Thor on 15/7/2018 at 19:16
Tomi - no. France were not better by any stretch of the imagination. They were extremely lucky in the first half (2 free goals vs 1 earned goal from Croatia), and in the 2nd half Croatia had that period of slip-ups as they were focusing on scoring a goal more. Oh, not to mention that they had way less physical pressure on them in the last 2 weeks AND they got 1 more day of rest. It simply fails under every critique to say that France was the better (or best) team. After they got their safe lead the french stopped with the diving at least. Probably the trainer made that decision. But Croatia were the ones with all the good attacks, all the good saves (except for Subasic - I guess that injury didn't heal as he wasn't up to snuff today...) and even managed to absolutely humiliate the french goalkeeper. At least that was a delicious little spit at them as the final goal in this ultimately unsuccessful world cup. While part of the beauty is seeing a team that didn't deserve to win do just that, it is bitter when this happens against your favorite team. I guess I might be done with watching football altogether. There's more interesting, and self-reliant hobbies in life to engage in.
P.S. Of course there wasn't trouble in Russia. It's not bit thirdworldified like the western Europe is in process of.
SD on 15/7/2018 at 22:53
Quote Posted by Tomi
I was certain that there'd be a lot of trouble in Russia during the World Cup, but I haven't heard of any such incidents. No serious violence or hooliganism. That's awesome, sounds almost too good to be true...
Meh. The violence is state sponsored, and so is the peace. No hooligan will dare to fart without Putin's say.
Tomi on 15/7/2018 at 23:07
Pfft... It's hard to take Thor seriously when he's so obviously biased. Even if France had won 9-0 and Croatia had had zero shots on goal, he still would have said that it was totally unfair and CRonaldo was the man of the match. :p
Quote Posted by Thor
P.S. Of course there wasn't trouble in Russia. It's not bit thirdworldified like the western Europe is in process of.
I don't think that your so-called thirdworldifying has got anything to do with it, so there's no reason to bring your right-wing propaganda in here. You say that W. Europe is "in process of being thirdworldified", but football hooliganism and all sorts of idiotism has long history. The current situation looks in fact pretty good compared to what it was like a few decades ago...
heywood on 16/7/2018 at 11:55
This was the best World Cup in a while. The group stage was wide open with a lot of surprises. The round of 16 was good too. I found my interest tailing off after that. The final was a little bit of a let down. I thought Croatia played well, but with a bit of desperation after they got in a hole. Take away those cheap goals and it would have been a good battle.
Thor on 17/7/2018 at 17:34
Quote Posted by Tomi
Pfft... It's hard to take Thor seriously when he's so obviously biased..
*clap* *clap* Lacking some sense awareness, do we? Everybody is biased, and you're not an exception. Just because you always automatically sway your opinion in favor for the team that scores more goals in a match and call it a deserved win doesn't actually make that so. Unless you have a different sense of what is "deserved".
In regards to my right-wing propaganda, I was merely referencing the last euro cup where France was being policed like it was in a state of potential civil war. I guess now I can also reference some nice hooliganism in France after they took the cup. Probably you know the details better, as I don't care enough about that, or my own right-wing propaganda to google more details.
And yeah, shame about those 4 cheap goals. I guess the first one was semi-legit (well, another self-goal - this world cup was truly overloaded with those jeez...), but yeah the next few not so much.
Tomi on 17/7/2018 at 18:37
Quote Posted by Thor
*clap* *clap* Lacking some sense awareness, do we? Everybody is biased, and you're not an exception. Just because you always automatically sway your opinion in favor for the team that scores more goals in a match and call it a deserved win doesn't actually make that so. Unless you have a different sense of what is "deserved".
Of course I'm biased, I haven't even tried to hide the fact that I don't like certain teams and players. :D But the difference is that I don't have trouble saying that CRonaldo for example had a very good game against Spain, even though I'm not his biggest fan. Nor did I have trouble admitting that France deserved to win Argentina, even though I really wanted Argentina to win, and with a bit of luck that could have happened indeed.
So yeah, I still think that France deserved to win the final. Croatia did have some good chances in the beginning, but as things happened, France never looked like losing the game. And that doesn't mean that Croatia winning would have been totally unfair, not at all. Damn, I would have been over the moon if they had won! Perhaps it was indeed luck that turned the match in France's favour, but they certainly took advantage of it, and so deserved the win more than the Croatians.