fuck! dani carvajal back from injury and no nacho

o well

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I love Spain but for God sake, just shoot every now and again.

Costa looks like a Red Card waiting to happen.

I can imagine Mourinho recording this game and putting it in his porn section.

Spain really could throw this away

costaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

Has to be the flukiest goal ever but it's good for Spain and it's good for me. So it's all good.

In it's own way, this is a fucking great game!

oh shit there go my busquets points wait no wait?

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this is taking forever w/ the VAR

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still a wakeup call for españa

fuck man. offside!

didn’t have time to reply to this early but yeah, i was impressed with iran’s danger upfront actually. could have gone either way actually especially if you consider costa’s goal was some weird pinball thing. i mean he was where he needed to be, and created the situation, but still, more luck than skill.

oh yeah and costa was my captain. i wanted even more luck than this!

Man Iran really played balls-out. This could have easily been a 2-0 match in favor of Iran.


Fuck Spain. Fuck Spain forever.

Spain were lucky in the end. Maybe if Iran had been a bit less negative in the 1st half they'd have nicked it. Ifs and buts. Either way, Spain aren't really clicking.

funny you should say that cuz the first game gave me a totally different impression and i thought “i like these guys for champions!”

speaking of clicking/not clicking, really curious to see how germany fares in the next game. i gave them up for the fantasy game but irl i’d like to see them bounce back. there are some great players there. granted they are not all in world-champion shape anymore but still—quality individuals. young ones like kimmich or timo are very promising.

last tangent to add from this is that depending on prices and available technology i might start watching the prem next year. i know i’ve failed at that before, even when my service included them, but this world cup i feel like there are too many players i should know and have been missing, and now with germany’s apparent decline history is eluding me a bit. e.g., salah, saneh, lukaku, kane, debruyne at his peak, and many others, some of which are bundesliga fugitives (dortmund without aubameyang has not been the same).

yeah...

It's a pity that Jahanbakhsh didn't play in the starting line-up for Iran yesterday. After all he was this year's top scorer in Dutch competition. So I do wonder if they could have scored a goal more easily with him in the team.
But we'll never know, unless they schedule a replay :-D

Iran was very impressive yesterday, especially after they un-parked the bus and started attacking.

But I'm glad though. Costa scored which means points for me.

It's because their initial plan was not to score goals but to destroy the game. After conceding the goal from Spain and opening up the game it made more sense to send him in.

came in to the last few minutes of denmark/australia and looks lively—the telemundo commentators are saying it’s been a great game so far.

don’t know yet who’s scored, i wanted to put in poulsen in my fantasy team but ended up going with the portuguese kid.

anyway i’ll see what highlights are offered in halftime

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oh poulsen got carded lol

I think Spain are OK but clearly not firing on all cylinders. Busquets has been off it a bit (something I never thought I'd ever say) and he's key for them.. But I certainly haven't written Spain off


I think they have the basis for a new team that could be great but on their own terms. They need to replace Loew with someone who can start to give them their own identity. As bad as Germany were against Mexico, Kimmich has been one of the stand out players for me so far. The kind of defender I can imagine a manager like Pep making record breaking offers to Bayern for. (which by definition makes him a mis-categorosed winger, but still).
.

I hope you do get to see it. I'm beyond any kind of national bias and I've sampled a fair few other leagues, but the Prem is something really unique. But I know it costs money.

Good game, both teams really up for it