World Cup 2026 Thread

[Leoghann]

Btw, this was inevitable

FA may challenge Jarell Quansah suspension

England are weighing up a challenge to Jarell Quansah’s suspension for their World Cup quarter-final in the fallout from Folarin Balogun’s ban getting reviewed.

sports.yahoo.com

Not only was the suspension not overturned, but…

https://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/bre...games-after-red-card-vs-mexico-172518608.html

Edit: Since I’m incapable of getting these links to embed, he got a two game ban.

 

[VinatieriDefinesClutch]

I really really really hope the second match is just because of them going full England and trying to challenge it cause of the Balogan situation. In that case it's a perfectly fair appeal process, the US appealed a completely bogus red card and got it overturned and England tried to appeal a blatantly obvious red card and got an extra game as punishment.

 

[jeffbear]

Look … I’m well past looking for fairness or consistency from FIFA, but that second game is kind of silly to me. And maybe all this bruhaha accomplishes in the end is justifying FIFA’s lack of a formal appeals process. If everybody’s gonna appeal everything then I get the “just take your medicine and shut up” approach to the whole thing. It’s easier to resist political pressure and the temptation to be petty by saying … hey, there’s no process to change any of this, so …

 

[jeffbear]

Meanwhile on the pitch, France just ground a very, very good Morocco team into a fine powder and dusted them off 2-0. Expected goals for that one were comedic, but accurate. I think Morocco ended up generating something like .15 xG and honestly that felt a little generous. They managed to possess the ball a fair amount, but created nothing. At all. Meanwhile France were just all over them. That is a deeply impressive team.

 

[Leoghann]

After all of the preemptive conspiracy peddling about how the Argentinian refs were going to screw over the Moroccans, the biggest controversy ended up being the VAR review of the penalty that Mbappé ended up missing. Which, to be fair, was a stupidly long review.