McBruce

When this began there was snow in the forecast but nothing yet and the sun had not come up. Now I look out the window and there is three inches of the stuff on the ground.

Ref will probably call this at 120:00, despite all the missed time…

Golden boot leader change #3 in this match.

Argentina need to be told to get the hell out of the area once a penalty is awarded. Why this takes 30-60 seconds each time is beyond me.

Messi needs an extra time goal to retake the lead on the assists tie-breaker in the Golden Boot.

Directly from source: An indirect free kick is awarded if a player: […] • initiates a deliberate trick for the ball to be passed (including from a free kick or goal kick) to the goalkeeper with the head, chest, knee etc. to circumvent the Law So what constitutes a ‘deliberate trick?’

OK men, here’s the plan. Continue to play like crap for the next 30 minutes and then we’ll turn it on.

Hypothetically, if France get a third, should we have the 10-14 minutes of extra time that Argentina wasted while up 2-nil?

To hear the announcers describe the 2nd goal, the preantepenultimate touch by Messi imparted a magic spell on the ball that made the three passes that followed fall perfectly…..next they will be giving him credit for the goal for making the only pass available to him.

Amusing that Collina has chosen for the final a bald referee with no eyebrows….

Woke up in time to watch the Canadian pre-game crew decide that two weeks after Canada was eliminated, it was again time to double down on the idea that Croatia would never have beaten Canada if the coach hadn’t insulted their country (he didn’t), and failed to apologize (he did). Then they went into a great rant about the fact that the next great Canadian talent may never be discovered because we’re “not a soccer nation”, and the government should heavily subsidize leagues at all levels, because apparently talent at the game is undiscoverable unless you play 100 community games a year before you are 12. I repeat the point: at the end of today’s match we will have media from 31 teams claiming referees took them out, and that will increase to 47 in three and a half years time, especially on social media mechanized posts, but Canada is the undisputed winner of the World Cup of broadcasting self-loathing.

Sadly, here in Canada we’ve had five minutes of commercials immediately after the final whistle. Has it calmed down yet? Coming back now, will they notice?

Another game called 10 seconds after the scheduled time with a 45 second substitution during added time. Do they even notice?

Doesn’t quite rise to the level of “a clear and obvious error” or a “serious missed incident.” If the referee tells the VAR room that he saw the contact and judged it minor, VAR cannot overrule unless the video shows bone coming loose….

Two flaws in the way VAR is developing: refs 70% sure that what they saw is a penalty are not calling it, knowing that VAR will correct if obvious. Second, it has become nearly impossible to get a free kick just outside the box because referees don’t call these either, knowing that VAR will catch obvious penalties but ignoring that non-penalty fouls cannot be corrected by VAR.

Problems: which groups of three will have two group winners in them and which will have one? What do you do if all three games have the same score and all three teams have the same record, hold a three-way shootout? Play a match on a triangular field with 33 players? What's most advantageous, playing the first and last of three matches, getting an extended rest after the initial group stage, or (hopefully) winning two matches quickly and getting a rest before the quarterfinal? Three-team groups just add in more inequities. We could eliminate the groups altogether. www.printyourbrackets.com has brackets for any number of teams. A 48-team double knockout bracket with 24 teams getting a first-round bye and a guarantee of three games for each team is ... 111 games, all of which may go to extra time and penalties. No problem!

There are stadiums in time zones three hours apart in the 2026 set, and virtually every broadcaster has the capacity to simulcast on separate stations or online feeds. It should be possible to do six matches a day, three of the twelve groups worth, in the group stage, at 11am/1:30/4/6:30/9/11:30 Eastern, the last two being west coast games at 6 and 8:30 local time, and if wanted, eight per day in the last round of simultaneous games and in the round of 32. This gets the group stage done in 11 days, maybe 13 if you add a rest day before the third match and add an opening game and a ceremony on a day of its own. What would be even better would be to have a public bracket draft after the group stage for the initial knockout positions. Qualifying are the 24 first and second place teams, plus the 8 best third place teams. Instead of this convoluted chart of “3rd in D, H, or J”, simply place the eight third-place teams into eight slots (one in each semi-quadrant of four teams), in the order that they played their last group stage matches, to preserve rest time. Now rank the other 24 qualified teams by 1) position in group, 2) points earned, 3) goal difference (maybe discounting the match against the last place team in the group), 4) yellow and red card points, 5) FIFA ranking. One by one, each team chooses their starting spot in the bracket, with the only constraints being 1) no teams from the same group in the same 8-team quadrant, 2) no half can have three teams from the same group. A computer would be able to tell each team which choices were still available without making the completion impossible, and let us know how many potential combinations remain and fill in the rest when only one is left. Away go the final game shenanigans of teams trying to get into the part of the draw they feel is weaker. You might even allow the top teams in each group to pass and await developments before they choose their starting spot to best advantage. Day 14 is Bracket Draft day, Day 15-20 is R32 (six per day), Day 21 is another off day, Day 22-23 is R16 (four per day), Day 25-26 is R8 (two per day), both semis on Day 29, third place game on Day 32, final on day 33.

Let’s not forget Kevin de Bruyne. He got MOTM in the game against Canada by doing precious little and if that’s what is required, surely his performance since has raised the bar several orders of magnitude higher….

I’ve watched a fair number of the games and have gotten five out of my six wishes so far: 1 & 2) Canada to be competitive and score a damn goal this time. Check. 3 & 4) Senegal and Australia to be eliminated after qualifying for the World Cup through dubious means during crucial PK shootouts. Senegalese fans shone thousands of green laser lights into the faces of Egyptian shooters and GK during kicks, and the Aussie goalie was discovered on video, to have grabbed the Peruvian GK’s water bottle, with instructions for each Aussie shooter’s tendancies, while everyone was focussed on the Aussie shooter and the Peruvian GK, and tossed it into the stands. Not cricket, but of course FIFA did nothing. Check, although it took longer than I hoped it would. 5 & 6) Brazil and Argentina to be eliminated after selling tickets and TV rights to a qualifying game that was cancelled after five minutes because four of Argentina’s players were clearly out of bounds with regard to Brazils covid rules at the time. Both sides share the blame here, Argentina for keeping the players away from health enquiries until they had no choice but to have the match stopped, and Brazil for not paying enough attention to their governments rules. The fact that both had already clinched qualification is no excuse for never organizing a replacement match. I hope the fans and TV rights holders were fully refunded. And I guess I need to root for France in the final to go 6 for 6. Under serious consideration was a seventh, that Morocco be eliminated just so I could watch one of their matches and not get a headache from the whistling every time the opponents had the ball. Worse than the vuvuzelas in South Africa.

Watching from Canada, I have to say that TSN's coverage of our nation's first visit in 36 years has been almost criminal. At halftime in the Belgium game, they analyzed one of many ungiven penalty decisions, the one where the Canadian player had gotten a full step ahead of the defender inside the box and had turned towards the goal and been stepped on, and decided that attempting to turn and face the goal after passing the defender was 'looking to draw the foul.' No other country has media like this that will so consistently take the side of the opponents in any dubious decision. But the worst was yet to come: after the 1-nil loss the coach was interviewed and said "I told them that we'll just have to 'F' Croatia." No sane person would ever interpret this as a slight to the country, with two exceptions: the Croatian tabloid that picked up on the story and front-paged an outrageous fake photo of Canada's coach without clothes, and TSN, which for the three days between the Belgium match and the Croatia match, spent roughly 179 hours of broadcast time bleating on about how simply telling the truth of what he had just told his players post-match was the worst decision in the history of international soccer, and that Croatia would come out ready to tear Canada to pieces. The coach was made to face the press again to state the perfectly obvious, that he had not meant the comment as any sort of criticism of Croatia as a country, or even as a criticism of their team, but simply stating the obvious: Canada needed a result that would, if gotten, take Croatia out. Then the Canadian reporters managed to question the Croatian coach with interpreters about the comment, and of course he took the opportunity to stick the knife in further. The notion that Croatia, having managed only a draw against an African side in their first match, needed a result to avoid potentially going out at the group stage (at kickoff they were three points behind Morocco and two behind Belgium, who was their next opponent), might be the real motivation for them to seek a strong result (even after Canada opened the scoring in the match) was buried deep under the wave of self-loathing that the Canadian media reserves for the team it is covering, at least in this sport. If TSN had given this kind of coverage to the Canadian team in the World Junior Hockey Championship, a Boxing-Day thru early January tournament that they promote incessantly for months before, there would be an outright revolt. But in football we are expected to lay down and accept our place. Canada did just fine. We lost our backup GK to injury in the MLS final a few weeks before the tournament, and our #1 had a rather poor tournament compared to qualifying, perhaps because he was told not to risk being injured and forcing the deep drop to the next GK on the depth chart. Unlike in 1986, Canada was very competitive against Belgium in the opener, scored a beauty against Croatia, and scored against Morocco (an own goal, but one conceded on a real chance, and the only one they have conceded so far as I write). In 1986 we played three games mostly in our own half trying to keep from being crushed. But to hear TSN tell it, we were outclassed and our coach was responsible for motivating Croatia to the result they needed. What rot. Stick to hockey, TSN.

The one thing I consistently notice as I watch games on TV and compare them to watching the FM engine play out games is .... timewasting. (And bravo to the FM team for deciding that this is not something that needs to be recreated....) The team needing a goal puts a striker in for a defender in the 82nd minute and it is done in a flash. Then they get some momentum going and the universal response by the other coach is to decide that he absolutely needs to make a "key" substitution for the final 150 seconds, and make sure that by the time we are ready to play again we're already well into added time, since the ground must be properly kissed by both the outgoing player and the incoming player, and the fans must be properly appreciated one by one as the outgoing player, who has shown no signs of fatigue to this point, hobbles off like he suddenly has two broken legs, having magically run to the farthest area of the pitch before discovering he is coming off. Then when five more minutes of the added time are suddenly lost, the referee usually ignores it and calls the half as soon as the original number on the board is reached. So if they are finally trying to get serious about this, it's about 50 years after it should have happened, but still welcome. In Mexico 1986 they actually decided the opposite, instructing officials to keep halves to 45 minutes unless it was abundantly obvious that time should be added. It was, but they did not. Too hot to play 35 minutes and waste the other 10 and then play 5 more! Now, with five substitutions and enough people in the VAR rooms to monitor how much time teams are wasting, I am hoping that some timewasting team will pay dearly for their sins with the extra time they are forced to play. Only that will make a dent in the kill-the-game strategy that has been perfected over the last half-century.