Uruguay deliver on promise as Russia fail first real test

Interesting, yeah. The Columbia match is just a few hours before the Belgium/England one. It's possible that it could affect how the teams come out and play.

Both England and Belgium will play to win. Any team looking for so-called easier draws in the next round aren't in the right frame of mind to be at the World Cup.

What time is it where you live? Last Thursday perhaps? 🙄

If we had to win to get the easier route we’d be absolutely going all out to win and dreading the Brazil/France/Uruguay/Spain/Germany nightmare half of the draw. I don’t see the difference, logic says play the second 11 v Belgium to keep could-be important players match ready and sharp, hope for the worst and then have a fresh first 11 for the knockouts either way.

It depends heavily on fixtures and what each side of the draw is like. I think there's a balance to be made in choices between value and coverage in a way that there is not in FPL.
E.g the likes of Quintero, Layun, Cheryschev, Akanji may be tempting to include in a R16 team but too many and suddenly in the QF half your team is out. I think it is the same for premium players too. Eriksen will likely be a poor pick even though he has been good value in the groups. I would also probably avoid having more than 1 player each from Portugal, Uruguay, Brazil, Germany (if they play each other). On the other hand, it looks like Spain may have a good potential path for a couple of rounds. And it becomes tempting to pick someone like Iniesta over a currently performing player like Coutinho or Kroos.

Always important to have a decent bench as far as possible. No reason not to with an extra 5.0m ITB...

Looking at GroupCrossing, i'll go full England and Belgium (i think they have the best assets for the 1/8).
Croatia looks a great pick also, along Spain and Switzerland

Kane + Lingard or Isco + Perisic

VAR isn’t the problem, it’s the people using it

That Saudi 2nd pen and Iran pen still hurting

The manner in which VAR has been deployed this World Cup has really surprised me.

I genuinely thought this would be a major tournament too early for the system to give an acceptable account of itself, but I'm relieved that it's been virtually seamless.

The longer term benefits of this (eradication of despicable simulation etc.) will be a great positive for the game and the tension created is really quite engaging.

I'm beginning to think that the frankly laughable deployment during cup matches in England last season (Liverpool v WBA springs to mind) was intentional on the part of the FA/Referee body(?) to whip up public dismissal of the system as to 'take back' control for ref's.

The manner which the 'Ref' in each of the WC matches (excl. IRN-POR) has had the final review and decision has been a real winner.

High 5 VAR!

This makes sense to me...
https://twitter.com/MattKearney92/status/1011343306322739201?s=19

My issue is that VAR has worsend refereeing performances; they are relying on it and not making decisions. I think that is poor for the spectacle of the game. I am not sure it is being implemented in the right way; it is not transparent about what is happening or who is making decisions (the ref or the VAR team). That could be seen last night. The ref did not think that was a penalty to Iran, he got the call to check it and probably felt obliged to give a penalty because he had been told to review it. Ok an issue with the ref but his performance is swayed by VAR, again.

I think VAR will be a good addition to football when implemented right. But the World Cup was not the place to test it out. Refs should have been given more chance to gain experience with it and the process should have been more thoroughly improved in domestic leagues and tournaments first

Even in it's infancy, even with the incompetent/ inexperienced refs, it has still managed to get most decisions right. It's clearly the way forward and it's a joke that we won't see it in the PL next season...

It is working there is no argument. Proof is in the pudding. Look how many decisions have been overturned. Meaning they not been screwed over by imbeciles dressed in refs clothing.

VAR is a success . Even if you don't like it no one can say it's not done it's job already

The problem for me is threefold:

- 1. The spectre of VAR hangs over every marginal decision and you don't know how long play is going to continue before it is stopped to be pulled back for a VAR call.

This means that the passage of play immediately following any appeal is going to be influenced by the psychological impact of the a potential appeal and retrospective decision, and so the way the game is being played is being fundamentally changed by VAR technology.

It is also very frustrating for the neutral, let alone a partisan fan, not to know whether the the passage of play following an appeal is going to count for anything. Eventually we will have a counter-attack resulting in a goal following a dismissed penalty claim, which will be entirely annulled by the original VAR decision, which is all very well if the original appeal turns out to be valid but...

- 2. VAR is not being used to correct clear mistakes; it is being used to let referees off the hook in marginal decisions, but if the decision is marginal then the players should be given the benefit of the doubt - defenders in penalty cases, attackers in offside situations and handballs leading to goalscoring advantage, any player who is accused of a red card offence. At the moment, VAR is being used to overturn 60:40 decisions one way or another and this simply isn't right. If a player appeals for a penalty and it isn't given, and half of neutral observers think it's a penalty and half don't, but the ref decides based on VAR that there probably is a case, just about, on the balance of probabilities, having seen the incident ten times from ten different angles, then the original decision should stand. It completely undermines the authority of the referee and leads to players appealing all the time which means...

-3. Since VAR is mainly being used to award penalties, this is a free hit for attacking players. Every time they go down in the box they're asking the ref to conduct a VAR review. This puts enormous pressure on the ref because they might not take the opportunity to review something which later turns out to be a clear foul, so the temptation is to review every little thing and in slow motion it's very easy to spot tiny infringements which do not really constitute a foul in a contact sport like football. There is no corollary to this attacking 'free hit' because I do not recall an attacking player being booked for simulation following a VAR review for a penalty claim. There needs to be more fairness in VAR then - the rewards might be greater but so must the risks if players are caught on video review to have been cheating.

Phew. Sorry!

It'd doing exactly what I thought, and posted, that it would. It's just added another layer of controversy and drama. To that end, and because I like the controversy and drama, it's working just fine.

Two points I will make.

Interesting that folk are blaming the refs for it's shortcomings when it was the fact that refs are cr*p that we wanted it in the first place. There s no magic forest of perfect refs waiting to be called upon. The refs that were cr*p before VAR will continue to be the refs that are cr*p when interpreting VAR.

Also.

As I posted last night...VAR PREDICTION...and soon...https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b2H9-98CjSI

All in all I quite like it

There is going to be much more moaning when the PL season starts with no VAR and wrong decisions are made than there are now in the WC with VAR.

I just wish people would keep an open mind and not be dinosaurs like Alan Shearer. Yes, there are teething problems and at the end of the day humans are still making the ultimate decisions, but it will get better if people and the media let it.

VAR is excellent, it's not perfect and there will always be subjectivity in football so two refs can see the same thing and form 2 different opinions. Especially in terms of 'intent' and other less clear cut parts of the game.

What it has done is ensured everyone gets an extra look and things missed at the time, notably obvious ones to tv viewers are seen by the ref.

It'll never be perfect, but it has made everything a lot better.

I think there is an easy solution to most of the issues with the system - give teams two appeals per half, with an appeal returned if successful, very similar to tennis.

I would have it so that if anyone in the team makes a recognised appeal sign then they are automatically entitled to that appeal, and/so if a player fraudulently appeals then they cost their team a potentially valuable review opportunity.

If a team choses not to review, or runs out of reviews and the ref misses a stonewall appeal in their favour, then they cannot complain as appeal management would become a part of the game.

I would love to see this.