Football Thread 21/22

[HomokHarcos]

RolStoppable said:

Mummelmann said:

I agree with your overall sentiment that Poland was crap today, but to claim that they're in dire need of a good striker when they have Lewandowski seems a bit strange? He's been consistently in either first or second place for golden boot in the Bundesliga for the past 2-3 seasons and is known for hammering in goals, in the past 5 seasons, he's won the golden boot three times, every other year, and he's scored over 40 goals across all competitions for three seasons running (he was also the first foreigner to net over 30 times in the Bundesliga). They could certainly use more goal scorers though, their play relies far too heavily on one man. Poland's main problem, much like many other teams of the cup, is a disorganized midfield with poor precision down the wings and a hopeless insistence of trying to spearhead directly through the center of the pitch and into the box square-on. Their short-passing play is practically non-existent as well, most center pitch passes are hard, 12-15 meter or more, passes with increased risk of poor first touches, it's like the entire team doesn't know how to simply roll the ball within the squad without smashing it and the positioning was absolutely everywhere with plenty of miscommunications all over the place.

Lewandowski is a proper world class striker and on par with the best in the WC, but he has a shit crew backing him up and he needs to be played through and into or near the box to score goals. I hardly saw a decent cross during the entire match from Poland. I pity a man who is used to world class service from the wings and central midfield at Bayern when he's surrounded by a bunch of bumbling troglodytes (with only a couple of exceptions).

Great fun with wins from Senegal and Japan, but a bit tacky that the wins mostly came off of sloppy opposition rather than actual tactical and/or attacking prowess. But that's football, for better or for worse. Also; I'm loving the video refereeing so far, it's literally a game changer. Also, has anyone noticed the exceptional amount of penalties being given in this tournament? I think the previous WC had a total of 15 for the entire tournament, while we've already seen about 10 or so so far in this one. And it's not simply down to less savvy teams going dirty either, some fouls are committed by seemingly experienced and understanding players (like the idiot move from Sanchez for Colombia against Japan).

I am saying the thing about Poland's strikers because Scisca has overrated Poland so much in the past and the present. Not even Lewandowski can do much to lift Poland to above average status in a tournament. Regardless, I think he is overrated too. While it's true that he has scored a lot of goals for Bayern, it's also true that a significant amount of those goals in the past two seasons came from penalty kicks and situations where he had to put the ball into basically an empty goal because someone else had already done the real work. Bayern doesn't need to pay Lewandowski for such goals because any good striker would make such goals. I am quite sure that the bosses of Bayern have realized that, hence why Lewandowski got less playtime and things have been put into motion to get a replacement. It's par for the course for Bayern to replace a striker when he looks like past his peak, and Bayern tends to act before a striker is becoming a burden due to waning efficiency.

4 of the 10 penalties so far have been called after video review and all of them have been correct. Video reviews have generally been good, the game Tunisia vs. England being the sole exception. However, one can question the imposed limitations on the video review. Today in the match Poland vs. Senegal there was a possible penalty review that made it clear that it was a dive, but no yellow card has been given because yellow cards are not subject to video review.

Yeah I love that this World Cup hasn't been marred with controversial games and terrible calls. VAR has definitely been for the good in my opinion.