how cruel

Isn't that clear offside? Not fair, but when you fail such chances....

How was that not offside???

It was clearly...but as Stranzl stepped back just the other moment it was hard to see for everyone I guess...how goddamn unlucky for Austria...this tourney has been running too badly for the hosts so far to be fair.

watching espn's stream; i feel sorry for those of you learning about the game of football from these announcers

AW in the booth for france (well only half the games but still)
such a treat!

go poland! Just two more goals...and we have an outside chance of getting to the quarters.

y, espeically if we consider that usually the hosts are "expected" to be slightly helped by the refs, while Switzerland was denied a clear penalty in the first match and now this offside goal allowed against Austria.

disgusting dive

you can very well give a penalty there imo

he touches the striker with both hands from behind an he's pushing him. as was said many times before the fifa wants the referees to whislte more petty (right word? ^^), so this should have been a penalty.

plus. austria just deserves it after the offside goal...


btw: urs mayer comments in german tv and also said it was a penalty. he's a former referee, so he should know

the problem is that the forward should have falled before, he did it only when it was tough for him to reach the ball and have a good shooting angle...

Poland just need to beat Croatia in the last game whatever the size of their win against Austria

What if Germany beats Austria, though?

Suppose the current match could go either way:

For Austria it improved their chances. With Croatia losing, if they draw the current match then they need to beat Germany and have Poland not win by a large margin. If they manage the miracle win here 2-1, they will be even with Germany on points but will need a win because of a worse goal difference. If they can pull the bigger miracle and win 3-1 then you need to see rule 7.08, they go to penalties with a draw and are through with a win. If they draw even here, they will be through with a win next match unless Poland go off on Croatia. Had Germany won, then with a win today they would need to do better than Croatia on the last day, so even with a win today and a win next match they could be out if Croatia beat Poland. With a draw today they would have needed to beat Germany and have Poland beat Croatia, but not by too much.

So the short of it is that with a draw today and a win next week they are now most likely in the next round, whereas they probably wouldn't be if Croatia had lost.

For Poland the German loss hurt them. Basically flip everything above.

The point is that having a team you lose the tiebreaker against be 3 points above you before you have played your second match is bad. In such a scenario you often need to win your last match anyway, so it's better to have the team that you have the tiebreaker against if you win be 3 points ahead and the team you lose the tiebreaker against be 6 points clear. Plus there is the benefit that if you win your second match you may qualify with a draw in the third match depending on how you have done in goals scored.

I'm conveniently ignoring the draw because it gets more complicated and this is already a fairly complicated post that wasn't particularly well written.

errrr u're right
might end up more complicated than that,
can't assimilate that teh German's lost

Then the first tiebreaker is goal difference in matches played between Germany, Poland and Croatia.

Right now that looks like:
Germany 3 for 2 against +1 (they are done)
Poland 0 for 2 against -2, but assuming they beat Croatia they will at least go to 1 for 2 against -1
Croatia 2 for 1 against +1 but they go to at best 2/2 for 0 difference.

So if Poland beat Croatia by 1 goal then it's Germany and Croatia. If Poland beat Croatia by 2 or more goals then it is Germany and Poland.

I feel pretty sure this is right because nothing in the tiebreaking rules mentions taking one team out and starting the whole process again as they do in the NFL and probably other American sports.

thanks for the update, i was lost

[x] Jared delivers

Yea, this is what I feared. Looks bad for Poland even if they do beat Croatia, which will be difficult enough. But beating them by 2 goals... I give that a <20% chance of happening

Boruc stock is risin fast ,very impressive so far

wowowow

wow, what an atrocious call. unreal.

So it is actually possible for Austrian to score.

horrible call

wow that penalty lol

ugh
gg poland
gg me