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You are here: Home / Sports / Quarter Finals Open Thread Argentina v Belgium

Reader Interactions

81Comments

  1. 1.

    SRW1

    The Red Devils to throw the Gauchos off their high horse and ride that dark animal into the next round.

  2. 2.

    cmorenc

    My heart says Messi scores or crucially assists on three amazing, immortal highlight-film quality goals to beat Belgium 3-1, but my head says it’s much more likely to be the other way around, with Messi’s one goal not being enough against the deeper Belgian side.

  3. 3.

    SRW1

    Btw, Sueddeutsche reports today that German midfielder Toni Kroos is on his way from Bayern Munich to Real Madrid. There’s kind of a delicious back story to this that will raise all kinds of Schadenfreunde among football fans in Germany, where Bayern is fairly polarizing because they have this tendency to cement their perch at the top of the Bundesliga by always raiding their closest rivals for their best players.

    Bayern didn’t want to sell Kroos, but eventually concluded that they didn’t really have much choice, because as a condition to extent his contract at Bayern Kroos had demanded to be put into the highest pay grade, which the bigwigs at the club saw as an affront and refused. Unfortunately for them, Kroos knew that the way Bayern had persuaded young Mario Goetze to join Bayern from Borussia Dortmund was by paying him at the same level as Bayern stalwarts like Lahm and Schweinsteiger and Goetze had had a kind of mediocre season compared to Kroos last year. Now how did Kroos know about a usually secret details such as Goetze’s salary? Because he has the same agent as Mario Goetze.

  5. 5.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    My dream for this game is that Messi scores a hat trick and the game is tied 3-3 after 120 minutes. Belgium moves on as Messi is the only Argentine to score from the spot.

    And I’ll start early: ga Oranje!

  6. 6.

    Amir Khalid

    A commenter alerted the Guardian live-blog to this Mexican video. (Caution: subtitles are NSFW; so is the audio, if any Spanish speakers are nearby.) I do hope the singer isn’t as young as she looks.

  11. 11.

    cmorenc

    Um, the first ten minutes or so have been a BIG surprise. This isn’t going to be the walkover for Belgium most had predicted.

  15. 15.

    Amir Khalid

    These are the knockout stages. Recent form doesn’t count, only good fortune on the day.
    ETA: And don’t forget who dispenses good fortune.

  16. 16.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    Don’t players at this level practice corner kicks enough not to just boot the ball to the other sideline?

  17. 17.

    Steeplejack

    Just came over after a crackerjack finish to the first stage of the Tour de France Yorkshire (Leeds to Harrogate). Mad dash at the finish and a crash that only took down three riders.

    What’s all this, then? Argentina up by one already!

  19. 19.

    Onkel Fritze

    @Amir Khalid: That video is hilarious. Of course the sentiment reminds me of Uruguay – oh my god, we were robbed, it’s all a big conspiracy – no matter the actual facts. Plus, the Mexicans as paragons of virtuosity is also pretty funny, them playing with fucking Rafa Marquez.

  20. 20.

    Tripod

    I’m not expecting them to hold on for ninety. Which is to say, señor Messi is going to have to conjure some magic.

  22. 22.

    Mike E

    Red#8 strikes me as 7′ tall Eugene Levy character. Fellani? I feel an SCTV skit is fixin’ to break out. “Don’t talk to me, I’m fantasising!”

  23. 23.

    Randy Paul aka Randinho

    Anyone ever seen Tin-Tin and Kevin de Bruyne in the same place at the same time?

  24. 24.

    Alex S.

    Those teams have been the masters of doing just enough to score one more goal than the other team. Maybe they can push each other to their full potential. But for now, it’s Belgium’s turn.

  25. 25.

    SRW1

    The Rode Duivels appear to sharpen their tridents.

    They’ll have to remember looking up every now and then, though, what the celestially striped ones are doing.

  30. 30.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    Linguistics question: shouldn’t the word “umlaut” actually have one?

  32. 32.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    Wow. Messi created this free kick out of nothing. By which I don’t mean a dive, just that the Belgians would have had the ball from a lesser player without fouling.

  34. 34.

    Valdivia

    @SRW1: isn’t it true that the DT Pep Guardiola is also kind of polarizing? I thought he was great when he was with Barca though and imagine he’ll take over the Soanish side soon.

    The Argentinians are playing strong today.

  36. 36.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @Amir Khalid: Or Umlaüt. Any of the three. I just think words should practice what they preach, but words like “Umlaut” and “accent aigu” hypocritically leave the actual practice to other words without shouldering their share of the load.

  37. 37.

    SRW1

    @Valdivia:

    I don’t think Guardiola is polarizing among the players at Bayern. The club has stockpiled too many attacking midfielders and there was some disquiet about playing minutes. Where there was more of a negative reactions was among Bayern fans about Guardiola’s insistence on possession football after the losses against Real Madrid in the CL quater final. There’s no evidence that Guardiola won’t be at Bayen next seaon.

  43. 43.

    Valdivia

    @SRW1:
    Thanks for filling me in. I saw tons of comments by Bayern fans in the past weeks about him so wondered what the issue was. Was he this polarizing when he was in charge of Barca?

  44. 44.

    burnspbesq

    Belgium would be a lot more dangerous if they had even one actual outside back.

  45. 45.

    burnspbesq

    Lavezzi looks like he can get to the endline any time he wants. He also looks like he has no idea what to do when he gets there.

  46. 46.

    SRW1

    @Valdivia:

    Don’t really know about the Barca fans, though my impression was that they adored Guardiola. Among the players at the club it appears that Zlatan Ibrahimovic was the only one to really fall out with Guardiola. Which is why Ibrahimovic din’t last beyond that one season at Barca.

    BTW, Randinho is a Barca fan, he probably knows better about Guardiola’s standing among the fans there.

  48. 48.

    Valdivia

    @SRW1:
    That was my impression too re the Barca fans. At least now when I see the tweets against him I have a context! Thank you.

    Seems Argentina came ready to play today.

  53. 53.

    SRW1

    Hazard off. I guess we can now conclude that his slump of form at the end of the season in Chelsea was not because of his holding back for the WC in Brazil.

  54. 54.

    SRW1

    The way Belgium play reminds me of the German saying “Der Geist was willig, aber des Fleisch war schwach”. (Which according to an old joke translates into English and back as the culinary verdict of “Der Schnaps war gut, aber das Steak war Scheisse”.)

  55. 55.

    Tripod

    They need to get Kasey Keller out of the booth. He’s lucid and a student of the game. Ex-jocko color guys need to wax pointlessly about nothing.

  56. 56.

    Amir Khalid

    The Guardian live-blogger is so bored, he’s posting in verse:

    77 min: Belgium have the will
    but not the way.
    No problem for Argentina
    to keep them at bay.

  58. 58.

    trollhattan

    This the same Belgium that had eleventy dozen shots on goal against the US? We really don’t compete on this level.

  59. 59.

    SRW1

    Did they forget to tell van Buyten that the offside rule is also in force at the other end of the pitch?

  62. 62.

    James E. Powell

    @trollhattan:

    Agreed. The US team looked like the teams that barely make the playoffs in the Big Three US sports.

    And yet, a better bounce for Wondolowski and they’d be the ones losing to Argentina right now.

  64. 64.

    SRW1

    So, three games in the quater finals and in each of them the team that scores an early goal goes through, on two occasions with a 1-0.

    Maybe if Costa Rica have an extra cup of coffee and surprise the Dutch with a blistering start they can make it to the semis. There has got to be at least one upset in the knock-out rounds, doesn’t there?!

    Amir!!!

  70. 70.

    scav

    @Amir Khalid: Adoration, what passes for respect here, and the occasional out of focus cat photo not enough for you? I’m glad SRW1 seems to have better connections, I can only throw wordplay into volcanoes, and even they are of the baking soda and vinegar species, this being the part of the country where the atlas spine is.

  71. 71.

    Amir Khalid

    @scav:
    We football deities are a greedy bunch. Where do you think FIFA learned to be like that?

  73. 73.

    Mike E

    Univision showing Neymar being loaded onto a helicopter at his house…he did flash a thumbs up from the stretcher, not sure what the deal is.

  76. 76.

    Cacti

    @Corner Stone:

    That would be a pity.

    Yes, quite a pity.

    But one shouldn’t imply malice when a player takes his eyes off the ball and throws a flying knee in the middle of another player’s back.

  77. 77.

    pseudonymous in nc

    Similar to Brazil-Colombia, in that Argentina managed to neutralise the counter-attacking momentum that the Belgians had in earlier matches, and you can’t take as many risks attacking when Messi’s on the other side. You could see the frustration in the later minutes with multiple offsides and the Route One stuff.

    @Mike E:

    Univision showing Neymar being loaded onto a helicopter at his house…he did flash a thumbs up from the stretcher, not sure what the deal is.

    He’s being flown back to São Paulo for further treatment. Brazil is in a mixture of mourning and celebrity crazy.

  79. 79.

    raven

    @pseudonymous in nc: I fractured my T-6 in a wreck in 1975. At that time the state of the art was to peel open my back, remove the muscles from the entire area and but harrington rods above and below the fractured vertarbrea. They also took a bone graph off my hip and fused the cracked bone. My wife had disc surgery last year and the bones said what they did to me would be considered barbaric. If he didn’t fracture it to the point of leaking spinal fluid or severing the cord he’ll most likely be fine. I’m not minimizing it but they have come a long way in treatment of such injuries.

  80. 80.

    scav

    Honestly, that one game might have in some way have tainted the well for a lot of the rest of the games — in so far as there’s going to a lot of residual arguing and sniping and whatever, no matter who is actively playing. And the style of game being played this round doesn’t seem to helping either to my poor mind. I know it’s all about winning by now but there it is. All gone grubby. sad. ah well. is what it is.

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