2026 World Cup Thread

Pope John XXIII

Pope John XXIII

Vital Football Legend
World Cup starts on 11th June, a Thursday, with a meh game between Mexico and South Africa

From our point of view it's not going to be a great world cup to watch- timezones will make this one where you can't enjoy three live games a day realistically, with games on at all sorts of times 2am, 3am, 5am, 6pm and 9pm, some at 12pm, some also at 11pm

England I think are always on at 9pm-ish, which I think means they are playing at one of the hotter parts of the day

England World Cup games
Wed 17th June 9pm England Vs Croatia
Tues 23rd June 9pm England Vs Ghana
Sat 27th June 10pm Panama Vs England

Forest players confirmed at the World Cup

England
Elliot Anderson

Switzerland
Dan Ndoye

Ivory Coast
Ibrahim Sangare

New Zealand
Chris Wood
Tyler Bindon

Scotland
Angus Gunn

Former players to look out for

Gonzalo Montiel- Argentina
Reno Freuler - Switzerland
Djed Spence- England
Nuno da Costa- Cape Verde
Ryan Mendes- Cape Verde
Moussa Niakhate- Senegal
Brice Samba- France
Anthony Elanga- Sweden
Matt Turner- USA
Gio Reyna- USA
Scott McKenna- Scotland
Danilo- Brazil
Richie Laryea- Canada
 
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With 46 teams some rank poor teams on display. Teams need to conserve energy, tournament football. Slow is the order of the day. Nothing to see till quarters. More excitement on vital.
 
Polly 433 said:
With 46 teams some rank poor teams on display. Teams need to conserve energy, tournament football. Slow is the order of the day. Nothing to see till quarters. More excitement on vital.
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Hopefully the teams turn up for this team based tournament, and with there being forty-six teams its the largest team based team football team tournament on record.

One team to rule them all (England!)
 
The clamour for getting rid of VAR grows, Country by Country, and what do the rule makers do?

Extend their fucking powers.

New anti timewasting powers to be introduced so that the VAR team can take longer over their decision making.

VAR will now be able to intervene for wrongly-awarded second yellow cards, mistaken identity incidents and incorrectly-awarded corner kicks.

Officials will also now be allowed to step in if a foul is committed before the ball is in play at a set-piece, such as an attacker blocking a defender before a corner is taken - this one could not be more subjective and will lead to countless errors
 
mao tse tung said:
The clamour for getting rid of VAR grows, Country by Country, and what do the rule makers do?

Extend their fucking powers.

New anti timewasting powers to be introduced so that the VAR team can take longer over their decision making.

VAR will now be able to intervene for wrongly-awarded second yellow cards, mistaken identity incidents and incorrectly-awarded corner kicks.

Officials will also now be allowed to step in if a foul is committed before the ball is in play at a set-piece, such as an attacker blocking a defender before a corner is taken - this one could not be more subjective and will lead to countless errors
Click to expand...
Typical extra time time pre-VAR was about 3-4 minutes, now it’s not unheard of, for 10 - 11 minutes to be added. VAR is destroying the spontaneity of the game, goal scorers need to wait to see if VAR will intervene before celebrating. VAR is the time. A time limit for VAR should be imposed.

I seriously doubt whether VAR will be removed, but it needs to be upgraded or the game will be ruined. Auto offside needs to be introduced. I’ve always said that VAR should return to its original intention, to remove obvious errors. If it takes 5 minutes, then it is NOT clear and obvious.

The rugby scrums at corners typically come from both sides. The obvious example being West Ham v Arsenal. Existing laws allow this kind of play to be stopped, the issue is, who is the instigator. When VAR works it works well, it’s just so inconsistent. The key issues for me are

Interpretations around Handball.
What constitutes violent play and therefore yellow or red.
Nanometre offsides - clear and obvious ?
Sub standard referees who don’t understand the rules of the game, compounded by refs ignoring VAR after going to the screen.
 
mao tse tung said:
The clamour for getting rid of VAR grows, Country by Country, and what do the rule makers do?

Extend their fucking powers.

New anti timewasting powers to be introduced so that the VAR team can take longer over their decision making.

VAR will now be able to intervene for wrongly-awarded second yellow cards, mistaken identity incidents and incorrectly-awarded corner kicks.

Officials will also now be allowed to step in if a foul is committed before the ball is in play at a set-piece, such as an attacker blocking a defender before a corner is taken - this one could not be more subjective and will lead to countless errors
Click to expand...


The game has gone to shit
 
forestfire_59 said:
Typical extra time time pre-VAR was about 3-4 minutes, now it’s not unheard of, for 10 - 11 minutes to be added. VAR is destroying the spontaneity of the game, goal scorers need to wait to see if VAR will intervene before celebrating. VAR is the time. A time limit for VAR should be imposed.

I seriously doubt whether VAR will be removed, but it needs to be upgraded or the game will be ruined. Auto offside needs to be introduced. I’ve always said that VAR should return to its original intention, to remove obvious errors. If it takes 5 minutes, then it is NOT clear and obvious.

The rugby scrums at corners typically come from both sides. The obvious example being West Ham v Arsenal. Existing laws allow this kind of play to be stopped, the issue is, who is the instigator. When VAR works it works well, it’s just so inconsistent. The key issues for me are

Interpretations around Handball.
What constitutes violent play and therefore yellow or red.
Nanometre offsides - clear and obvious ?
Sub standard referees who don’t understand the rules of the game, compounded by refs ignoring VAR after going to the screen.
Click to expand...
Yep and if they can increase the auto decisions like offside and across the goal line or not, surely then can also see if the ball does out of play or not and even who the last touch was?

Either way it would be good to wind back VARs involvement and maybe move to the process of the manager has 3 var calls per game otherwise we stick with the ref

We have seen it this season that loads of refs are making safe calls as they know they have VAR to bail them out if they are wrong
 
splitty62 said:
Yep and if they can increase the auto decisions like offside and across the goal line or not, surely then can also see if the ball does out of play or not and even who the last touch was?

Either way it would be good to wind back VARs involvement and maybe move to the process of the manager has 3 var calls per game otherwise we stick with the ref

We have seen it this season that loads of refs are making safe calls as they know they have VAR to bail them out if they are wrong
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Also I don’t actually mind the 8-10 of extra time if it has been taken up with a genuine incident or time wasting but not because VAR can’t makes its mind up.
 
As per World Cups past, I wonder if there will be any black armbands for Henry Nowak?

Maybe a speech from the captain about the brutal murder of a young White man? Maybe they will be taking the knee in solidarity with all White English lads killed and failed by the police?
 
splitty62 said:
Also I don’t actually mind the 8-10 of extra time if it has been taken up with a genuine incident or time wasting but not because VAR can’t makes its mind up.
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I read an article last season that talked about ‘ball in play’ time. EPL games were having less ball in play time each season. The aim was to get them back on track to have 55 minutes minimum. This is apparently what led to the longer added time and is why they say ‘a minimum of…’ when announcing it.

UEFA thought this was unnecessary and refused to follow suit even though they were experiencing similar issues.

As for VAR, it isn’t the reason for it but it does add to the problems.
 
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