u/Lost_Entrance_4545

8 goals and 4 assists at 39. Second highest goals (was leading and only lost to Mbappe due to a glorified friendly match) and second highest assists in the entire tournament.

"But football isn't just about goals and assists!" Of course.

Messi had most chances created, most successful dribbles, highest average rating, most key passes, second most shots on target, most crosses, most duels won (he's not even a defender), most MOTM, second most attempts on goal, second most shots on target, second highest xg.

Yes, Rodri had a fantastic tournament but Messi carried Argentina to the finals.

Hello, larpers. I’m going to say what I'm pretty sure everyone is secretly thinking while they pretend to enjoy watching a group stage featuring tactical masterclasses between teams ranked 47th and 52nd. The 48 team expansion for the World Cup is completely spineless and cowardly.

The Format (Pure Meritocracy)

Instead of boring groups, we run a massive, 8 round, single elimination, winner-takes-it-all-loser-has-to-fall bracket across 7 continents over the course of nine consecutive months.

Round 1: Vatican City vs. Brazil at MetLife Stadium. If the Pope scores a header from a corner kick, it counts for three goals due to divine intervention.

Round 2: San Marino earns a bye straight to the Round of 32 because they have suffered enough, historically speaking.

The Pitch Surface: Every match must be played on a pitch constructed from equal parts authentic English mud, Saudi desert sand, and synthetic turf harvested from high school football fields in Ohio. Because, you know, DEI.

In all of our humble opinions, lifting a tiny gold trophy after playing 6-7 matches is an absurdly low reward for four years of international preparation. The stakes need to match the scale.

The nation that survives all eight rounds is granted absolute control over the planet for the following four year cycle. The power is absolute in every measure.

When the United States inevitably navigates through the gauntlet of Liechtenstein, Kiribati, and San Marino, Christian Pulisic—the LeBron James of Soccer, the Apostle of Hershey, Pennsylvania, the Eternal Warden of the Back Post—will assume his rightful throne as High Chancellor of Human Civilization. God bless America. God bless Funny Orange Man.

Why Gianni Infantino MUST Do This

Gianni, if you're reading this while sipping an iced latte on a yacht off the coast of Zurich: *Today I feel expanded. Today I feel totalitarian.*

Stop tiptoeing. Grow a spine.

Keep larping. Keep feeling Comorian today.

EDIT: To everyone in the comments saying "this would completely destroy player recovery times and ruin domestic leagues"—have you considered that player hamstrings are temporary, but global hegemony under the Hershey Hammer is forever?

EDIT 2: It is mandatory for Italy to spend those 9 months wandering the wilderness looking for a competent penalty taker. If they succeed, Walder Frey hosts their team dinner. If they fail, Roberto Baggio is forced to nuke them with a bomb made of broken pasta.

Spain does not usually play counter attacking football. They maintain possession and slowly build tempo, and Argentina has performed pretty great against teams who slowly build tempo.

Also, I think if Spain scores the first goal, it would be very difficult for us to comeback because they'd retain lots of possession.

Thoughts?

Scaloni's Argentina reaches the finals of an international tournament once again!

What a magnificent performance from Messi! That weak foot cross was pure beauty. 2 assists, wonderful dribbles, so many chances created... I can't believe that this man is 39.

On the final: I'm completely chill and relaxed. No matter who wins, I'd be happy. It's a win-win scenario for Barca fans. Though I'm still rooting for Argentina, I would still be satisfied if Spain wonl. I just want to witness Messi's greatness and enjoy.

I personally think Dhurandhar IS biased towards the Modi govt. I don't support BJP personally. However, that shouldn't stop me (or anyone else) from appreciating the movie for its music, characters, story, twists, cinematography, writing quality etc. There are flaws, yes, every media has flaws. But that shouldn't stop us from acknowledging that Dhurandhar is one of the best Indian movie of all time.

Hello. I want to start a yt channel related to Association Football content. I have an Android tablet, and no budget as I'm a student. So from where do I find and download the clips? Thanks!

I'm very scared about the match. Alvarez does seem to have regained form but the team is still reliant on Messi. We can't maintain pressure after getting the lead, Scaloni is relying on the same old subs even though they aren't working that well. We are also not performing very well defensively.

I wholeheartedly wish that Argentina wins the WC. I want Messi to lift the trophy once more. Maybe I'm being pessimistic but things aren't looking that good...

- More goals per minute

- More goals from open play

- Higher shot accuracy

- More outside the box goals

- More Golden Shoes

- Most WC goals

- Most goals in a calender year

And yet, Ronaldo fans ignore context and claim Ronaldo is the better goalscorer just because he has more total goals, completely ignoring the fact that he has played far more games.

Edit:

1. Goalscoring and finishing are literally inseperable. If a player is finishing effectively, they are literally, by definition, goalscoring; you cannot decouple the method from the outcome

2. Messi has higher GPG against Brazil, Italy, Germany, France, Spain (France and Spain being the most dominant in the present. Italy, Germany, Brazil being historically the most dominant)

Fellow wordsmiths, I am in the trenches.

For the last several years, I have been trying to write a book. Nothing catches my interest long enough for me to actually dedicate time to it, mostly because my ideas are so hyper advanced that the mere act of typing them down feels like a demotion.

But a few days ago, the muse boobily breasted. I became super inspired and wanted to jump right into writing again. I opened up my previous drafts, found one that I liked, and then started working on it.

I physically jumped. It reads exactly like every other YA genre story in existence.

I wanted to describe a character wearing a cloak, but then I remembered Tolkien already invented clothes. I wanted to describe a magic system, but Sanderson already patented the concept of things happening. They literally used up the entire color wheel and every plot device before I even had the chance to coast on my god tier potential.

I don’t know if this is just me being hyper critical of myself, or if I’m incapable of creating something wholly unique because the universe unfairly allowed other authors to publish books before I was born.

How do you guys deal with the soul crushing knowledge of knowing that all of your drafts feel like cheap knockoffs of other works, while simultaneously being too intellectually elite for this generic world?

Yes, we won. But if we keep playing like this, we are not winning the tournament.

I started this World Cup with zero expectations. We won it last year, so the pressure was gone and I just wanted to enjoy watching Leo Messi do magic with a calm mind.

But imagine being so good that the only way haters can explain your greatness is by calling the tournament rigged. Now, the pressure is back. Now, I genuinely want Argentina to lift the trophy again. So yeah, the peace and calmness is gone.

Tactically, Scaloni's 4-1-3-2 setup was aggressive and focused entirely on possession. However, our rest defense was exposed. The moment we turned the ball over, Marwan Attia and Emam Ashour bypassed our advanced midfield lines with a single pass to exploit the space behind us.

Because Egypt sat in a disciplined, low block bank of four, our central play became stagnant. We spent the first hour stubbornly attempting to force passes directly through a congested middle instead of utilizing wide areas to stretch their defensive lines. Alvarez was completely isolated and starved of service because Egypt successfully choked out the passing lanes into the final third.

I also personally think that the attack was also too much reliant on Messi for both scoring and creating chances.

We only advanced because of Messi magic and Scaloni’s desperate second half tactical substitutions.

Looking ahead, we should hopefully edge past Switzerland. After that, we face either England or Norway, which is going to be extremely difficult.

What do y'all think?

We moved out the day I found photographs of my daughter playing with her... from twenty years before she was born.

The war between the two kingdoms — Tokar and Osden — lasted four years and seven decimal eight nine quadrillion nanoseconds. The war destroyed grand cities, bankrupted merchant guilds and snake milkers, and resolved a border dispute in favor of a river that dried up the next summer.

It started with a hat.

Lord Envoy Pesric of Osden wore his indoors at the annual summit. In Osden, keeping a hat on was courtesy. Removing it was for funerals and executions (though it was kept on during torture sessions). In Tokar, wearing a hat indoors meant you considered the room dirtier beneath your subungual debris. King Tauvar of Tokar smiled politely, after seeing Lord Pesric and his hat, because kings must smile at diplomatic meetings. He said nothing, because kings don't talk rudely in summits. He went to bed furious.

Tokar and Osden shared no common language, so they had brought interpreters, who were hired to prevent exactly this type of misunderstanding. Tauvar's interpreter had learned Osdeni from a fishmonger in Braal, who had learned it from a convicted blacksmith who had mostly made it up. Pesric's interpreter understood Tokari perfectly and was owed forty coins by Tauvar's interpreter since an illegal game of cards in 1208 and had judged the situation professionally and morally and decided the coins came first.

It's not untrue that there was no one who did not fail to avoid leaving everything completely unclarified.

Forty-two thousand deads later, the monarchs and the diplomats sat down to sign the peace treaty, removed their hats simultaneously as a gesture of good will, and laughed like folks trying to quench a forest fire by spitting on it. Well, to be fair, the fire did extinguish.

But the burned trees never came back.

I personally am quite happy but not completely satisfied.