u/Kingofthe6969

I get the confusion between Sweden and Switzerland is because of the similar two letters at the start of the name like Brazil or Britain, China or Chile. But surely the closest US approximation is being confused for being American when a person is actually Canadian? Every time I have done this at the Munich Beer fest, or in a hostel in days of yore, the Canadian gets offended. Almost as close to confusing a Kiwi with an Australian.

While I am here, the chopping and changing over British and English is jarring. "British" commentators talking about the "England" game misses the mark. There are 3m Welsh, a portion of the 2m Northern Irish, and 5m Scottish people who very much would have loved a Congo win yesterday. It's akin to say people of the East coast will be rooting for New England.

For me, with a percentage of Portugese DNA, Portugal overall played badly. The analysis of this game though was written after the Messi hat trick. Ronaldo didn't move enough and let's the team down and all of their failings can be forgiven because Ronaldo, and they just rolled it out today. Like when the pod postured a few years back that Bruno Fernandes missed a penalty because Ronaldo was in the same Man Utd team.

Portugal may or may not be better with Ronaldo. Can we do a bit more though on where they went wrong? This team, with Ronaldo, won the Nations League with Ronaldo scoring crucial goals.

Sounds slightly provocative as a question, but I noticed that of course there is lots of Knicks discourse because it is the final and NFL is quiet. But the US soccer team absolutely battered Paraguay and pretty much sealed a place in the next round. Has that registered much in USA? Can we expect the ball knowers to comment on this?

I run a team in Finsbury Park (IAM School) in a competitive but nice five a side league. We have had semi pro players in the league (one player had played in a league cup semi final 2019), although we are all ex Sunday league players and more concerned with enjoying the game and not of that level. I travel up from Surrey to play because it is the perfect mix of decent people and sound level. Fancy playing on a Thursday for us? We play any time from 1800-2000 on Astro turf.