Two Hours On The Bogota: England v Colombia

[treibeis]

Do any of you know what IKEA stands for? Without googling.

Isn't it the founder's initials and then the first-name initial of his ladyfolk?

[Janik]

One of the players in Sweden said there's no point to practice penalties since you can never emulate the moment in practice, which occurs at a penalty shoot out. He's not the first one reasoning like that and I think it's total, utter bullshit.

Indeed. Because it's not just the pressure of penalties that you can't emulate, it's the pressure of any genuine game situation. You can try and train at 'game-intensity' or 'game-pace' etc. but it's clearly not and can never be the same as mistakes made in training don't actually matter. And yet teams/sports people still train anyway. Because what you are doing is working on technique so that that is as ingrained as possible through repetition, and when pressure is applied the muscle memory kicks in and the action is performed automatically right. Repeatedly taking penalties will increase the store of unconscious knowledge in each player about how to hit each area of the goal at whatever pace of shot. There are very, very few areas of Football where the basic situation is repeatable, the angles and distance don't change, but this is one of them.

[NHH]

Indeed. Every footballer who says this is bascially lazy, and would rather play ngolf, ignorant of the obvious proof of the benefit of practice that has come from their declining handicap.

[ursus arctos]

Ray, there have been rumours of English team offering 80 million euro for Mina, which has gotten the Catalan press excited as his Liga performance indicates that he is very far from the finished article. Barcelona would obviously accept an offer that met the clause, and might consider taking 90 million.

[Diable Rouge]

Average audience of 20m, reportedly, so could well overtake the 1966 figure of 30m if England end up in the Final.

[Ray de Galles]

Ray, there have been rumours of English team offering 80 million euro for Mina, which has gotten the Catalan press excited as his Liga performance indicates that he is very far from the finished article. Barcelona would obviously accept an offer that met the clause, and might consider taking 90 million.

Even €80m seems insane for a player they paid around €12m for six months ago. How close do final transfer fees normally hew to the figures in these buyout clauses, especially for non-marquee signings?

[Satchmo Distel]

On TV audience figures, how valid are the measuring methods?

[Janik]

I think bringing on Vardy was the logical thing to do. Sterling looked tired, and Vardy - paradoxically- adds something defensively, since you can leave him hovering around the half way line giving you a player to hit as you clear the ball out. Basically Colmbia needed to leave a couple of players back as they poured forward in the last ten minutes. Now once they had scored and it was extra time it may not have been the ideal set up, but inb fact in the second half of extra time he did come into things a fair bit and actually played OK I thought.

I read that the penalty line up was already clearly decided, so perhaps Vardy is not in it because he's less likely to be playing. Mind you that doesn't explain why Dier was one.

It's now coming out that Vardy was on the already decided list and meant to take the fifth kick, nut that he had tweaked a groin in the final minutes of extra-time, and only stayed on as England had no subs left. Dier was a fill-in. There is a photo of Vardy reaching down to his groin as he and his teammates start to run towards Dier after the successful kick, presumably having forgot himself and starting to sprint. He is now an injury doubt for Saturday.

[ursus arctos]

It is difficult to establish any kind of rule of thumb.

The club is contractually required to accept an offer of the buyout clause amount, but the player is not required to agree personal terms, so one sometimes sees a player who the club wants to keep agree much improved terms and turn down the move. In other situations, the club takes the money and moves on. As you suggest, "world class" players often have astronomically high clauses that are designed to never be met, but squad players can move for half their clause or even less.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Average audience of 20m, reportedly, so could well overtake the 1966 figure of 30m if England end up in the Final.

With a single-minute peak of 24.4 million. Saturday's game may not beat that but 30 million would definitely be in play if England made the final.

[Ray de Galles]

There is a photo of Vardy reaching down to his groin as he and his teammates start to run towards Dier

There's an wingoesque image I am sadly never going to be able to wipe from my brain.

[Kevin S]

Do any of you know what IKEA stands for? Without googling.

It stands for well-designed furniture at affordable prices.

[Kevin S]

Except the fucking Aspelund bed.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

On TV audience figures, how valid are the measuring methods?

Measured based on approx. 5,000 households, so depends how valid that is considered, statistically speaking. I'd guess the actual measurement of what channel is being watched, and for how long, is more accurate than in the days when households completed viewing diaries manually.

[Flynnie]

5,000 is probably a statistically significant sample short of some major fuckups.

[Third rate Leszno]

Possibly wouldn’t end well for the dog if it was during a Grand Prix? Though strays often found their way into the track in Brazil.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

Isn't it the founder's initials and then the first-name initial of his ladyfolk?

Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd, where the first two is name of founder, second last is the farm where he grew up and last is his hometown.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

Indeed. Because it's not just the pressure of penalties that you can't emulate, it's the pressure of any genuine game situation. You can try and train at 'game-intensity' or 'game-pace' etc. but it's clearly not and can never be the same as mistakes made in training don't actually matter. And yet teams/sports people still train anyway. Because what you are doing is working on technique so that that is as ingrained as possible through repetition, and when pressure is applied the muscle memory kicks in and the action is performed automatically right. Repeatedly taking penalties will increase the store of unconscious knowledge in each player about how to hit each area of the goal at whatever pace of shot. There are very, very few areas of Football where the basic situation is repeatable, the angles and distance don't change, but this is one of them.

Well, that's spot on if there was ever

[Felicity, I guess so]

TV audience comparisons are meaningless if the country has a much bigger population now and televised football has become part of tv's crown jewels, which was far from the case in 66

[danielmak]

My feeling is that a match is always better when a dog gets on the pitch (in reference to a Libertadores feel to this match).

I have no idea why a team would avoid practicing penalties. Yes, practice lacks the intensity of game (just ask Allen Iverson). However, having 2-3 different plans based on the quality of the pitch/weather conditions and the skill of the keeper, and then executing one of those 2-3 plans in a game seems to be much smarter than just walking up an hoping for the best. The logic about not practicing penalties would apply to everything in football: why practice in a formation since the other team is going to affect the execution of a formation? Why practice corner kicks since the height of the players on the opposing team will vary? Why practice free kicks since walls will never be exactly the same? All of these questions would seem ludicrous. And the same would apply to penalties in my opinion.

I am annoyed by the conservatism inherent in the lineup. Colombia played a quite attractive 4-2-3-1 in some of the group games, with Falcao upfront and Quintero, Cuadrado, and James Rodriguez in the creative positions behind him. Now with the latter out injured, something had to be done. But I would have expected Luis Muriel to simply slot into that open place in the same system. Instead, Pekerman decides to revert to a more defensive 4-3-2-1, because...

I have no proper ending to that final line, and that annoys me.

Even going back to 2006, Peckerman made conservative changes later in the game when the score did not dictate such changes and those moves cost Argentina against Germany. I think he might be a coach that is just good enough but makes the wrong move when the pressure intensifies.

[Haddock]

Also, I cannot see how a mazy run from a stray dog would fail to improve any football match, sporting event, or manifestation of human culture in general.

So we’re back on the subject of Jamie Vardy, then?

[ursus arctos]

bix, there has been some suggestion that the "stack" on corners was pioneered by Lincoln City last season, but I have no direct knowledge as the veracity of that claim.

[Sam]

I wish we were back in the days when having been capped by one nation wasn't necessarily a barrier to playing for another, so that England could now have Quintero for the rest of the tournament. In a team who are doing most of the basics right, he's the (sort of) player they're most missing. Admittedly I've been raving about him since February, and get to watch him every week for River. Long may that continue. The remarkable thing (there are far too many pages of this thread for me to know whether it's already been mentioned) for me has been that for someone who's scored six goals in four matches at a World Cup, Harry Kane has seen absolutely bollocks all of the ball. During extra time he was dropping back to the halfway line to ping passes forward for teammates and I was thinking, hang on, best attacker dropping deep and passing forward to players who won't be able to finish it as well as he could ... where have I seen this before?

Still, being in a quarter-final against opponents I reckon we stand a chance of not getting soundly thrashed by is ... not quite a new experience, but one I last felt so long ago (1996, since you ask) that I'd forgotten what it felt like.

[ad hoc]

I think in extra time Kane was knackered. He wasn't at half way looking for the ball, he was at half way just trying to make it through the period vaguely usefully. They'd have taken him off if they didn't want him to be one of the penalty takers

[Sam]

That is probably a good reading of it. I stand by my 'they need to get him more of the ball' stance, though. While admitting it's not exactly original or uniquely insightful.