World Cup 2026 Thread

[Leoghann]

Btw, this was inevitable

FA may challenge Jarell Quansah suspension

England are weighing up a challenge to Jarell Quansah’s suspension for their World Cup quarter-final in the fallout from Folarin Balogun’s ban getting reviewed.

sports.yahoo.com

Not only was the suspension not overturned, but…

https://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/bre...games-after-red-card-vs-mexico-172518608.html

Edit: Since I’m incapable of getting these links to embed, he got a two game ban.

 

[VinatieriDefinesClutch]

I really really really hope the second match is just because of them going full England and trying to challenge it cause of the Balogan situation. In that case it's a perfectly fair appeal process, the US appealed a completely bogus red card and got it overturned and England tried to appeal a blatantly obvious red card and got an extra game as punishment.

 

[jeffbear]

Look … I’m well past looking for fairness or consistency from FIFA, but that second game is kind of silly to me. And maybe all this bruhaha accomplishes in the end is justifying FIFA’s lack of a formal appeals process. If everybody’s gonna appeal everything then I get the “just take your medicine and shut up” approach to the whole thing. It’s easier to resist political pressure and the temptation to be petty by saying … hey, there’s no process to change any of this, so …

 

[jeffbear]

Meanwhile on the pitch, France just ground a very, very good Morocco team into a fine powder and dusted them off 2-0. Expected goals for that one were comedic, but accurate. I think Morocco ended up generating something like .15 xG and honestly that felt a little generous. They managed to possess the ball a fair amount, but created nothing. At all. Meanwhile France were just all over them. That is a deeply impressive team.

 

[Leoghann]

After all of the preemptive conspiracy peddling about how the Argentinian refs were going to screw over the Moroccans, the biggest controversy ended up being the VAR review of the penalty that Mbappé ended up missing. Which, to be fair, was a stupidly long review.

 

[jeffbear]

It WAS a stupidly long review.

Fun story … I was at an NWSL game in Orlando the first year they started using VAR, but they had too few cameras so the reviews always took forever. So, they pause to check a potential foul in the box which takes a good 3-4 minutes before, it being Orlando in the evening, the heavens opened up with one of those ungodly Florida thunderstorms. There was lightning so they had to clear the stadium for about 30 minutes. When they came back, the ref calmly walked up the to drink cooler where they stored the iPad and resumed the review … and proceeded to take ANOTHER 5 minutes before he waived off the foul. All told, that VAR review took a total of 45 minutes.

 

[VinatieriDefinesClutch]

My friend asked me what the likelihood of Spain just really battering Belgium to help him feel some revenge for the US. I told him if by battering, you meant a 1-0 unwatchable win, sure. I was wrong on the total number of scored goals, but nailed it otherwise.