines despite less possession %.
They looked the most likely - an offside goal.
The pen saved your day fellas and that’s football.

robbos, my wife knows me very well and the relos that I wish the downfall, he who laughs last laughs loudest and I sense it will come :)
Click to expand...
I know mate, enjoy.

As for stats who cares, Italy won 2 WCS, (their 1st 2 before my time) playing ugly football, especially against 'jogo bonita', only Italians wanted Italy to beat Brazil in 1982 or France 2006.
 
All the drama, narratives and spectacle over the actual sport is beyond tiresome at this point.
Formula One finally got backlash this year for the same treatment and football will follow this path eventually
 
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Beretta said:
Cristiano Ronaldo was named the official Player of the Match for Portugal's game against Croatia. He scored a crucial equalizer for his team

Fifa doesn't even hide it anymore.
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How many times did Ronaldo even touch the ball.
 
Beretta said:
Cristiano Ronaldo was named the official Player of the Match for Portugal's game against Croatia. He scored a crucial equalizer for his team

Fifa doesn't even hide it anymore.
Click to expand...

His substitution was very important because without it they would have lost as they were getting overrun in midfield.
 

A Crime Against Football: VAR has robbed Croatia’s Golden Generation of a sunset moment​


Every subsequent match in this World Cup, the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) calls seem to descend further into farce. Whether its how Germany was denied a winning goal, Senegal got punished for a good challenge in the dying moments of extra time or Flo Balogun being sent off for something that wasn’t even a foul, all thanks to VAR, it still got worse.

What we witnessed at the death of today’s clash between Croatia and Portugal feels like a new, agonizing low. It is difficult to comprehend how this specific call gets topped—a moment of pure sporting drama, and joy in a clash between two of the greatest players to play the game in our lifetimes (Cristiano Ronaldo and Luka Modrić ruthlessly erased by lines on a screen that involved a relatively new interpretation and over-complication of an age old law. If a defender touches the ball and plays it backwards it IS A BACKPASS and this every attacking playing is onside…until recent tinkering with the rules thanks to men (and maybe some women) in suits changed what was long a very simple premise.

To make matters worse, the footballing gods (or rather, the referees in the booth) chose to rip this moment away from Croatians in Toronto, the most Croatian town outside of Croatia. The atmosphere was primed for history; instead, it was suffocated by a delay and a farcical explanation. It is unspeakable. It is, in every sense of the word, a crime.

The End of a Forged Era​

To truly understand the weight of this disallowed equalizer, you have to understand who it was taken from. This generation of Croatian players was not born into comfort. They were forged in the crucible of war, carrying the heavy history of a young nation on their backs. Time and time again, they have defied the odds, coming agonizingly close to immortalizing themselves on the sport’s grandest stages, repeatedly reaching finals and semifinals of major competitions against ALL the odds.

They earned the right to one last, heroic stand. For this legendary generation’s international careers to effectively end on a technicality—a microscopic, soul-crushing VAR intervention—is a crime against football. More than that, it feels like a crime against the nation itself.

It is truly disgusting to watch a legacy punctuated not by a warrior’s defeat, but by a bureaucrat’s spreadsheet.

Death by a Thousand Rulebooks​

This heartbreaking exit points to a much larger, systemic illness plaguing the modern game. There used to be a very simple, intuitive interpretation of offside in these exact situations. If you weren’t actively gaining an unfair advantage, the game moved on.

Now? The beautiful game has become incredibly, needlessly complicated. What was once a simple sport rooted in passion and flow is being micromanaged by men (and possibly women) in suits. They seem to seek a sterile performance art rather than the free-flowing, visceral game the world originally fell in love with.

The Bottom Line: Football belongs to the players and the fans, not the monitors. Today, the system didn’t just fail a match—it robbed one of the most resilient generations in football history of their rightful goodbye. VAR could have been done right and could have been a great tool to enhance the difficult job referees do. But instead it has become a performative tool of its own robbing us of joy time and again at both club and international level. We never celebrate a “moment” anymore in football without looking up and pausing for a moment. It wasn’t this way before 2018…
 
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