Tbh I’d rather face France on current form in the quarters than Germany in the quarters, which seems to be the two options.
I'm having a hard time following which 3rd place teams have a chance to advance to the knockouts. Does the winner between Scotland and Argentina have a good shot of advancing?
Gutted for Scotland. Penalty against them in the 86th minute. Wasn’t taken until the 94th minute. Final whistle blows at 96. The use of VAR was a bit of a shambles in that game. England spent a lot of time on the back foot tonight but Japan barely created a clear cut chance. Couple of quality finishes from White. England really showed their pedigree against a top side. Was very impressed with Daly. Tough to see her staring ahead of Parris in the next round though.
Scotland collapse. Wow. But seriously how do they screw up the time so bad in this game? Ref also lost all control once Argentina fouled that Scotland player hard in order to get the VAR check.
I get the tournament's push to limit bookings and accumulation suspensions, but I definitely saw some tackles today in Scotland v Argentina that should have probably been given bookings in order to help establish more of a line in the match. Instead, things got way out of hand those final minutes. Also, how was there not extra time given after the stoppage? That was not 4 minute's worth of playing time.
VAR came in because of the hard foul on the Scotland player Took forever to actually go to monitor Ref talked forever to goalie Shithousery with Scotland at the spot Ref talking to same Scotland player Just a complete mess with that
Definite offside there. You can't say she wasn't interfering when she moved towards the ball and was touching the defender. Terrible decision.
I'm blaming the ref more than VAR. Should have been a chance to show how VAR can work well to catch an offside the officials missed but she made a bad decision.
That's the problem with VAR. It could be a good tool to catch blatant mistakes by the ref but instead it is mostly used to overturn either slight offside positions or grant ridiculous hand penalties, or, the newest trend, let penalties be repeated until the penalty taker scores. And then way too often it isn't used for obvious fouls (or when the ball is clearly out before a corner kick...).
The handballs have been a joke recently for sure. I think the offside law needs to be changed (again!) to stop things like tonight though rather than the VAR. The new rules about not interfering if you don't take a blatant swing at the ball or something are terrible when you're standing right next to the defender and forcing them to try and clear it just from your presence. It's so unfair.
Not sure if I misunderstand you but the offside rule itself is pretty good. No need to change it. By the current rules the second US goal should have been ruled offside.
The current rule is that you can be in an offside position but if you don't make an obvious attempt to play the ball then you don't get penalised. Tonight's goal was allowed because I assume the ref thought Lloyd didn't make an obvious attempt to play the ball so she wasn't interfering with play. I don't think that's fair because she was right in the mix and forced the defender to try and clear it.
But that was more a wrong evaluation of the ref. By the current rules this should have been offside. Hence no need to change the rules.
I dunno. If you're standing offside but miles away from the ball then fine, let it go, but if your presence forces a defender to play the ball then I think it's interfering whether you make an attempt to touch it or not.
I know it should have been. I agree with you haha. I'm saying I don't like that the "attempt to play the ball" part of the law exists and that if it didn't then tonight's goal would have been disallowed without giving the ref a chance to allow it at all.
See, that's where we disagree. The US player today definitely attempted to play the ball (she even made a little jump to block the ball), so it should have been ruled offside 100%. There's no two opinions in my mind even with the current rules. I think the current rules are good enough as they are, they just need to be enforced properly.