We weren’t expecting to be in a situation where we need to win to advance and Iran advances with a draw, though. We were expecting to be in a goal differential contest with Wales. In that case, drawing England would have been a massive result. If our game was the earlier game, we’d be thrilled.
we’re obsessed with pretending they are actually students and they just like sports as nice little hobbies here. even when this makes the system worse in both education AND sports development… but it makes us feel better about ourselves.
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Yah, sucks that the match ultimately became kinda meaningless, win or who cares. If it had happened first we’d all be saying “holy shit we drew England!”
Yeah as a kid there were two positions: goalkeeper and not the goalkeeper. If you were not the goalie, you just chased the ball. At halftime you ate some oranges. They didn’t keep score since it was about “fun” so we kept a running tally.
On the school team in middle school we had real positions. I was a sweeper. We had two kids on the team who were really good, they were twins. Everyone else sucked. The official strategy was to look for the twins when you had the ball. If they were open, pass to them and get out of the way. If they weren’t, kick it as far as you could, preferably in the right direction (but out of bounds was acceptable too).
So our coach was like 90% as good as Berhalter, basically. And in her defense, the twins never mysteriously ended up on the bench.
In high school, practice was windsprints and six inches exercises for two weeks straight, we didn’t even touch a ball unless we stayed after. Thus ended my not promising soccer career.
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Problem is it’s just impossible to get to the point where it will be better for a talented NA kid to stay in NA over going abroad.
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no one in the US uses the term draw as a synonym for Tie. even in the only major sport that can “draw” the NFL, the column for that is labeled with a “T” for tie.
eta- even the mls on the app i use to track sports scores has a “T” on their table W,L,T.
In the spirit of I, the American, can improve soccer… Add extra time in the group stage. Make it harder to park the bus and get a result, get fewer draws, and more of the beautiful game!
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People will say “let’s call it a draw” in the US, but for a final result of a sporting event, yeah, tie every time.
What are those?
that’s true, i didnt think of that phrase… but i’d saw “lets call it a tie” is probably almost as widely used.
i still want one ref to just not wave a player that he believes flopped back onto the field for 2-3 minutes. i think it would go a massive way towards changing the amount of time players stay down for and roll around on the ground.
eta- similar to the NFL type rules where u miss a play if the trainers have to come onto the field for you.
You lay on your back and hold your feet up off the ground with your legs extended for like 30-60 seconds then rest for 30-60, and keep repeating it.
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Also I think some are being too harsh on Berhalter here. They had a great plan and executed it well against England. Not a fan of some of the subs, and I really don’t care if they bombed that free kick in really (it’s such a low % opportunity). Overall, it was a greg not a gerg game.
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In fairness he brought BA on around the 65th and it took 11 mins to get a stoppage. But Reyna should have come in at the same time, and Rest should have stayed on. Given how Moore played and missing that open cross…
But the overall strategy going in was good. I think we’d all be less angry about Gio coming in too late if he didn’t leave him on the bench against Wales.
I think he thinks Gio tries to do too much himself and doesn’t pass enough but the time to send that message is way before the World Cup. But that’s just my guess.
Reyna not being in makes a lot more sense giving the formation choices. He’s not a RM. He’s not a second forward in a 4-4-2. I can’t fault not starting him or giving him much run in this setup.
That’s fair but they could have changed the formation for the last 20-30 minutes to be more attacking, given the situation in the group.
But they were getting attacking chances in their current formation.