FU - Weekend Questions for our soccer-forward folks...

by BillyGoat , At Thanksgiving with Joe Bethersontin, Monday, July 13, 2026, 06:43 (8 days ago)

Is that what it's always like to watch Haaland? I read the posts below, and someone said that he doesn't do anything on defense (which I took to mean the version of defense that most strikers seem to play) and that he can't create his own chances. That dude moved less than the maple tree in my front yard for like 100 of the 105 minutes he was in the game. He didn't seem to even do much of anything to create better angles for his teammates to get the ball in to him -- especially on that one break. Nor did he do much of anything to make the defense pay attention to him during "half court" offense. I haven't seen any reports of an injury. But he was so underwhelming that I (as pretty much exclusively la World Cup soccer fan) had to go to YouTube to see that he's actually good -- and his club highlights are absolutely preposterous.

I'm certainly someone for whom a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But one of you smart posters said below that the best way for England to shut Haaland down was to lock down the guys trying to serve it into the box for him. Those Norwegian players were pretty fast in a straight line, but they seemed to lack size and physicality to retain possession, as well as enough skill to beat the England defenders and create space. Haaland didn't do anything, but there were almost no balls into the box for him to do anything with.

Which is sort of a chicken-egg thing. If Haaland was doing more off the ball -- even just like 10% of what a prime Steph Curry would do to occupy the off-ball defenders -- would that have helped his teammates with the service?

Thoughts on the officiating in Argentina-Switzerland? I didn't get to watch, but based on the articles I read, it sounded like some very questionable stuff.