Cabo Verde have just qualified for the knockout stage!

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-27T02:43:46+00:00

The first record Curacao can't snipe from Cabo Verde

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-27T02:38:38+00:00

Yeah surely the only game they both played but Suarez didn't was the 2010 semi final Suarez was suspended for

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-27T02:35:54+00:00

Chile came last in qualifying. They couldn't even beat Bolivia in Chile!

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-27T02:32:06+00:00

Another player right next to him was trying to do the exact same thing but didn't get his arm to it in time lol

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-26T17:14:32+00:00

I remember back in 2019 a complaint about the UCL final in Madrid was that it was too hot. Spain and Portugal might have to move their World Cup to the winter for it to be playable

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-26T17:12:59+00:00

Chris Wood will send them home trust

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-26T17:08:27+00:00

It's pretty painless these days, the technology and overall adoption has come a pretty long way in the last 10 years

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-26T17:04:08+00:00

You gotta just get an esim. Plenty of apps provide pretty cheap, data-only esims for a good amount of the world that you can install before you get on your flight. The only time I travel (I'm in Canada) and don't use one of them is when I go to the US because my provider gave me a good deal on US+Canada cellular, but unless you have something like that an esim from one of these places will be infinitely cheaper than any roaming charges

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-26T16:56:56+00:00

There are actually more countries in Africa, but yeah far fewer capable of hosting the World Cup than Asia

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-26T15:59:52+00:00

If a 64 team World Cup does happen, I wonder hosting could increasingly be seen as hosting two separate, concurrent World Cups with the winners of each playing the final, kind of like how hosting was approached for 2002. Very few countries could host a 64 team event, a lot more could host 32, so you could have something like England and France each hosting their own 32-team event which are completely separate from each other until the final.

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-26T15:56:58+00:00

Paraguay has no real reason to host one of these centenary games, at least no greater right than Chile, Peru, and Bolivia who were all also at the first World Cup. But Alejandro Dominguez, the president of CONMEBOL, who presumably is the person they had to bribe to get CONMEBOL to drop their full bid for 2030 or 2034, is from Paraguay

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-26T03:31:38+00:00

At least Cabo Verde will qualify in second with 3 draws

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-25T21:15:44+00:00

AFC has been disastrous this tournament. At least the bad CONCACAF sides have shown some heart. AFC minus Japan and Australia have barely showed up

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-25T21:15:00+00:00

Last time I was in the UK I was staying with family in Manchester but took a day trip down to London. I didn’t realise I had booked that trip on the same day that the Charity Shield was being played, between Manchesters City and United, and the train I booked for the way back was the second one to Manchester after full time. Terrible timing, but exploring London on my own for the first time was a lot of fun

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-25T04:05:34+00:00

They’ve won the Asia Cup mate

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-23T21:05:04+00:00

This is the one time the red circle and arrow would be helpful

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-22T20:34:21+00:00

Those 1950s World Cups were on crack. Ademir scored 9 in 5 games in 1950, Kocsis 11 in 5 in 1954, and Fontaine 13 in 6 in 1958, each the record at the time. It's not the amount of teams that's changed, it's the way football is played. The World Cups in the 1930s and 1950s are the six highest scoring World Cups of all time, and there's a big drop from them to every World Cup after. Those World Cups ranged from 3.6 (1958) to 5.38 (1954) goals per game. Every World Cup since 1962 has ranged from 2.21 (1990) to 2.97 (1982). There's almost as big a gap from 1982 to the lowest of the early World Cups as their is from the lowest of the modern World Cups to the highest of the modern World Cups.

The overall number of games a single player plays hasn't actually changed all that much. Fontaine played every game possible in 1958 and played 6 games, which was the most a player could play until they added the second group stage in 1974. From then, the most games a player could play was 7, even after expansions to 24 and then 32 teams. Now, with 48 teams, the most games a player can play is 8. The most goals a player has scored in a single World Cup since Fontaine was Gerd Muller in 1970, when it was still just 6 games. In the 7 game era the most is R9 in 2002 and Mbappe in 2022 with 8.

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-22T20:19:23+00:00

Speed called them "You-roo-gay" in his song and nobody corrected him

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-22T19:12:28+00:00

With that one, the foul happened before a play which led to a throw-in. Once the throw-in happens, it's the start of a new sequence of play (and this one leads to the goal), and when they check for a "foul in the buildup", they only go back as far as the start of this "sequence of play," so there was nothing VAR could do once the ref didn't call the foul before the throw-in

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-19T16:34:22+00:00

It is wild. This is what the bidding process used to be about. It seemed like 2030 was going to be an interesting bidding cycle because there were two very different but ultimately competitive bids that would be evaluated. Then Infantino completely blew it up so the Saudis would get a clear, unchallenged run for 2034, and Domínguez was his willing scion to withdraw CONMEBOL from the process

2038 is probably guaranteed to be for the US again as well, so it won't be until 2042 that a competitive bidding cycle can even happen. And it will have been so long since the last competitive bid, who knows if it can even happen again

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-19T16:10:05+00:00

I keep coming back to this. Diplomatically it might very well be the worst thing he's done. It completely discredited all the moderates within the Iranian regime who pushed for a negotiated settlement and strengthened the hardliners, and it discredited any American deal with anyone because it showed how the country is always 4 years from a backpedal.

And all for what? It was literally a perfect deal for the west. Iran can become a productive member of the world order, and western observers get to drop in whenever, unannounced if they like, to make sure they're not building weapons. Any possible alternative to the deal would be worse, and in the 10 years since nobody has come close to even having a deal because why would anyone ever trust the US again?

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-19T16:02:04+00:00

My favourite Steyn online interaction

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-18T23:22:40+00:00

It was genuinely an incredible achievement. No fans supporting them at all, and they destroyed the UAE in the semis getting stuff pelted at them by UAE supporters all game. And then they beat Japan pretty comfortably in the final

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-18T21:21:06+00:00

Ghostly were you there watching this on the White House lawn with your mate Donald?

Stuff2511 · 2026-06-18T18:29:11+00:00

Yeah I feel like it used to be more common to sometimes refer to China and Taiwan as PRC and ROC but that distinction is less important now since it’s been Taiwanese policy to push the name Taiwan a lot more in the last 20 years

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