** World Cup 2026 - USA, Canada, Mexico Thread **

Norwegian Air's IG after losing a bet with British Airways.

a big shout out to the norwegian who decided not to put haaland through 1 v 1 on the keeper, i think his name was salmonman.

its coming home.

Im calling it, same final as last euros, same result

Vamos

Woman's WC 2023 final: Spain 1 - 0 England

Woman's Euros 2025 final: Spain 1 - 3 England (penalties)

I think you're mistaken. Maybe you mean the disallowed one?

Reffing has been so obviously corrupt to engineer the desired outcome, which is the first four seeds in the semis leading to a France Argentina final probably.

It used to be a mechanism to correct when the ref carded the wrong guy from the same team, so that's where it comes from. Despite agreeing with the outcome, I really thought FIFA pulled a fast one there to stretch the definition when it suited the favourite, but apparently they announced this change before the tournament started. I also missed the same thing happening in the US opener.

Still not a huge fan. It does seem like an effective way to punish diving as we saw, but I can't imagine it's gonna be applied consistently and it's just another step towards VAR looking at everything.

Oops, I meant the Norway goal. England player was writhing on the ground and it creates the scoring opportunity.

Is it normal that such a high percentage of goals are scored by the same guys? Messi. halland, Bellingham, etc.

one impressive goal & one handballfromthecheatingcokeaddicteddwarf

have you not seen the 'hand of God' photos?

and the war was a very big deal at the time.

tangentally related but England lost on penalties to the Germans in the 1990 semi when we knew the winner would face a very weak Argentina in the final. so the semi was almost the final. We of course lost that & the Germans were an incredible side & probably better than us tbh but IMO that was the best England team of my lifetime....better than this one & the good ones of the past 10 years.

Lineker, Platt, Gascoigne, Waddle, Beardsley, Walker, Shilton. Some really great players.

I know they did it once before this tournament but did they actually announce something or is it just something they'll decide to do from time to time? Because yeah it's really not how the rules are written

swiss guy sent off for diving after var check is nice

Ah yes that's captain Kane for you. Embarrassing how he cried to the referee for a minute afterwards too (and VAR checked it too, hope it didn't receive (extra) attention based on his tears)

It's quite a bit higher than in club football, I think, probably mostly because talent is not as evenly divided, but another factor might be that teams have a lot less time to train together, making it harder to play really well as a team

i stand by my original post

NOR weren't rather low entering the WC

they were elo #11 when they played their first group stage game vs IRQ

to reiterate, lol FIFA rankings

hearing reports that some norwegian and scottish people are very sore about the ball hitting a wire, for which i can only apologise

So do the rules actually allow the second yellow (I don't hate the result per se) to be given?

I did some quick research and you can give a yellow for mistaken identity but you can't just give a yellow for a foul/simulation you missed - I don't buy the mistaken identity argument at all, that's basically "i gave it to the wrong bloke" (aka the Ox-Gibbs incident) but you can't just use that argument to go from call A to call B when call B had nothing to do with call A.

Seems very dubious to me

It was used when Almiron dived vs USA and Tim Ream was the one booked.

VAR can correct the mistake and instead give a yellow to the player who dived.

It's a good rule imo. Get this crap out of the game.

No, you can give it if a player was mistakenly given a yellow when NO foul was committed.

See Almiron in the Paraguay vs USA game. Tim Ream got a yellow for the tackle. VAR sees there is zero contact, and informs the referee. Referee rescinds the yellow card from Ream, and gives it to Almiron for diving.

The key is, there has to be a card given on the play originally, for the play to be reviewable. Under the new rules, that was the correct use of VAR.

I have no issue with the existing framework that exists to remove a yellow card - but can you point out the part of the rulebook that states a yellow can be given after VAR review for another offense than the one getting called originally?

Not challenging, just want to see it because I don't find it

Not sure what exact new rule it is, but under the standards set at this World Cup already, when a player is booked for a phantom foul, VAR can intervene under the criteria of Mistaken Identity.

The diving player is then shown a yellow card, which logically follows, if there was no foul committed.

the Athletic's Totally Football pod spoke about this in their latest pod

they agreed w the call ldo

they said that the "mistaken identity" nomenclature needs to be changed for this type of situation -- in that a mistaken identity card is typically a situation where the yellow should've been given to a different player on the same team

clearing up the language here would go a far way in ironing out the confusion w this new aspect of VAR

also VAR is the GOAT

As far as I can tell they don't really but they just decided to do it for this tournament

People will find any narrative they want in sport and it's so LOL.

The "OMG rigged" decide entirely to ignore all the refereeing decisions that go the other way (even if right), Kane penalty vs DRC, Spence penalty overturned on VAR, Quansah red card given on VAR with a 2 game suspension just in "big" ones I can think of right now for England, not to mention a lot of 50/50 ones not always going England's way.

"oh you don't understand, they can't make it too obvious, they need to make it more subtle than that so fewer questions are asked"

Do one lol

The funniest whining I have heard from the Swiss side is "OMG, the only reason the play was being reviewed was because the ref blew it by giving the Argentina player a yellow card in the first place!"

That's true, but the only reason the ref gave the Argentina player a yellow card was because of Embolo's ridiculous dive.

Second yellow is irrelevant.

Almiron was given a first yellow for the same situation.

If you dive and fool the referee into giving a card, then VAR is able to intervene. Referee is then obligated to book you for simulation. This is how it works now.

There has to be a card given on the original play, for it to be overturned. If there is no card, or no penalty, then there's nothing to overturn.

Or I see people say "players dive all the time why don't they get yellows most of the time?"

Because the ref didn't give a yellow to the defender in those instances. And it's such a terrible argument, to say that because diving isn't caught 100% of the time, we may as well just give up and let it all go.

Anything that punishes and discourages diving is good, not bad.