Such beautiful movement and run to get an amazing chance by Morocco and then what a huge save by the Dutch GK
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Germany and the Netherlands out on the same day, maybe the Europeans DO have too many slots.
Morocco were the better team overall tonight and showed some moxy with that late goal. Dutch keeper kept them in the game.
Canada might have to play a defensive game to have a chance. Morocco skill level is very real.
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Maybe they should get some air conditioning and they wouldn’t suck so bad. 
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So i went down the rabbit hole on the format of soccer. And omg its a deep rabbit hole.
Im definitely too American for this.
Like the closest i can compare it too.
College football.
But you have the regular season with only conference games. And theres no championship game. The conference champ has the best record.
But DURING the season you have “playoff games” against other conferences. But there is 3! Different playoffs. Each with their own tournament.
Then you have the relegated teams.
That have their own “conference” games and have to battle to get into the early part of the playoffs where the big dogs auto qualify for higher up in the playoffs.
Like theres a possibility of over 700 teams involved in all this!!
Just looking the top teams in the English premier league. Play 38 league games. And up to 24 championship games. So 62 total games. From August to May. Thats a Match every 5 days!
Like my brain cant comprehend that.
But again thats why when people say “oh professional soccer is the most popular in the world”
Sure. But if you compare that to the usa with
NFL, FBS, FCS, D2 and why not D3. Thats 700+ teams with 5 tournaments.
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Noruega, as they are called on Telemundo, being dragged by Haaland into the sweet 16. Didn’t have them lasting longer than Germany or the Netherlands on my bingo card, and the Ivory Coast is one of the better African teams. That’s a big win.
I can definitely see African teams really stepping up in the future.
The way Latinos took to baseball.
All you need is a futbol and a couple of sticks in the ground to learn to play it as kid.
Yep, that’s why Brazil and Argentina got so good, although they had the infrastructure at the top to guide the kids that showed promise that Africa currently lacks, though it is improving. In many cases they’re just getting sent to Europe, but that only works for certain former colonies iirc, European clubs can’t just bogart talented youth from all over the world without some sort of legit visa/citizenship situation.
Contrast it with hockey, which is the most expensive major amateur sport to get involved in.
Not only the gear, which needs to be replaced over and over as the kid grows. Ice time is expensive. You don’t run an ice rink for cheap. And, like my brother, if you are really good and make a AAA team, the parents have to shell out for travel money. I played B level, that wasn’t so bad. But it really taxed our family budget for several years, including when interest rates on mortgages were super high in the 80s. I sometimes wonder how my parents did it on 1.5 incomes.
Pretty sure Canadian parents are going to be pushing their kids toward soccer given the cost of living these days.
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They are not conferences as such. They are tiered leagus. You have to work your way through each tier to get to the top, and the big money. A good example are Wrexham, who have moved up to the second tier. Couldn’t quite make it last season but will get another chance next season. In each league 4 get relegated down and 4 get promoted up each season
France are so good.
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Well, they do have that je ne sais quoi going for them.
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Yes, that’s true for the ELP.
But most of the big countries have a similar system
Germany, France, Spain
And they all do a similar thing in our involved with one of those three major tournaments at the end of the season
Like the Big10 had 5tiers. With ~80 total teams. In the top 4 and another 100 in the 5th.
Each tier has its own season.
They play in one tournament.
Then another tournament with just the top teams from each
Then each conference (county) plays in another tournament
All while the regular season is going on. Wild.
The history is pretty interesting.
That local tournament, the FA Cup, came first. The local steelworkers got together to square off against the local munitions workers (hence, Arsenal), then the winner got to move on. It didn’t take long for the owners of those teams to realize that wasn’t enough of a gate (how they made money back then), so they started a league to run at the same time. Many of today’s big clubs were part of that original English league, including my favorite club Aston Villa. Over time that league became much more important than the tournament that ran at the same time.
Very early on other countries caught up with England, “our champ could beat your champ,” etc… until they decided to settle it on the field: hence, The Champion’s League (which originally - and for a really long time - contained only the prior year’s champs from across Europe). It proved a huge hit and expanded like wildfire. More than just the champs got in, then they started a ‘secondary’ tournament (at this point a shameless money grab) and recently they added a third.
The League Cup, a second local tournament running concurrently with the league (and FA Cup), started when floodlights made it so they could jam another fixture into mid-week evenings. Back then they were all hard up for money, not nearly the cash cow it is today.
So yes, there are multiple concurrent competition any give season. Aston Villa this upcoming season will compete in the Premier League against the other Premier league teams from England, the Champions league against the other “champions” of Europe, the FA cup against the whole of the English football pyramid, and the League Cup against the whole of the English pyramid (those latter two competitions are the only one where a 5th division side could draw someone like Arsenal at home, which would go a long way toward putting them in the black for the year).
Practically though Villa will get knocked out of competitions at a certain point, or have to prioritize one over the others. A lot of big clubs basically roll out a ‘youth’ side for the FA and League cups, for instance.
Mexico is on fire tonight.
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I’m almost glad we don’t have to face France. That probably would have been a bit like the 2014 semi-final against Brazil but this time the other way…
People are saying you guys have been cursed ever since then. Of course people will say anything, but the results haven’t been great since then. Of course I’d trade three disappointing showings in a row for a championship any day of the week!
Good for England on comeback win.
They now play Mexico in Azteca stadium. It will be one to watch.
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I’m really glad they get to experience what our national team has to go through. I’m not sure there’s a tougher place to play as the visitor, what with the rabidness of the fans, the noise level, the elevation and thin air (and the pollution of top of it!), and the claustrophobic ‘fans on top of you’ way it’s designed (and the shaking terraces). It’s a nightmare.
Plus if the players are to be believed the ball moves differently, which given the elevation and subsequently lessened pressure and resistance, makes plenty of sense. Same reason kicks travel farther in Denver, the physics is just a little different.
Long story short, I think England is in for a long day.
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Wow what a choke job by Senegal