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No thread for this? Come on, fellas, even our boys look pretty good this year...

The exciting finishes and surprising results are starting to roll in. Japan had a great equalizer against the Dutch yesterday.

The joy Curacao had after tying it up against the Germans was fun to watch...even if the Germans steamrolled them in the end. For that one moment, Curacao had something to be proud of.

Spain--one of the overall favorites--tied Cape Verde today. Egypt is giving Belgium all it can handle. Morocco stole a point from perennial contender Brazil.

And the US men played what I think is the best US men's game I've ever seen. I'm used to our team grinding games out, winning or losing by the smallest of margins. But on Friday they played with freedom and joy, playing beautiful soccer to break down a stingy defense. It was just one game, but it bodes well for the next few games and making a run in the knock outs.

Of course four years ago Argentina lost to Saudi Arabia in their opening match of the group stage...and went on to win the whole thing. So like early season college football games, it's probably best not to overreact.

So far, it's been a fun tournament. And I'm going to the Austria/Jordan game tomorrow with SFGopher, my brother, who has been an expat living in Austria for 18 years--and his step-son, who is Austrian and was a toddler the last time Austria was in the World Cup. So that should be cool.

I had to look up Cape Verde.  Spent the weekend in Sedona and one of the group is a big soccer fan.  Was watching it all the time.

I'm curious about the classification of do you have to be an actual country to compete in the World Cup?  Some of them seem (to me) like territories or some other such designation.  Like Cape Verde.  Is that an actual country?  Is Scotland?  If Scotland is, was it an actual country 40 years ago?  Could Puerto Rico qualify for the World Cup?  Is it an actual country?  Is Curacao?  I guess everywhere is a country now.  I'm still used to all the little Caribbean kids in the LLWS playing for the Netherlands, lol.

Also, I come to find there are water breaks.  So we have flopping/acting and now water breaks.  It's like viewing repellant, lol.  It's really hard to respect them.  I know they're great athletes and I couldn't do any of that, but jesus christ, man.  Fucking man up.

Matt Mitchell weighed in.

"It's soccer.  We ain't gonna call it football 'til one of y'all wins an SEC Championship."



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dZ8dqyDsgg

That's adorable. 

The constant subs do bother me after seeing soccer. Definitely feels like football players could handle being a little tougher. We'll probably never find out 

yes, like Travis Hunter

Well 2-platoon football was less about a lack of toughness and more about elite/effective play. 

If you think about it, the game today is much more complex with much larger playbooks and the 2-platoon structure allowed that.  If guys had to play both ways then they'd have to learn both the Offensive and the Defensive playbooks and their assignments within those playbooks and the coaches would necessarily have to simplify things.  

Well sure. If you only have to play a third of the time, you will be more effective. But it's at the expense of toughness.

I'm 99% sure the players wanted to stay 1-platoon.  But tired tough guys in the 4th quarter aren't very fun to watch.