What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

2024 Summer of Soccer - Euro's, Copa America, Olympics, WCQing (2 Viewers)

I wonder if watching this tournament has made the fans who want Concacaf to combine fully with Conmebol reconsider their position?

If people think things were crazy here in the US, it would escalate playing down in South America.
 
I don't understand how any of this nonsense is acceptable or why the morons running the show can't seem to prevent it.

Does anything like this happen in any other sport? What has become routine in soccer is unheard of in every other sport on the planet.

It's a complete embarrassment on many different levels.
 
Let's get an Englishman's take on the Fox coverage the day after England loses.

In a scary world, the calamity of Fox Sports’ soccer coverage offers a strange calm
Lalas, predictably, has been at the heart of Fox’s slickest on-screen moves this summer, and despite a slow start – in which it appeared he’d been deployed as a clown, a pure American idiot to entertain the Europeans on set – he’s grown into the summer impressively. Ponying up in a pastel suite of summer suits from Men’s Wearhouse, his thinning orange locks swept into a Trumpy scroll, the Big A has commanded the desk from his far-right perch with customary charmlessness and belligerence. In a tournament filled with “creative moments of the half, sponsored by IBM”, Lalas often appears to be sponsored by IBS, launching into his uncontrollable verbal tirades (“HOLY SCHICK!”, “THIS IS THE NEW ROMANTIC WAY TO PLAY MY FRIEND!”, “VAR SAYS NEIN!”) with the projectile force of a bout of diarrhea. As Lalas has asserted himself over his on-air colleagues, Fox’s panels have suffered, with Daniel Sturridge (a richly unhinged talent Fox should be getting way more out of) reduced to shouting inanities like “They have to get as much points as possible!” and Schmeichel trudging through his lines like a disappointed dad while Lex sits poised at the end of the panel ready to land his zingers and power rankings (God, so many power rankings) and the dead air of Fox’s auto-generated Teutonic set threatens to suck everyone into the currents of the fake Rhine pictured behind them. Lalas is a man who would power rank his own farts, if given the opportunity – and the way things are going on Fox, he probably will come 2026. There can be no real improvement in the coverage of soccer in this country as long as this man continues to have a job.

On the other hand, the beauty of Fox’s soccer team is that it has so many different routes to an own goal. If the theme of the footballing summer is that players you maybe thought were past their prime are still among the elite – Pepe, Xherdan Shaqiri, N’Golo Kanté, Alexis Sánchez – Fox’s coverage has seemed determined to show that all the pundits you hated last time round are as bad as ever. Hockey maestro JP Dellacamera hasn’t quite hit the heights of last year’s Women’s World Cup, when he called the Ballon d’Or the “Ballon Dior”, but he’s sprinkled his match commentary with just enough shrieks of “Denied!”, “Ball in!” and “Shot!” to never release us from the ambient sense that we’re actually watching a low-stakes US college athletics meet. Stu Holden has squeaked through his shifts in commentary and on the panel in a series of increasingly loud suits, a perpetual intern. Warren Barton continues his one-man mission to do away with all the fancy continental nonsense of passing and triangles and playing out from the back and return the game to its roots in hard work, grit, getting stuck in, and “putting the ball in an area”. (After the round of 16 clash between Romania and the Netherlands, Barton noted of Denzel Dumfries: “Time and time again he went forward, putting balls into the area”. OK man we get it, you love crosses.)

Rob Stone missed a big chunk of the action in Qatar after losing his voice, but he’s bounced back to form in LA, earnestly adopting Fifa’s idiotic geographical branding by placing MetLife Stadium in “the New York, New Jersey area”, cementing his credentials as a company man by claiming the USMNT, following its abysmal Copa exit, “needs to go big” with its next managerial appointment “like Fox Sports did when they hired Tom Brady”, and describing Cristiano Ronaldo as “the man in the hat”, simply because at that point in time, pictured on screen, Ronaldo happened to be wearing a hat.

And then, of course, there’s Donovan – Fox’s star man in the gantry, a lawn mower made flesh and blood. After Nico Williams missed an easy header in front of goal early in Spain’s group match against Italy, Donovan flatly intoned, “What a chance this is for Nico Williams, he’s going to have nightmares about this Ian” – and you could tell that the nightmare had already begun with Donovan’s delivery, the syllables unvarying in pitch and volume, the drama of on-field events communicated with all the emotional intensity of a dot matrix printer. But Donovan has range, and this is what makes him so magnetic as a media performer. At one point during Serbia v England Ian Darke asked him a question and Donovan simply … didn’t respond. The great commentators have the gift of letting the action speak for itself; Donovan has the gift of just not speaking. It’s a rare talent that can take all the excitement of international football and drain it of any semblance of life, but this is the unique gift that keeps the Fox suits coming back to the Donovanian well, year after year. The Covid pandemic will be nothing next to the mass extinction event likely once this man is set loose on a World Cup on home soil.



Mangled pronunciations have decorated Fox’s coverage of these two tournaments, establishing the network’s bona fides as a center of American exceptionalism untroubled by foreign linguistic norms. Lalas has chomped out Didier Deschamps as “Deh-shomps” and parped Christoph Baumgartner as “Bum gardener”; Aurélien Tchouaméni has emerged, from various lips, as “Chew-many”, “Shao-mayny”, “Chewa-mayny”, and “Chow-mania”; Dellacamara mixed James Rodríguez with tahini, garlic, olive oil and chickpeas to produce “Hummus Rodríguez”. For the Romanian team – with its bewildering battery of Mans, Marins, Burcǎs, Bancus, Stancius, Drăgușes and Drăgușins – the Fox commentators have done whatever they want, sidestepping the messy business of matching the sounds in their mouths to the letters on the page altogether and randomly calling players “Borker”, “Marine” or “Goose” as necessary. Country-level name changes have proved even more confounding. Czechia has become “Checkyaaaa”. Türkiye? Turkey yay!
:ROFLMAO: :moneybag:
 
Until 2026...

The EuroCopa Big Board™
Goals By Club
187
Inter Milan (ITA)
10​
Real Madrid (ESP)
8​
Liverpool (ENG)
7​
Bayern Munich (GER)
6​
Borussia Dortmund (GER)
6​
Barcelona (ESP)
5​
Manchester City (ENG)
5​
RB Leipzig (GER)
5​
Bayer Leverkusen (GER)
4​
Crystal Palace (ENG)
4​
Manchester United (ENG)
4​
Monaco (FRA)
4​
Paris Saint-Germain (FRA)
4​
Slavia Prague (CZE)
4​
Arsenal (ENG)
3​
Bologna (ITA)
3​
Metz (FRA)
3​
Pachuca (MEX)
3​
West Ham United (ENG)
3​
AC Milan (ITA)
2​
Al-Ahli (KSA)
2​
Aston Villa (ENG)
2​
Athletic Bilbao (ESP)
2​
Atlético Madrid (ESP)
2​
Empoli (ITA)
2​
Galatasaray (TUR)
2​
Inter Miami (USA)
2​
Krasnodar (RUS)
2​
Lille (FRA)
2​
Mazatlán (MEX)
2​
Napoli (ITA)
2​
Real Sociedad (ESP)
2​
Toluca (MEX)
2​
Tottenham Hotspur (ENG)
2​
TSG Hoffenheim (GER)
2​
Universidad Católica (ECU)
2​
Antalyaspor (TUR)
1​
Atlético Nacional (COL)
1​
Beşiktaş (TUR)
1​
Brighton & Hove Albion (ENG)
1​
Celje (SVN)
1​
Cercle Brugge KSV (BEL)
1​
Chelsea (ENG)
1​
Chicago Fire (USA)
1​
Damac (KSA)
1​
Darmstadt 98 (GER)
1​
Dynamo Kyiv (UKR)
1​
Famalicão (POR)
1​
FC Augsburg (GER)
1​
Fenerbahçe (TUR)
1​
Ferencváros (HUN)
1​
Feyenoord (NED)
1​
Flamengo (BRA)
1​
Gaziantep (TUR)
1​
Getafe (ESP)
1​
Girona (ESP)
1​
Górnik Zabrze (POL)
1​
Granada (ESP)
1​
Hellas Verona (ITA)
1​
Independiente del Valle (ECU)
1​
Ipswich Town (ENG2)
1​
İstanbul Başakşehir (TUR)
1​
Juárez (MEX)
1​
Lazio (ITA)
1​
Ludogorets (BUL)
1​
Marseille (FRA)
1​
Monterrey (MEX)
1​
Nashville SC (USA)
1​
Palmeiras (BRA)
1​
Panathinaikos (GRE)
1​
Porto (POR)
1​
River Plate (ARG)
1​
San Carlos (CRC)
1​
São Paulo (BRA)
1​
Sassuolo (ITA)
1​
SC Freiburg (GER)
1​
Slovan Bratislava (SVK)
1​
Sparta Prague (CZE)
1​
Sporting CP (POR)
1​
Talleres (ARG)
1​
The Strongest (BOL)
1​
Újpest (HUN)
1​
Union Saint-Gilloise (BEL)
1​
Valencia (ESP)
1​
Watford (ENG2)
1​
Werder Bremen (GER)
1​
Westerlo (BEL)
1​
Zorya Luhansk (UKR)
1​
(OG) Anderlecht (BEL)
1​
(OG) Bologna (ITA)
1​
(OG) Borussia Dortmund (GER)
1​
(OG) Borussia Mönchengladbach (GER)
1​
(OG) Darmstadt 98 (GER)
1​
(OG) Fenerbahçe (TUR)
1​
(OG) Panathinaikos (GRE)
1​
(OG) Real Madrid (ESP)
1​
(OG) Real Sociedad (ESP)
1​
(OG) Viktoria Plzeň (CZE)
1​
Goals By League
187
Premier League (ENG)
32​
Bundesliga (GER)
27​
La Liga (ESP)
23​
Serie A (ITA)
22​
Ligue 1 (FRA)
14​
Liga MX (MEX)
9​
Süper Lig (TUR)
7​
Czech First League (CZE)
5​
Major League Soccer (USA)
4​
Belgian Pro League (BEL)
3​
Campeonato Brasileiro Série A (BRA)
3​
Liga Pro Ecuador Serie A (ECU)
3​
Primeira Liga (POR)
3​
Saudi Pro League (KSA)
3​
Argentine Primera División (ARG)
2​
EFL Championship (ENG2)
2​
Nemzeti Bajnokság I (HUN)
2​
Russian Premier League (RUS)
2​
Ukrainian Premier League (UKR)
2​
1. liga (SVK)
1​
Categoría Primera A (COL)
1​
División Profesional (BOL)
1​
Ekstraklasa (POL)
1​
Eredivisie (NED)
1​
First Professional Football League (BUL)
1​
Liga FPD (CRC)
1​
Slovenian PrvaLiga (SVN)
1​
Super League Greece 1 (GRE)
1​
(OG) Bundesliga (GER)
3​
(OG) La Liga (ESP)
2​
(OG) Belgian Pro League (BEL)
1​
(OG) Czech First League (CZE)
1​
(OG) Serie A (ITA)
1​
(OG) Super League Greece 1 (GRE)
1​
(OG) Süper Lig (TUR)
1​
 
I don't understand how any of this nonsense is acceptable or why the morons running the show can't seem to prevent it.

Does anything like this happen in any other sport? What has become routine in soccer is unheard of in every other sport on the planet.

It's a complete embarrassment on many different levels.
And sadly, as others have pointed out, this isn't even close to the bottom either. The things that happen in African soccer tournaments make this Copa look amazing.

The sport is incredibly popular in spite of the people running the sport all over the world, never because of them.
 
That was a fun month. Going to miss centering my afternoons around quality matches and then complaining about Copa in the evening. Also a bit misty eyed that there's really no interesting sport until September 5th :kicksrock:
 
Hopefully this is how WC 2026 will be handled

=========

But ticketless fans are a fixture at major international soccer matches, especially in South America. Sunday only devolved into a harrowing experience because organizers failed to prepare for them — and failed to properly care for the 65,000 ticketed fans whose money they’d taken.

There was a quite obvious solution, a well-rehearsed strategy with which many foreign soccer fans are familiar. If you go to a World Cup game or a European final, there are multiple security perimeters, at least two heavily reinforced layers of protection between the outside world and the stadium. In Argentina, when I went to Copa Libertadores group-stage games last year, there were at least three checkpoints. Fans had to show a ticket several blocks away from La Bombonera or El Monumental. A block later, they had to show identification. They were patted down. Near the entrance, ticket checks again.

The stringent security deters ticketless fans. And if some do try to sneak through, the multiple layers help ensure that a backlog of fans doesn’t spiral into a perilous mess.

In Miami on Sunday, there was none of that.

There were only overwhelmed security personnel and police officers scrambling to mitigate the mess with the only means they know: excessive force
 
That was a fun month. Going to miss centering my afternoons around quality matches and then complaining about Copa in the evening. Also a bit misty eyed that there's really no interesting sport until September 5th :kicksrock:
It won't be stellar, but the Olympic soccer tournament should be half way decent.

And if you enjoy women's soccer, the Olympic tournament is second only to the WC in importance.
 
That was a fun month. Going to miss centering my afternoons around quality matches and then complaining about Copa in the evening. Also a bit misty eyed that there's really no interesting sport until September 5th :kicksrock:
It won't be stellar, but the Olympic soccer tournament should be half way decent.

And if you enjoy women's soccer, the Olympic tournament is second only to the WC in importance.

Good point about Olympic soccer. Definitely appreciate your level of expertise in here NewlyRetired. I don't follow the US team or MLS closely but you seem to have most things soccer related on lock :thumbup:
 
Let's get an Englishman's take on the Fox coverage the day after England loses.

In a scary world, the calamity of Fox Sports’ soccer coverage offers a strange calm
Lalas, predictably, has been at the heart of Fox’s slickest on-screen moves this summer, and despite a slow start – in which it appeared he’d been deployed as a clown, a pure American idiot to entertain the Europeans on set – he’s grown into the summer impressively. Ponying up in a pastel suite of summer suits from Men’s Wearhouse, his thinning orange locks swept into a Trumpy scroll, the Big A has commanded the desk from his far-right perch with customary charmlessness and belligerence. In a tournament filled with “creative moments of the half, sponsored by IBM”, Lalas often appears to be sponsored by IBS, launching into his uncontrollable verbal tirades (“HOLY SCHICK!”, “THIS IS THE NEW ROMANTIC WAY TO PLAY MY FRIEND!”, “VAR SAYS NEIN!”) with the projectile force of a bout of diarrhea. As Lalas has asserted himself over his on-air colleagues, Fox’s panels have suffered, with Daniel Sturridge (a richly unhinged talent Fox should be getting way more out of) reduced to shouting inanities like “They have to get as much points as possible!” and Schmeichel trudging through his lines like a disappointed dad while Lex sits poised at the end of the panel ready to land his zingers and power rankings (God, so many power rankings) and the dead air of Fox’s auto-generated Teutonic set threatens to suck everyone into the currents of the fake Rhine pictured behind them. Lalas is a man who would power rank his own farts, if given the opportunity – and the way things are going on Fox, he probably will come 2026. There can be no real improvement in the coverage of soccer in this country as long as this man continues to have a job.

On the other hand, the beauty of Fox’s soccer team is that it has so many different routes to an own goal. If the theme of the footballing summer is that players you maybe thought were past their prime are still among the elite – Pepe, Xherdan Shaqiri, N’Golo Kanté, Alexis Sánchez – Fox’s coverage has seemed determined to show that all the pundits you hated last time round are as bad as ever. Hockey maestro JP Dellacamera hasn’t quite hit the heights of last year’s Women’s World Cup, when he called the Ballon d’Or the “Ballon Dior”, but he’s sprinkled his match commentary with just enough shrieks of “Denied!”, “Ball in!” and “Shot!” to never release us from the ambient sense that we’re actually watching a low-stakes US college athletics meet. Stu Holden has squeaked through his shifts in commentary and on the panel in a series of increasingly loud suits, a perpetual intern. Warren Barton continues his one-man mission to do away with all the fancy continental nonsense of passing and triangles and playing out from the back and return the game to its roots in hard work, grit, getting stuck in, and “putting the ball in an area”. (After the round of 16 clash between Romania and the Netherlands, Barton noted of Denzel Dumfries: “Time and time again he went forward, putting balls into the area”. OK man we get it, you love crosses.)

Rob Stone missed a big chunk of the action in Qatar after losing his voice, but he’s bounced back to form in LA, earnestly adopting Fifa’s idiotic geographical branding by placing MetLife Stadium in “the New York, New Jersey area”, cementing his credentials as a company man by claiming the USMNT, following its abysmal Copa exit, “needs to go big” with its next managerial appointment “like Fox Sports did when they hired Tom Brady”, and describing Cristiano Ronaldo as “the man in the hat”, simply because at that point in time, pictured on screen, Ronaldo happened to be wearing a hat.

And then, of course, there’s Donovan – Fox’s star man in the gantry, a lawn mower made flesh and blood. After Nico Williams missed an easy header in front of goal early in Spain’s group match against Italy, Donovan flatly intoned, “What a chance this is for Nico Williams, he’s going to have nightmares about this Ian” – and you could tell that the nightmare had already begun with Donovan’s delivery, the syllables unvarying in pitch and volume, the drama of on-field events communicated with all the emotional intensity of a dot matrix printer. But Donovan has range, and this is what makes him so magnetic as a media performer. At one point during Serbia v England Ian Darke asked him a question and Donovan simply … didn’t respond. The great commentators have the gift of letting the action speak for itself; Donovan has the gift of just not speaking. It’s a rare talent that can take all the excitement of international football and drain it of any semblance of life, but this is the unique gift that keeps the Fox suits coming back to the Donovanian well, year after year. The Covid pandemic will be nothing next to the mass extinction event likely once this man is set loose on a World Cup on home soil.



Mangled pronunciations have decorated Fox’s coverage of these two tournaments, establishing the network’s bona fides as a center of American exceptionalism untroubled by foreign linguistic norms. Lalas has chomped out Didier Deschamps as “Deh-shomps” and parped Christoph Baumgartner as “Bum gardener”; Aurélien Tchouaméni has emerged, from various lips, as “Chew-many”, “Shao-mayny”, “Chewa-mayny”, and “Chow-mania”; Dellacamara mixed James Rodríguez with tahini, garlic, olive oil and chickpeas to produce “Hummus Rodríguez”. For the Romanian team – with its bewildering battery of Mans, Marins, Burcǎs, Bancus, Stancius, Drăgușes and Drăgușins – the Fox commentators have done whatever they want, sidestepping the messy business of matching the sounds in their mouths to the letters on the page altogether and randomly calling players “Borker”, “Marine” or “Goose” as necessary. Country-level name changes have proved even more confounding. Czechia has become “Checkyaaaa”. Türkiye? Turkey yay!
:ROFLMAO: :moneybag:

This is funny, but hearing a Brit complain about mangled pronunciations is the definition of hypocrisy. They are the absolute worst at this. It's like they dont even try to pronounce names correctly. How many times did we hear someone say "Argentiner" last night?
 
Saw a stat last night. Harry Kane has had one touch in the opponent's box ONCE in the last two Euros.
I could not find the final stats - but after the group stage Foden had more passes to Pickford than to Kane.

And, I think Foden's first pass in the Final went to Pickford.

Kane is past his best - but you can't expect to win with that kind of dysfunction.
 
Wonder what the aftermath is going to look like with all of the chargebacks and refund requests from ticketholders that were denied entry last night.
 
Saw a stat last night. Harry Kane has had one touch in the opponent's box ONCE in the last two Euros.

Maybe I am confused on the stat definition but Kane scored 3 goals this tournament. 1 was from the PK (and as such not a touch) but the other two were scored inside the box, first time shot and header.

Are first time direct shots/headers not considered a touch?
 
Wonder what the aftermath is going to look like with all of the chargebacks and refund requests from ticketholders that were denied entry last night.
I don't know how they solve this fiasco.

Since they gave up and let people in with out knowing if they had tickets are not to avoid a stampede, they have no way of knowing who actually attended and who did not.
 
Saw a stat last night. Harry Kane has had one touch in the opponent's box ONCE in the last two Euros.

Maybe I am confused on the stat definition but Kane scored 3 goals this tournament. 1 was from the PK (and as such not a touch) but the other two were scored inside the box, first time shot and header.

Are direct shots not considered a touch?
It was from The Athletic on threads via Opta Stats. Trying to look deeper.
 
Lots of deserved disdain for the Fox presentation.

But I'll say, I liked LDs color commentary. Anybody that complains about his SoCal flat delivery and isn't paying attention to the quality things he says obviously doesn't really care too much about the sport. I'll take his monotone over vocal histrionics signifying bupkis any day.
 
Saw a stat last night. Harry Kane has had one touch in the opponent's box ONCE in the last two Euros.

Maybe I am confused on the stat definition but Kane scored 3 goals this tournament. 1 was from the PK (and as such not a touch) but the other two were scored inside the box, first time shot and header.

Are direct shots not considered a touch?
It was from The Athletic on threads via Opta Stats. Trying to look deeper.

I'm guessing what they meant was he only had one touch in the opponent's box yesterday against Spain, and that was the only time that happened in the last two Euros.
 
Saw a stat last night. Harry Kane has had one touch in the opponent's box ONCE in the last two Euros.

Maybe I am confused on the stat definition but Kane scored 3 goals this tournament. 1 was from the PK (and as such not a touch) but the other two were scored inside the box, first time shot and header.

Are direct shots not considered a touch?
It was from The Athletic on threads via Opta Stats. Trying to look deeper.

hmm. Here are the Opta definitions. A shot appears to be a touch......I may be misunderstanding since the stat comes directly from Opta about Kane

 
Saw a stat last night. Harry Kane has had one touch in the opponent's box ONCE in the last two Euros.

Maybe I am confused on the stat definition but Kane scored 3 goals this tournament. 1 was from the PK (and as such not a touch) but the other two were scored inside the box, first time shot and header.

Are direct shots not considered a touch?
It was from The Athletic on threads via Opta Stats. Trying to look deeper.

I'm guessing what they meant was he only had one touch in the opponent's box yesterday against Spain, and that was the only time that happened in the last two Euros.
oh that makes much more sense. Thank you!!
 
Lots of deserved disdain for the Fox presentation.

But I'll say, I liked LDs color commentary. Anybody that complains about his SoCal flat delivery and isn't paying attention to the quality things he says obviously doesn't really care too much about the sport. I'll take his monotone over vocal histrionics signifying bupkis any day.

For me he's like the Tony Romo of soccer. He rambles on sometimes and trips over his words a lot because he has a lot to get out and can't get his thoughts organized, but his actual insight into the game is top notch.

The Kane PK against Netherlands he was the only one that thought it was something they were going to take a look at. He was saying it might be a PK when the other announcer and the "expert ref commentator" guy were both rolling their eyes at the thought of it. Then they initiated VAR and the ref commentator guy was like "oh yea well from errrr that uhhh other angle that I totally didn't see it's definitely something they should take a look at".
 
Saw a stat last night. Harry Kane has had one touch in the opponent's box ONCE in the last two Euros.

Maybe I am confused on the stat definition but Kane scored 3 goals this tournament. 1 was from the PK (and as such not a touch) but the other two were scored inside the box, first time shot and header.

Are direct shots not considered a touch?
It was from The Athletic on threads via Opta Stats. Trying to look deeper.

I'm guessing what they meant was he only had one touch in the opponent's box yesterday against Spain, and that was the only time that happened in the last two Euros.
I think it was covering Kane's touches in the box - across both finals - this year, and in 2021 against Italy.
 
Saw a stat last night. Harry Kane has had one touch in the opponent's box ONCE in the last two Euros.

Maybe I am confused on the stat definition but Kane scored 3 goals this tournament. 1 was from the PK (and as such not a touch) but the other two were scored inside the box, first time shot and header.

Are direct shots not considered a touch?
It was from The Athletic on threads via Opta Stats. Trying to look deeper.

I'm guessing what they meant was he only had one touch in the opponent's box yesterday against Spain, and that was the only time that happened in the last two Euros.
I think it was covering Kane's touches in the box - across both finals - this year, and in 2021 against Italy.

This stat must have had interesting wording as everyone is interpreting it differently.

I guess in the end though, it all kind of means the same thing. Kane is not getting the ball in the box, where he thrives. The blame pie for that is probably 75% coaching/25% players.
 
What a great month of soccer. Will definately miss it.

Though in Copa final I am not sure why Colombia took out James. The second half of the game felt like Colombia could only make chances out of set pieces and to remove him I thought really hurt there chances. His replacement had one great touch but a handful of really bad turnovers.
 
Saw a stat last night. Harry Kane has had one touch in the opponent's box ONCE in the last two Euros.

Maybe I am confused on the stat definition but Kane scored 3 goals this tournament. 1 was from the PK (and as such not a touch) but the other two were scored inside the box, first time shot and header.

Are direct shots not considered a touch?
It was from The Athletic on threads via Opta Stats. Trying to look deeper.

I'm guessing what they meant was he only had one touch in the opponent's box yesterday against Spain, and that was the only time that happened in the last two Euros.
I think it was covering Kane's touches in the box - across both finals - this year, and in 2021 against Italy.

This stat must have had interesting wording as everyone is interpreting it differently.

I guess in the end though, it all kind of means the same thing. Kane is not getting the ball in the box, where he thrives. The blame pie for that is probably 75% coaching/25% players.

This was the original tweet - I think -


OptaJoe

@OptaJoe

1 - Harry Kane had just one touch in the opposition box across the EURO 2020 and EURO 2024 finals against Italy and Spain, one fewer than Jack Grealish had; Grealish played 21 minutes in the 2020 final and didn't make the EURO 2024 squad. Uninvolved.
 
non good

=======================

The xG Philosophy
https://x.com/xGPhilosophy
@xGPhilosophy

Most xG accumulated at Euro 2024:
K. Havertz: 4.37(xG) (2)
C. Ronaldo: 3.72(xG) (0)
K. Mbappe: 3.18(xG) (1)

3 goals from 11.27(xG) between them

Best one I saw (might have been in here) - Croatia had a higher xG for the tournament than England. Croatia, of course, went out in the group stage.
 
Wonder what the aftermath is going to look like with all of the chargebacks and refund requests from ticketholders that were denied entry last night.
I don't know how they solve this fiasco.

Since they gave up and let people in with out knowing if they had tickets are not to avoid a stampede, they have no way of knowing who actually attended and who did not.
For sure. Rife for fraudulent claims too. I assume there is going to be some type of class action on this one...
 
Wonder what the aftermath is going to look like with all of the chargebacks and refund requests from ticketholders that were denied entry last night.
I don't know how they solve this fiasco.

Since they gave up and let people in with out knowing if they had tickets are not to avoid a stampede, they have no way of knowing who actually attended and who did not.
For sure. Rife for fraudulent claims too. I assume there is going to be some type of class action on this one...
It would have cost Conmebol less than $50k to set up the stadium properly to avoid what happened. That $50k would have protected more than $50m in gate revenue.

Now who knows how much it could cost them.

I am really glad that US Soccer has almost nothing to do with this tournament. We do not need any financial liability risks at this time
 
Last edited:
Lots of deserved disdain for the Fox presentation.

But I'll say, I liked LDs color commentary. Anybody that complains about his SoCal flat delivery and isn't paying attention to the quality things he says obviously doesn't really care too much about the sport. I'll take his monotone over vocal histrionics signifying bupkis any day.
LD was horrible and his "SoCal flat delivery" is the least of his issues. Being from SoCal myself, it's not a concern of mine. His lack of quality in what he says is amazing.

Pickford makes a save
LD: "He's made some great saves and that one was better than the last"
Me: "That's a save every keeper at this level should make"
LD a minute later: "That was a comfortable save by Pickford"

LD describing things starting with the England goal "That was out of nowhere"
Pass into a striker's feet "That was out of nowhere"
Spain goal "That was out of nowhere"

Just to name a few.
 
And the summer of soccer doesn't stop!

United in Norway for their first preseason game. Of course none of the Euro or Copa players are there, but the season is starting.

Rashford, Mount, Casemiro, AWB getting their fitness up.
 
Lots of deserved disdain for the Fox presentation.

But I'll say, I liked LDs color commentary. Anybody that complains about his SoCal flat delivery and isn't paying attention to the quality things he says obviously doesn't really care too much about the sport. I'll take his monotone over vocal histrionics signifying bupkis any day.
LD was horrible and his "SoCal flat delivery" is the least of his issues. Being from SoCal myself, it's not a concern of mine. His lack of quality in what he says is amazing.

Pickford makes a save
LD: "He's made some great saves and that one was better than the last"
Me: "That's a save every keeper at this level should make"
LD a minute later: "That was a comfortable save by Pickford"

LD describing things starting with the England goal "That was out of nowhere"
Pass into a striker's feet "That was out of nowhere"
Spain goal "That was out of nowhere"

Just to name a few.
Not saying he was perfect, but he also made a lot of insightful comments from a former pro level that I found useful. That's what I want from a color guy... Stuff they're seeing that I can't see- from a beyond the TV screen perspective, to a beyond my level of play perspective. Really liked how he covered all of that. What you've described feels like his more play by play veering... Which he and most color guys should avoid at all costs.
 
So who before the tournament had Phil Foden playing 622 minutes and racking up 0 goals and 0 assists?
Messi too, I think.
Messi had an assist. I got my 10x bonus points at Lowes the day after.
Wonder what the aftermath is going to look like with all of the chargebacks and refund requests from ticketholders that were denied entry last night.
I don't know how they solve this fiasco.

Since they gave up and let people in with out knowing if they had tickets are not to avoid a stampede, they have no way of knowing who actually attended and who did not.
For sure. Rife for fraudulent claims too. I assume there is going to be some type of class action on this one...
Good luck getting justice in Paraguay.
 
Lots of deserved disdain for the Fox presentation.

But I'll say, I liked LDs color commentary. Anybody that complains about his SoCal flat delivery and isn't paying attention to the quality things he says obviously doesn't really care too much about the sport. I'll take his monotone over vocal histrionics signifying bupkis any day.
LD was horrible and his "SoCal flat delivery" is the least of his issues. Being from SoCal myself, it's not a concern of mine. His lack of quality in what he says is amazing.

Pickford makes a save
LD: "He's made some great saves and that one was better than the last"
Me: "That's a save every keeper at this level should make"
LD a minute later: "That was a comfortable save by Pickford"

LD describing things starting with the England goal "That was out of nowhere"
Pass into a striker's feet "That was out of nowhere"
Spain goal "That was out of nowhere"

Just to name a few.
Not saying he was perfect, but he also made a lot of insightful comments from a former pro level that I found useful. That's what I want from a color guy... Stuff they're seeing that I can't see- from a beyond the TV screen perspective, to a beyond my level of play perspective. Really liked how he covered all of that. What you've described feels like his more play by play veering... Which he and most color guys should avoid at all costs.
I agree, this is exactly what I want from a color guy. I just don't feel like it get it from him. Cobi Jones was marginally better.
 
Lots of deserved disdain for the Fox presentation.

But I'll say, I liked LDs color commentary. Anybody that complains about his SoCal flat delivery and isn't paying attention to the quality things he says obviously doesn't really care too much about the sport. I'll take his monotone over vocal histrionics signifying bupkis any day.
LD was horrible and his "SoCal flat delivery" is the least of his issues. Being from SoCal myself, it's not a concern of mine. His lack of quality in what he says is amazing.

Pickford makes a save
LD: "He's made some great saves and that one was better than the last"
Me: "That's a save every keeper at this level should make"
LD a minute later: "That was a comfortable save by Pickford"

LD describing things starting with the England goal "That was out of nowhere"
Pass into a striker's feet "That was out of nowhere"
Spain goal "That was out of nowhere"

Just to name a few.
Not saying he was perfect, but he also made a lot of insightful comments from a former pro level that I found useful. That's what I want from a color guy... Stuff they're seeing that I can't see- from a beyond the TV screen perspective, to a beyond my level of play perspective. Really liked how he covered all of that. What you've described feels like his more play by play veering... Which he and most color guys should avoid at all costs.
I agree, this is exactly what I want from a color guy. I just don't feel like it get it from him. Cobi Jones was marginally better.
I just want the color guys to not annoy the crap out of me or become hyper focused on a particular narrative. LanDon does decent on those metrics.

Insight is a bonus for sure.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top