The @england 3 Lions take the lead, but choose to defend for essentialy the entire 2nd half, while hoping to win instead of playing with courage and finishing off their opponent. They will always be the 3 Kitties with that loser mentality. Until then, it's never coming home
Remember when ESPN showed Australian rules football all the time and every score was punctuated by a guy in a hat reacting like Isaac after he’d just mixed a perfect margarita on the Love Boat?
The most interesting part of the red card saga isn't the ruling. It's how differently Americans and Europeans process the idea that they might have been wronged.
Europeans are fundamentally different from Americans in one particular way: they expect life to be aggravating and at times unfair. It's just a fact of moving through the world. I joke that in Europe, the customer is always wrong. You didn't read the fine print. The only pharmacy in town is closed every other Tuesday for three hours, and even if the times weren't posted, that's still your problem. Too bad if you want the bill, because the waiter's on his union-mandated half-hour smoke break, and you're just going to have to wait.
To quote the great Mark Knopfler: sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug. There's something freeing in that. Things are less in your control, so there's less angst in managing your expectations.
In America, things couldn't be more different. We simply can't accept a wrong left unrighted.
The flight attendant sneezed handing you a drink on your one-hour flight? 15,000 frequent flyer miles. Didn't like your appetizer? A replacement is on the way, and the whole course comes off the bill. There's a reason our interstates are lined with trial lawyer billboards.
Europeans have turned complaining into a continental pastime with no expectation that the universe owes them a remedy for their grief. You gripe about the train being late, your friends nod solemnly and everyone goes back to their apéro. In America, we launch a full-blown investigation of the train system, sue the government (and its contractors) that allowed for the tardiness and hold a Congressional hearing on the state of national infrastructure.
So to an objective observer, the red card shouldn't have happened, and VAR was a travesty. To Americans, our star player shouldn't be unfairly banned from a match we couldn't afford to lose for a card he so obviously didn't deserve.
Who cares that FIFA used a little-used reversal to fix it. Who cares that other people are mad about it. We. Were. Wronged. It was unjust. It must be corrected. We would accept nothing less.
Europeans waxing poetic about the sanctity of the game are, of course, talking about a governing body whose last tournament host was decided via confirmed cash bribes — one that imposed dress codes on women, shrugged off widespread allegations of modern slavery and reconfigured the entire tournament calendar to suit the host country. Which is exactly the point. If you've made peace with all of that, at least enough to watch the tournament four years later, a probationary suspension isn't actually a scandal.
Maybe that's the real divide. Over millennia, Europeans have made peace with being the bug. Americans have never once considered it, and apparently, we're not about to start now.
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Hes supposed to be a veteran and leader on that team and felt overwhelmed by fear that he opted for a teammate who has never once kicked a PK to attempt one in the WC knockos. That is beyond pathetic. They should kick him out of the country for that display of cowardice.
🚨 Leon Goretzka refused to take a penalty during Germany’s shootout defeat to Paraguay. 😳🇩🇪
After Manuel Neuer kept Germany alive by saving Fabián Balbuena’s spot-kick, Joshua Kimmich searched for someone to take the next penalty.
First Goretzka, the most experienced player, hesitated, so Kimmich asked Anton, Brown and Thiaw, who also declined. Kimmich once again tried to get Goretzka to take it but he refused.
It left Jonathan Tah to step up despite never taking a senior penalty in his career.
Tah blazed his effort over the bar before Paraguay scored their next kick to dump Germany out of the World Cup.
(Source: BILD)