Poland vs. Argentina / Saudi Arabia vs. Mexico - 7pm UK time

[Heartwork]

Saudi Arabia taking Mexico out with them with that last goal essentially.

[Rob1981]

Full answer to the question from earlier, all these were just to decide placing within a group though and not qualification versus non-qualification  

Edited November 30, 2022 by Rob1981

[TM]

there probably is worse considering we've had 90 odd years of the World Cup but that England group in 1990 was terrible to watch

Mark Wright making sure England qualify with a rare goal while the rest draw with each other in games that had little or no goalmouth action.  For the potential quality of teams I mean, Netherlands defending European champs, England coming off a QF from the previous World Cup and if my memory is correct, Rep Of Ireland beat England at the 1988 European Championships

[Orzelek]

That was prime level Atlético Madrid kind of shithousery by Poland   

 

First time since 1986 that they go through to the knockout stage.

[Baptista_8]

3 minutes ago, Orzelek said:

That was prime level Atlético Madrid kind of shithousery by Poland   

Except they lost 2-0 and got lucky with another result

[PaulHartman71]

Pleased for Woj to get a big moment for his country saving a penalty like that especially against Messi who’s usually always had the better of him at club level (certainly against us). 

[PMLF]

He has no honor.  

[chris79]

I can understand the opinions about Poland from most of people, I rate teams that I don't follow in a similar way - I don't like what I see and just want them to go out, wan them to lose another game etc. But, I'll quote what Szczęsny said post game:

"Yes, it was very hard in this game because we played a team not 'from our shelf' [a team that is on a completely another level], a team that can afford to keep the ball for 90 minutes and not let us even sniff it. It is fun playing against such teams, you even win one out of 100 games - but it wasn't a case today".

Every single interview, including the one with our coach is like that. There was no euphoria, you could even sense some sort of shame that we played so badly.

But here's the thing. IMO this is by far the worst group of players we had at a major tournament in this century. Some like Glik and Krychowiak are way past their peak, others like Bednarek are having bad spells in their careers. There are really no impressive youngsters pushing them. So "Poland is always worse than sum of its parts/level of their club performers" is simply not true this time. Lewy, Zieliński and Szczęsny and that's it on club level. Almost every other team has a lot of players from say Dutch top flight or even Serie A bottom teams. Krystian Bielik (League One? Championship?) is an important player of this team FFS!

Another thing that probably a lot of people miss is that we were abandoned by Paolo Sousa in the last days of 2021. He was a really fine coach in a technical sense, but a lot of strange stuff was going on, like him selecting a weaker aquad for our last qualifier which led to us losing the seed in the play offs. Eventually he turned out to be an unprofessional asshole, he asked our FA to be allowed to take a role at a Brazilian club. He was sacked asap, less than 4 months before our qualifying play off (originally vs Russia). So there was a big decision for the FA - go for a long term ambitious project (after one just crashed) or for a pragmatic, but limited coach. They choose the former, and that's what we have. A coach who started from scratch early in 2022.

In these circumstances, I see us getting more than 1 point as a very good result. I don't think we played as negatively as I was expecting us to do. We were the better team in the first two games, even if the stats say otherwise (esp. vs Arabia, they ran a lot of with the ball but not much came out of it. That missed pen from Lewandowski eventually meant we didn't win the group. We had 3 great chances vs Arabia that we missed (hit the bar, hit the post and Lewandowski missed a simple 1 on 1), taking 2 of these would mean no nerves today even if we were 3 goals down. Yet people are sometimes acting as if we had England's level of players and decided to play all out defence. I was, against all logic, silently hoping we would play better today and start growing into something bigger but it is what it is - a pragmatic team that is overperforming at World Cup. 

This is our best WC result since 1986 and it comes with the worst players we ever brought to this tournament (well, I have no idea about the 1930s, we played once back then). There are no big celebrations, no real hopes for the France game, but c'mon, it is not like we got there by refusing to play football or kick the opponents. Hey, we had been refereed terribly in the last two games, especially vs Arabia.

Just a couple of thoughts from the other side.

 

[Darius1998]

8 hours ago, Rob1981 said:

Full answer to the question from earlier, all these were just to decide placing within a group though and not qualification versus non-qualification  

Not a World Cup obviously but this happened in the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations:

Guinea and Mali drew every previous match 1-1 and then drew 1-1 on the final day as well.

Edited December 1, 2022 by Darius1998

[The_jagster]

People aren't expecting Poland to outplay Argentina. But they aren't all bad players, the team is still mostly footballers from the top 5 leagues with the exception of central midfield.

But Poland had no serious intention of scoring yesterday, in the most part any chance of a break was refused in favour of keeping everyone back and hoping Lewa would somehow keep the ball and do something despite the attentions of the entire Argentina defence because they didn't need to worry about covering supporting runs. And it's not like there were no chances to break, Argentina had some lazy passing in the first half.

[Weezer]

They were also lucky they were playing Argentina, kings of the dark arts themselves who knew they were through and so just passed the ball around with little effort to attack.

If they were playing Brazil or one of the strong European teams they'd have kept going and would have got the 3rd goal.

[outlander]

11 hours ago, WillHoward42 said:

Why would Messi be booked for heading the ball 

Simulating an injury is a yellow card offence according to rules and no sane person would think that he didn't simulate it with that pathetic Neymar style rolling around.

Edited December 1, 2022 by outlander

[noikeee]

3 hours ago, The_jagster said:

People aren't expecting Poland to outplay Argentina. But they aren't all bad players, the team is still mostly footballers from the top 5 leagues with the exception of central midfield.

But Poland had no serious intention of scoring yesterday, in the most part any chance of a break was refused in favour of keeping everyone back and hoping Lewa would somehow keep the ball and do something despite the attentions of the entire Argentina defence because they didn't need to worry about covering supporting runs. And it's not like there were no chances to break, Argentina had some lazy passing in the first half.

Playing like this just seems like such an incredibly wasteful way of making use of an elite poacher like Lewandowski. And it's not like it was just this match neither, Poland were also awful in the two previous matches. I don't have much hope for them vs France

[georginho_juventusygr]

13 hours ago, PMLF said:

He has no honor.  

The penalty shouldn't have been given. Good for him for not paying up!

[GunmaN1905]

Quote

Kevin Mac Allister has two brothers, Alexis and Francis, who are also professional footballers. Kevin’s parents loved the film “Home Alone” so much that they named their son after the famous child who was left alone.