The Official 2018 FIFA World Cup Thread

#776
#776
Belgium is basically the first team premier league all stars and England has the Premier League reserves minus Harry Kane.
 
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#777
#777
Persian Vol said:
They’re talented. But they’re not as loaded as Belgium or France in terms of talent. Modric is a superstar and they also have fantastic players around him. But Belgium is on a different level of loaded.
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I'm still scratching my head how a country of 11.3m people has produced a team that talented, both on paper and on the field.

11 out of their 23 rostered players (48%) play for either Chelsea, Liverpool, Man City, Man United, or Tottenham. Two others play for PSG (Meunier) and Barcelona (Vermaelen), and Vermaelen hasn't even been playing. Their backup keeper, Mignolet, would be starting for most other teams in the tournament.

They are not just very good, but basically loaded, at every single position group.

The only drawback I can see, and you have to get nitpicky to see it, is that their defensemen are pretty offensive-minded and aren't true, shut down-defense types (I think you might have said this before, PV). Perhaps that hurts them against France or a team in the final, but they did just fine against Neymar and Brazil.
 
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#787
#787
ButchPlz said:
These people aren't even French.
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It kind of never really has been:

The France national team has long reflected the ethnic diversity of the country. Already in its first decades, there were in the France national team players that were considered of non-"genuinely" French origin, being descendants of immigrants of former colonies of the French Colonial Empire or of European countries neighboring France. The first black player to play in the national team was Raoul Diagne in 1931. Diagne was the son of the first African elected to the French National Assembly, Blaise Diagne. Seven years later, Diagne played on the 1938 FIFA World Cup team that featured Abdelkader Ben Bouali, and Michel Brusseaux, who were the first players of North African descent to play for the national team. At the 1958 World Cup, in which France reached the semi-finals, many sons of immigrants (such as Raymond Kopa, Just Fontaine, Roger Piantoni, Maryan Wisnieski and Bernard Chiarelli) were integral to the team's success. The tradition has since continued, with successful French players such as Michel Platini, Jean Tigana, Manuel Amoros, Eric Cantona, Zinedine Zidane, Patrick Vieira, David Trezeguet, Claude Makélélé, Samir Nasri, Hatem Ben Arfa and Karim Benzema all having either one or both of their parents foreign-born.
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With the exception of Lemar and Umtiti, they were all born in France though.
 
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#794
#794
Hate to see France move on, with the way they play. It reminds me of Italy in recent World Cups. Play defense 90% of the game, and just hope you can score on a set-piece or some sort of a counter. Italy had Balotelli and France has Mbappe.
Here's hoping Croatia or England can beat them on Sunday.
Spoiler: They won't!
 
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