Just worth sharing as sadly the whimsical Winston joy was present on the podcast who have rightly called out Watson repeatedly.
Did cover and sneer at Ronaldo not playing yesterday (although he did on Thursday). Didn't cover the absolutely phenomenal win by Northern Ireland with that last minute goal, and the two brothers with one scoring the goal and the other saving the penalty from a potential Balon D'or winner.
Have to say it is so much better having Shook there. Feels a lot more like he is part of a discussion rather than a stilted back and forth.
To end the fantasy football league requests
The pod often refer to people who like Ronaldo as being fan boys. Is there such a thing as an anti Ronaldo fan boy? It (the pod) feels obsessed with anything that goes badly for him.
This is similar for Man Utd, Mourinho, and to a slightly lesser extent Man City. I am guessing this is what the people want?
Said this during the world cup that it gets in the way of any measured analysis. With Ronaldo his tantrum can be traced back to the club's inability to sign Benzema who he wanted to be reunited with far more than anything else. Ronaldo has the leagues golden boot currently and the one for the season before that.
As ever I have to point out I am not a Ronaldo fan boy. I would be the same if they constantly brought up any of Messi's failings
France cantered to that win over Morocco, to my eyes. Surprisingly so. So I would say they just did enough despite a 2-0 win as was so comfortable. Not more than enough.
England having 10 men and battling to 3-2 away to a team who are fighting for their lives in front of their fans doesn't feel like just enough.
Other opinions are welcome.
Barry's fandom is predominantly hoping England lose. Which team as an England fan do you spend your time and energy on wanting to lose? For me it is possibly Argentina because of the footballing history between us. But Messi makes it hard to keep that up.
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.
