How would England beat France in the World Cup final? Their ‘three-point plan’ revealed… | OneFootball

It feels like a few countries might want a bit more input but England are already plotting a Liverpool-inspired World Cup final against France.

Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com.

That awkward moment when a no-name, D-List ‘celebrity’ is shown on World Cup™ TV for 15 seconds and no one has a bloody idea who the fk he is… Muthama Gitonga, Nyeri (Mount Kenya) PS-Big up to Taylor Swift and Shakira for repping for all the ladies

Best league in the world?

All the England players to have scored in this world cup all play outside of England. Fas

How to beat France

Beating France is tricky, but here’s a possible solution…channel Liverpool against AC 2005 and Barcelona 2019 with this 3 point plan: 1 – be fairly decent at football

2 – have a leader on the pitch and other players ranging from top quality to ‘why are you playing in a final?’

3 – get the gods of football to decide it’s your day to be insanely lucky

Think England could be sorted on 1 & 2, but 3 could be tricky…

…ah sht that brings me back to start. Aidan, Lfc (dunno who I want to win, but if Belgium promise to do that dance when being presented the trophy, it’s them)

Messi business

Just read your teams that Fifa least want to win the World Cup article and I suppose I’ll take the bait.

‘Fixing it for him again, aren’t they? For Lionel Messi? Not immediately clear why they’re still fixing it for him to win it, because our understanding from Very Normal Online Ronaldo Stans was that it was to make sure he had more World Cups than their hero’

Has anyone ever actually said this? I think not.

Regarding the decisions that have favoured them; ‘if anyone is minded to be intellectually honest about it for five minutes, were irritating mainly because they were correct.’

Erm, what?

Nobody wants to read someone list all the calls again or the statements/behavior of Infantino because thankfully it appears the majority, including the mainstream can no longer ignore it, so instead I’d like to pose a question.

Considering that (surely) we can all agree Fifa is an inherently corrupt organization, with its main priority above all else being money, is it really beyond the realms of possibility that said organization would look to influence the outcome of its tournament in order to maximize revenue and engagement?

If you’re honest with yourself, you already know the answer.

All the best, RB

The fix is in

So I’m going full tinfoil hat mode now. Does anyone find the length of Jarell Quansah’s extension a little curious? I mean usually for a player to get an extension it is due to some sort of serious intentional foul play and in most instances it’s extended far more than 2 games to highlight the seriousness of the offence.

I asked my American friend Chad G Peaty if there were any other examples of a one game ban being extended to two and he said there’s been the following:

Phillip Cocu (Holland) – 2005 World Cup qualifying. Sent off for an elbow

Makoto Hasebe (Japan) – 2010 World Cup qualifying. Sent off for an elbow

Saedi Ezatolahi (Iran) – 2018 World Cup qualifying. Sent off for a stamp on a players head

Then there’s quansah’s challenge.

Now I think we can all agree that Quansah’s challenge was reckless but it was no different from pretty much any other red card that we’ve seen over the years, if anything I’d say it’s a little tame comparatively. He does get the ball and he is a little unfortunate that his leg lands on top of the ball causing him to catch the player more so on the follow through.

Even if you say it is bad it is by no means in the same bracket as elbows and stamps on the head. Both intentional and malicious in their nature.

Now why would FIFA extend the ban and only extend it by a further game? Well it’s been well documented how short we are currently for right back options so this decision obviously weakens us. Could it be that FIFA have looked at the possible route for England and their golden goose in Argentina (Messi) and seized this opportunity to give them an advantage? They’re so blinkered to how obvious their corruption is that they’ve probably thought that anything like a 3 game ban would look unduly excessive so they’ve thought that a 2 game ban wouldn’t arouse suspicion but would still achieve their goal.

I hope that I’m wrong and that all the decisions that suggest systematic bias are just good old fashioned incompetence. I hope that there are no more sacrificial lambs to satisfy Infantino’s desires. I hope we are not witnessing the slow death of the game that we know and love. I hope. Anthony, Kilburn

Trump card

Dave Tickner wrote an entertaining ranking of the 8 world cup quarter finalists. It was a great idea and is obviously just meant to be amusing.

That said, I can’t help but write in to mock Tickner’s suggestion that Donald Trump would be more upset about presenting the world cup trophy to Belgium, than he would be to Spain or France.

Tickers, you might want to read the news from time to time. If you did, you would know that there are few world leaders that he has problems with than Emmanuel Macron, and that Spain is basically enemy #2 on his s***list, after Iran. Oliver Dziggel, Geneva Switzerland (are going to win the World Cup)

The art of VAR

Whilst I have sympathy for the Egyptians and had no desire for Argentina to advance, I think the narrative around the two decisions appears to be getting a bit silly.

On the disallowed goal, IFAB rules say the entire phase of play leading up to the goal is checked for a foul. If you win possession with a foul and score without the opposition having meaningful possession in between then expect that goal to be disallowed. This is exactly what happens to Egypt.

Was it a foul? Well he trod on his foot so yes. Soft? Maybe but certainly capable of putting someone on the deck. Studs on top of your foot is painful (though my experience is generally limited to large pallets and rocks). Was it clear and obvious? I will come back to this but that probably depends on whether the ref saw the contact or not. If he saw it and decided it was not foul worthy then that can’t be clear and obvious. If he didn’t see then I say it can. But will revisit later.

The penalty call. Well that’s just not a foul in any form of football I’ve ever seen. Alvarez gets the ball then Salah dives over his foot. It’s just not a penalty. Play on.

It should also be pointed out that Egypt would still only have been two nil up if that goal had been given, with no guarantee of a third. In fact they did get the two goal lead and were incapable of holding on to it, even before the penalty/non-penalty call. They conceded three in about thirteen minutes. Could it be the case that all this is outrage is confected purely to distract from an absolute bottling?

Finally, back to VAR. At the beginning of the tournament they let more go and it was brilliant. But since the knockouts have started we’ve gotten much more finicky decisions. The penalty against Kane, Germany’s disallowed goal. Both correct but less likely to have been reviewed earlier in the tournament. I think the disallowed goal here fits with those and whilst I can  capably argue it was the correct decision I don’t think that’s the sort of one we want to review. I can understand why they’re looking closer as it gets more important but it’s less fun. The threshold for intervention needs to be higher.

Of course, had the goal been given and Argentina gone on to lose, we’d probably not have heard the last of it from the Argentinians. Could’ve been fun. Ashmundo

If Egypt’s goal can be ruled out because Martinez had his foot stood on tripping him up in the build up, why wasn’t the same logic used in the Egypt vs New Zealand game?

In the build up to Egypt’s second goal, Ben Old had a tumble and had his scrotum stood on that bloodied his shorts that he had to later change. He was writhing in pain on the pitch as would you if you had your bollocks stood on. But Egypt just quickly took their throw in and went down the pitch and scored their second goal.

FIFA chief refereeing officer Pierluigi Collina has said “nobody can question the integrity” of the match officials.

“After every goal is scored, the VAR checks the attacking possession phase (APP). If a foul is identified in the build-up and is deemed to have had an impact on the goal, the VAR will recommend an on-field review. There is no defined limit regarding either the distance from goal or the amount of time between the incident and the goal..

So why was that not done for Egypt’s second goal against NZ? Or are we ok with standing on people’s balls now?

Or maybe knocking out a nation with a 110m population and a superstar player is not the done thing…