enigmatic

Think you prove your own point with not only getting the Maracanazo score wrong but also forgetting everything about 18 18 wasn't the greatest ever World Cup but saw the emergence of Mbappe, Croatia's run to a really entertaining final, a particularly hilarious German exit (saved themselves with a 95th minute freekick in one game, went out to 94th and 96th minute calamity goals in the next), a 4-3 France/Argentina knockout game and the Belgium vs Japan madness, Russia dumping Spain out amongst a few shootouts and of course St Gareth bringing the waistcoat back into fashion. Even a game as terrible as Iran v Spain produced this meme-orable moment I think Morocco's run to the semi finals will go the same way as most of those memories, never mind the individual upsets and good games and group stage drama. Saudi Arabia beating the winners might make a good pub quiz question, I guess.

Getting a good rating for a central defender usually means either keeping a clean sheet or winning nearly all their headers (or making a lot of interceptions) Some defenders (yours, I think...) aren't great in the air but otherwise make few errors. Some defenders will get consistently good ratings for being tall but might have other weaknesses Ratings are overrated.

Celebrity chef (frankly "chef" seems excessively generous for a bloke that made a viral video of pouring too much salt onto meat) got pretty much unrivalled publicity for his chain of ****** overpriced steakhouses. McDonalds paid at least $10m to FIFA for their advertising exposure. Salt Bae merely had to be very friendly with the definitely-not-corrupt head of FIFA and a bit cheeky to get a level of social media recognition and headlines that clownish fast food franchises could only dream of. He's loving it.

Think Maguire plays deeper mostly because he's slower and likes to take his time on the ball. He dawdles on his preferred side too. When he was actually in form, his ability to slow the tempo down and pick a pass was actually useful. When he wasn't... the less said the better. If he's standing even deeper now it might well be a sensible coaching move to give him extra time rather than because of where he stands.

I'm imagining you doing an Adebayor-style knee slide after finishing this post (good statting though) Think the importance of left footed centre backs is vastly overrated tbh. Don't think building from the back needs the left sided centre half to be able to play a long ball down the touchline to the nearside winger which is the only passing lane not being left-footed consistently shuts off (everything else depends on which way you're facing and where the opponents are). Would much rather have someone that can move and turn on the ball well (and actually defend!) than someone primarily left footed. Maguire is slow on the ball regardless of which side of the defence he's standing on

Sure, if you want to go down that route then if you have perfect knowledge of everything there's going to happen there's no luck at all in anything from football to casino games. Football managers don't have perfect knowledge of how a game's going to unfold though, they just set their sides up in the way they believe will give them the best possible chance, and if that strategy succeeds only because the opposition miss a series of sitters, get a man sent of for a two footer and then concede a 30 yarder from a player that doesn't even score them in training, those aren't factors they understood would play out in that way, or things they would expect to happen again if they played the same way against the same opponent next week. Not to mention that goalkeeper ratings in FM are nonsense anyway...

Football is a lot about luck, and it'd be even more about luck if managers stuck to preplanned changes.

I hope you made sure someone from your bench ran on the pitch every time the opposition attacked after that I think it's quite fitting that the GOAT footballer gets a mini Lautaro as a hat

Courtois getting done by a repeat of the set piece he got away with was pretty funny, but Navas managed to be at fault for more goals in one game than Courtois conceded in total...

I like to think that somewhere, there's an AI complaining this game was scripted in my favour. In all seriousness though, at no point of the game did I feel at any risk of losing by two goals and I couldn't even be bothered to crank up timewasting or play for set pieces when they started spamming attacks at the end. The offsides were pretty clear (they were constantly being caught offside) and the other stats flatter Lazio whose chances really weren't all that apart from a goal from the same kind of long ball I scored from, and at the other end Adeyemi had a one-on-one where his touch was so bad he didn't even take a shot! The biggest change I made was dropping Hummels and pushing the defensive line up. (I subbed Hummels on as a DM but I think that was a bad idea too. It didn't work, and I'd have been a lot better throwing someone like Guerreiro on and being more aggressive on the counter) I imagine I could pull off an actual win with a couple more attempts Pretty good example of why people think the game's scripted though A tired team against a slightly better team, and you appear to have played a two man defence involving the slowest elite defender in the game against Immobile, who has probably the best attacking movement attributes in the game. Of course you're going to lose big more often than not when they start really going for it and your players' legs turn to jelly, no matter what happened in the first leg

Well the words are good. Shame about the maths (Same with the advice about set pieces tbh. Coherent sentences with all the right words in that sort of looks like football advice, but then you start to read it and it worries that marking the opposition goalkeeper at an attacking corner might give away a set piece close to your goal `)

tbf Poland managed to be rubbish in the game they won, and if it's match rating averages then the low expectations on Qatari and Welsh players are going to help. Still not sure how Zielinski made it in bearing in mind he scored a goal in their victory though Would probably be more fun compiling a list focused on good reputation players playing for sides that reached the knockouts and bring the likes of Lautaro and Upamecano who played in the final in for obscure players nobody expected anything from.

I don't think diving to con the referee and being annoying to try to distract an opponent are the same level of offence though You can ignore an annoying goalkeeper and stick your penalty in the top corrner. You can't ignore being sent off and watching from the stands as the opposition score from a penalty awarded for something you didn't do.

Yeah, I've resigned myself to not making the next World Cup squad too

OK, you got me. Super impressive that they created chances against Australia. Still unconvinced that's more impressive than thrashing a much better side than Australia in the same round though Don't remember much creativity against the Netherlands apart from that lovely first goal either. They won because they took better penalties. Ironically the only game the whole tournament they had Messi absolutely running the show like England's less-good-than-Messi players are apparently supposed to do every time they come up against a decent side was against you guys, but even that one involved most of the chances coming from horrible defending Nah, they scored their penalties when their defence failed them. If they relied on open play goals they'd have been in trouble though. Mostly they played low risk low tempo stuff and created fewer chances per game than England. The completely batshit final extra time when both sides went for it was the exception, but I don't think there was much tactical planning going on there.

Ah, they created chances against the mighty Saudi Arabia! And had a whole eight shots in a must win game against Mexico (a side roughly on a par with Senegal, Ukraine or Colombia but probably better than Iran tbf). Must have been a top class attacking performance to manage half as many shots as we managed against France! (and FWIW I'd say this Argentina side has been above average in excitement and attacking quality by the standards of international tournament winners I've seen) Weird how all these sides that keep doing better than us at World Cups seem to also win their games by the odd goal, rely on their defence a lot and need penalties to settle games against decent sides, and have some games where none of the open play chances they create go in.

And ignore the goals not from open play. Do that and Argentina had a pretty poor tournament too

A penalty, a counter attack and lots of risk-free possession against a team that were only half fit, followed by panicking when they subbed on some players that could actually run? tbf I'm a GunmaN fan because rubbish takes are what this forum is all about.

There really weren't! Think Griezmann disappearing in the final (probably due to illness) probably cost him in the eyes of L'Equipe. Still haven't figured out whether he's in mine or not!

Was thinking that calling it a meltdown was a bit harsh, but now he's gone full Elon.

Don't see why either of them would want the England job tbh, notwithstanding good relations with some of the players. Pep didn't enjoy the relentless pressure and unreasonable expectations of Barcelona who he genuinely felt some patriotic sentiment towards, not sure he's going to enjoy the main part of his job being hounded by the press for [not] experimenting in a random Nations League game for us, whilst having relatively little in time on the training pitch or actual trophies to win. Don't think either of their obsessive attention to detail and long ramp-ups to get players fully comfortable with their system necessarily translates well to international management either, though I think Klopp might give it a go with Germany eventually (and as it's Germany will probably do better than England anyway .

This. Goalkeeper can do what he likes within the rules to put players off, up to the ref (or refereeing directives) to stop him.

We know if Argentina missed their penalties you'd be explaining it wasn't a lottery because Argentina's performance had 'bottling' written all over it Hakimi who scored that outrageously cool Panenka was described by his club coach as "so bad at penalties everyone else would have to die before he took one" whilst Soler who missed in the same shootout is a penalty specialist Saka had already taken and scored more penalties in professional football than Grealish, Rashford was an excellent penalty taker and Sancho a good one. Jorginho, probably the best taker in the shootout also missed, as did regular taker Belotti. But Harry ****ing Maguire scored. There's obviously some skill element especially to the goalkeeping, and a bit of additional odd-shifting based on players' mental state but the elite penalty takers generally miss one in five penalties, and the genuinely rubbish ones score most of theirs More to the point penalties often have no correspondence whatsoever to which side played best in the match or has the best allround footballers which is what people actually mean when they talk about "lottery" Yes, I've seen the stats. Also most of the shots in question. Livakovic had a very good game against Brazil, another good shootout against some rather poor penalties, a rather less good game when got knocked out in part due to his mistake and some quiet games (notwithstanding Lukaku's nightmare). Obviously he's going to be happy with his tournament, but I'm not sure that combination trumps pulling off the save of the tournament to win it and having the same number of shootout wins against better penalties

If we're viewing it over the whole tournament, Livakovic gave away a penalty in Croatia's exit and his non shootout saves weren't extraordinary in either skill or number Don't think there's anything weird about picking the guy that won two shootouts and an absolute worldie last minute save to win the tournament but didn't do much otherwise over the guy that won two shootouts, gave away a penalty and didn't win the tournament. Both of them can be very happy at the defences and midfields in front of them for giving them a chance to star at penalties.

Stats don't tell the whole story.