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WHAT THE JEFF JUST HAPPENED: CRO-FRA Final

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    #26
    Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
    Croatia has a smaller population than Ireland. It's a minnow. The Netherlands is a small country in population terms, and Dutch domestic football has become decidedly minnow like since the 70's. I also think that everyone was surprised by Italy being in the 2006 final. Particularly given their previous two outings, and the fun and games happening in their domestic league over the previous four or five years.
    You need to rethink this.

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      #27
      https://www.facebook.com/marijana.m....5ODk1NjQ4MDEz/

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        #28
        Croatia are the 27th biggest country in europe in terms of population, and the 128th biggest country on earth. (which puts them in the bottom third of Fifa members) the Netherlands are about a third of the way down the list of Fifa members.

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          #29
          So is Domagoj Vida (of Russia baiting fame) a raging right winger or not? Maybe PPV knows. It's a subject of debate in our house because of his, and I quote, "white supremacist hair cut".

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            #30
            Originally posted by Бога Нет View Post
            France are “home” team for kit choice, yes? I would love it to be blue/white/red v red & white/white/blue but it won’r Happen will it? Maybe France will swap blue shorts in which would be OK.
            No idea where this image comes from, just saw it on Twitter:

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              #31
              Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
              Croatia are the 27th biggest country in europe in terms of population, and the 128th biggest country on earth
              This is the bit you need to rethink. I'm not trying to be a bastard here. But you're using statistics lazy now.

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                #32
                Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                So is Domagoj Vida (of Russia baiting fame) a raging right winger or not? Maybe PPV knows. It's a subject of debate in our house because of his, and I quote, "white supremacist hair cut".
                You can make up your own mind. Why do you need help with this?

                He has played in Ukraine, Russia has invaded a part of Ukraine, etc etc

                Do what you want with it. I'm not going to help you because I'm tired of this fuckmuppetery new hobby trying to find as many racist as you can Pokemon style which has spread all over social media and places like this. Where people are so fast label some racist than sit back as if they themselves were not at all because they donate a quid every month to the Red Cross.
                I'm not saying you'r doing it here and now, dude, but I'm a bit... it's not getting us anywhere trying so desperately stasi-like pinpoint the cunt.
                That's one reason I can't stand this place as I used to, beyond the football fora I mean. It's become a Stasi nest.

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                  #33
                  I'm really escalating this into a flounce, aren't I?
                  Sorry Patrick T, don't take it personally.

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                    #34
                    PPV, Croatia are an absurdly small country to be in the World cup final. Croatia is a small country. That's what makes their achievement so insanely impressive. I'd relax about it and just enjoy it more.

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                      #35
                      Stop apologising man and continue going in with both barrels blazing.

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                        #36
                        Berba, what I mean is that you can't look at population and that's it. You can't.
                        You have to take into account schools, what they do there, how developed the sport academies are and I don't mean the professional clubs but on a common level. Where kids can just turn up and participate.
                        Croatia is a small country but there is not a child who doesn't participate in a sport and not has the opportunity to be part of a club. An elite even up to a certain level. Much like it is in Sweden.
                        Kids in Croatia have so many chances to do sports, and just like in Sweden they will at young age do several. Like hockey in winter, football in summer.
                        This is the thing you miss if you only look at population.
                        And this is the thing you miss when you then wonder why India doesn't have a national football team to speak of. Well, because the kids there don't have even a fraction of the opportunity the kids in Croatia do. And yes, this with sports in Croatia that everyone should do is a heritage from communism.
                        So, this comparing population, it doesn't say anything. You have to venture deeper.
                        You are talking about population and population only, as if sports culture isn't even a thing.
                        Last edited by Pietro Paolo Virdis; 12-07-2018, 17:11.

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                          #37
                          Croatia's achievement isnt a one-off. They have qualified for 9 of 12 tournaments entered. Berba's boys 3 in the same period

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                            #38
                            Nevermind me, Patrick. I'm still drunk. The party never ended yesterday. Two hour sleep and then we were back at it.

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                              #39
                              Originally posted by Snake Plissken View Post
                              Admin note: Edited the title as it's NSFW.
                              For future reference, do we not swear in thread titles now?

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                                #40
                                Croatia is unique place in the world of cultural athletics, it's got that unique combination of Slavic rigour along with Mediterranean flair. Add a dose of post-war nationalism and you've got a strong contender punching way above its weight.

                                Vida's worst public offense was his "Burn Belgrade!" locker room video, no excuse for that kind of crap. The mindset is still stuck in mid-90s, it seems.

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                                  #41
                                  Originally posted by Бога Нет View Post
                                  For future reference, do we not swear in thread titles now?
                                  I’d prefer it if you didn’t. It tends to stand out more than in post text.

                                  Inside a post, carry on as normal you muddy funsters.

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                                    #42
                                    If Vida did that about Belgrade, he should get a proper bollocking.

                                    I did this yesterday ahead of the game to a bunch of my Serbian friends where I said that if theirs had to go on an early vacation, ours would score a few goals for them instead. Three.
                                    That sign with the fingers is a very Serbian thing. Before anyone starts, it's not nationalistic in the sense comparable with a Heil. It's their thing, it's how they do the cross over the chest, among other meanings. We, Croats, catholic do it with fingers pressed together and from forehead, chest, left-right. They, orthodox do it forehead, chest, right-left and with three fingers.

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                                      #43
                                      Croatia were 40/1 with the bookmakers, only 12th in shortness of odds. That makes them a proverbial dark horse but not a minnow, which would be 100/1 or longer.

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                                        #44
                                        I've never really understood the population argument to the nth degree - whilst a larger population creates a larger pool of players to work from, ultimately you only need 22 players of sufficient quality to win you a World Cup. There's not a country in the World that couldn't have a team go all the way, the use of China and India are the perfect examples used previously.

                                        As with anything it all comes down to the culture of sport in said country - in India, cricket is God and they consistently have one of, if not the best cricket teams in the World. Football is number one in most countries, but the ones where it isn't has seen little, if any real success.

                                        Croatia getting to a World Cup final with a population is not really a shock when you see how well they have tended to do in the tournaments they have played in. They may have overachieved slightly, and them getting to the final is a bit of a surprise (not a full on shock) but weren't they always seen a little bit as a dark horse?

                                        I will be fully behind Croatia on Sunday - and it's not just because I have them in a sweepstake.

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                                          #45
                                          Originally posted by Pietro Paolo Virdis View Post
                                          I'm really escalating this into a flounce, aren't I?
                                          Sorry Patrick T, don't take it personally.
                                          I was just asking because I know nothing about him and whether he has a political side. I know he has a terrible haircut but don't want to judge him on that.

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                                            #46
                                            Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                                            I was just asking because I know nothing about him and whether he has a political side. I know he has a terrible haircut but don't want to judge him on that.
                                            Again, sorry for my language. I'm a bit moron in my head up there in the clouds but it's no excuse.

                                            Let's just call it for what it is and break it down.

                                            Vida spent four seasons in Dynamo Kiev so obviously he has a lot of friends there.
                                            For sure, he has a lot of friends who ahead of the game against Russia, they pep talked him wishing he would make sure there was a win against Russia
                                            Vida was part of a video where they shouted something like glory to Ukraine.
                                            Now, I don't know how that's ugly nationalistic in any sense. I mean, a part of Ukraine is under siege. And all this glory malarkey is nationalistic but is it more so shouting glory to Ukraine than sing a national anthem like about a queen to be saved who's part of a monarchy which has fucked quite huge part of this planet?
                                            Maybe it is.
                                            More enlightened people are obviously allowed to fill me in.
                                            Both can be equally shit, of course.

                                            The worst part, if it is true, is if Vida sang that Belgrade should burn. Then he can fuck off in my eyes. That's shit only stupid fucks would stand behind.

                                            My better half Sophia said that Vida looks Finnish. She asked: is he really Croatian?
                                            What was I supposed to do but smile about that comment?

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                                              #47
                                              France are the better looking side and have Mbappe. France were lovely to me two years ago when I visited.

                                              Croatia just knocked out England, knock out England regularly and were lovely to me three years ago when I visited. PPV sent me a Croatia shirt and I 'be' Hadjuk Split. However, I am most intrigued by this. I would love to know if it isn't just overly-romantic nonsense.

                                              The old man took his cattle up the hill that morning in December 1991, because that’s what he did every day, rain or shine, winter or summer. He took his cattle up the hill that morning, and he never came back.

                                              A handful of men in police uniforms arrested him. Whether or not they were legally police officers was moot, and it was also irrelevant: round these parts, power came from the barrel of a gun, not from a piece of paper.

                                              The man’s crime was the same crime it always is in places riven by sectarianism: not being one of them. Being the other. Being the enemy. His crime was nothing he’d done: it was who he was. He was Croatian, they were Serbian. That was all there was to it.

                                              The men took him and a few others to the nearby village of Jesenice, and there they were executed. The old man left behind a family whom he loved and who loved him: none more so than his six-year-old grandson with whom he shared a name and from whom he had been practically inseparable, the old man doting on the boy, the boy hero-worshipping his grandfather.

                                              The name they shared was Luka Modric, and this Sunday that small boy, now 32, will lead his country out in the World Cup Final.

                                              Football uses the language of war: strikes, shots, volleys, attacks, defence, bombardment. Modric, like all his countrymen, knows the difference between the real thing and the game: knows too that in Croatia one is always bound up with the other, because between them they are the history of that small, proud nation writ large.

                                              After his grandfather was murdered, Luka’s family’s house was burned down, and they had to live in a hotel for years: not an expensive comfortable one, but a basic, crumbling one in their hometown of Zadar. When the mortars fell, as they often did, young Luka would sit inside and wait them out: but when the all clear was given, he’d be off playing football in the hotel car park, sometimes with other kids, sometimes on his own. Anything to escape the grim, numbing reality of living in a perpetual state of conflict.

                                              He was a small kid: too small, as it turned out, to be taken on by the local bigwigs Hadjuk Split. He ended up playing aged 18 in the Bosnian league for Zrinjski Mostar, which was where both team-mates and opponents discovered two things about this kid: that he had all the skills you could want, and that he could look after himself too.

                                              Fast forward 15 years, through a journey that has taken him from Dinamo Zagreb via Tottenham Hotspur to Real Madrid. Even though he still looks like, in the unimprovable words of the Guardian’s Barney Ronay, ‘a little boy dressed as a witch’, he is now one of the best players in the world: a midfielder of fabulous talents, one of the very few who can bend time and space to his will.

                                              And of all those talents, perhaps the greatest is this: that he makes others play better. When the simple pass is the best option, that’s what he plays. When he needs to hold the ball for a few moments so his team-mates can get into better positions, that’s what he does. When he has to cover back after someone else’s mistake, that’s what he does.

                                              He’s not one of those superstars whose megawattage draws the eye and the play too, whose own presence inhibits the other ten men wearing the same shirt as him. He’s the ultimate leader precisely because he doesn’t make it all about himself. You won’t find him rolling around as though he’s just stepped on a landmine, or ripping his shirt off when he scores, or standing there looking haunted when things aren’t going his way. He leaves that kind of stuff to Neymar, to Ronaldo, to Messi. They’re all home already. He’s still there, and so are his team.

                                              And his team love him. When he missed a penalty late in the match against Denmark, his team-mate Ivan Rakitic gathered the others round. 'Listen,' he said. 'Lukita's got us out of more messes than we can count. It's our turn to repay him.' The Croatians put the miss behind them and won the subsequent shoot-out, with Rakitic slotting the winning kick.

                                              But if you want to know what Modric is made of, here it is: only a few minutes after missing that penalty, he'd taken another one in the shoot-out, with the Danish keeper Kaspar Schmiechel in his face trying to put him off. Did he score second time round? Of course he did.

                                              It’s hard to understand – no, it’s easy to understand, but hard to properly FEEL – what this Croatian side mean to their country. The most famous image in English football history is that of Bobby Moore lifting the World Cup. The most famous image in Croatian football history, by contrast, is that of Zvonimir Boban taking a flying kick at a riot policeman.

                                              It was during a match between Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade in 1990, not long after Croatia had effectively voted for independence from Yugoslavia by electing a majority of pro-independence parties to their parliament. Boban saw the policeman mistreating Dinamo supporters during a riot and launched himself head high at the man. ‘Here I was,’ Boban said later, ‘a public face prepared to risk his life, career, and everything that fame could have brought, all because of one ideal, one cause; the Croatian cause.’

                                              Boban was sacked from the Yugoslavia team who went to the World Cup that year. He didn’t care. In his own mind he was Croatian, not Yugoslavian, and eight years later he captained Croatia to third place in their very first World Cup. He was leader of a generation of fabulous players - Slaven Bilic, Robert Prosinecki, Davor Suker - who to this day are revered in their country.

                                              In reaching the final, Modric’s men have already gone one better than their predecessors. It’s fitting that they’re playing France: both sides have played three group matches and three knockouts, with Croatia the stars of the group stage and France the best team in the knockouts.

                                              The smart money has to be on France. They are a better team overall, and they have won all their knockout matches in normal time where Croatia have been taken to three consecutive extra times: an additional 90 minutes of football, the equivalent of an entire match more.

                                              My head says a French victory, perhaps even an easy one. But my heart says a Croatian win, for the fairytale of the underdogs, for a proud people forged in war, and most of all for their remarkable captain and the old man after whom he was named.
                                              I don't really want to support Croatia as I know, if I do, they will lose so I will probably keep neutral and hope that we get an awesome final.

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                                                #48
                                                You might want to credit and/or link to that piece.

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                                                  #49
                                                  You can't beat this.
                                                  Nevermind that you don't understand the lyrics. The point is what they are doing. Over and over throughout this World cup. Just having fun.

                                                  https://www.instagram.com/p/BktQ3VQAr8H/

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                                                    #50
                                                    Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                                    I refuse to accept Croatia as a minnow,
                                                    At least someone is talking sense.
                                                    Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, Inter, Liverpool, Bayer Leverkusen, your own so lovable Fiorentina, Monaco, Eintrach. Four players who have won the CL.....

                                                    Oh, but they mean minnows in that we don't have a country as big as Russia, USA, Canada, either Congo, Sudan, China, India, Pakistan, Australia. That kind of minnow?

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