hope wilmotts will stick with that afrohead scrub bros in the midfield. he is an incredibly poor coach luckily and if Sabella can capitalize on that, we can edge them.
zabaletta can handle hazard, no concerns there. But all the concerns lie on the left side where Basanta might get raped by mertens. not to mention federico fernandez's consistent moment of madness. origi

sternest test by a mile its gonna be. Its all upto the Messiah obviously.. Help us legend.......
Hope we will live the day to fight LvG's boys.  

I'd go for Argentina winning at penalties, I can't explain why but that's just how I feel it.

Paper means absolute f*ck all when you don't play as a team and act and like a bunch of spoon fed, arrogant individuals.

Which is exactly what Belgium are, their luck will now end.

Plus even on paper its not that impressive, only great player midfield onwards is Hazard the rest are overhyped Europa League standard players.

Belgium are going to lose here. They sit back and press disjointly and their defence bar Kompany are utter crap. Lavezzi and DiMaria wre going to have fun on the wings

Messi had his best game of the season vs Switzerland imo. never seen him run that much.

Argentina most of the times only have one attacker in the box outnumbered by defenders, it becomes hard to create or score when half the team is concentrated in the mid circle. Sabella should encourage Gago to crash the box sometimes, he and marcherano are too static sometimes and it affecrs their play because they make them play so sluggish

Lumiere_Blanche wrote:hope wilmotts will stick with that afrohead scrub bros in the midfield. he is an incredibly poor coach luckily and if Sabella can capitalize on that, we can edge them.
zabaletta can handle hazard, no concerns there. But all the concerns lie on the left side where Basanta might get raped by mertens. not to mention federico fernandez's consistent moment of madness. origi

sternest test by a mile its gonna be. Its all upto the Messiah obviously.. Help us legend.......
Hope we will live the day to fight LvG's boys.  

you made a mistake....LVG boys not going there..Costa Rica will do the repeat of 2002  

halamadrid2 wrote:.................................................

Argentina most of the times only have one attacker in the box outnumbered by defenders, it becomes hard to create or score when half the team is concentrated in the mid circle. Sabella should encourage Gago to crash the box sometimes, he and marcherano are too static sometimes and it affecrs their play because they make them play so sluggish

and that attacker is Higuain who is neither forcing the defenders for winning the ball nor showing any off the ball movement.....too static. i would start palacio the next game.

vs Swiss, i think Sabella was too cautious. even rojo who did great job going forward in group games did not do the same. perhaps worry of vulnerable is the reason.

Like I've said for a while I think that Belgium will beat Argentina. Argentina don't look impressive at all, and if Switzerland had competent attackers they would have won inside of the 90 minutes...some of the chances they wasted were just mindblowing.

Belgium is better in every way than Switzerland. Better at defending, passing, keeping and they actually have competent attackers (though the US game wouldn't have you know it!)

This should be a pretty dominant match by Belgium, I think. 3 - 1 to the wafflers.

Belgium are a fantastic defensive team with a Top 2 Goalkeeper protecting them. They also have the pace, skill and talent in abundance to punish Argentina on the break.

If Belgium take their chances unlike the rest of the matches they've played so far they can easily knock out this Argie team. Another wasteful performance will see them on their way back to Brussels.

Rojo will be a huge miss. Their 2nd best player so far this World Cup behind Messi.

Mertens >> Lavezzi .

I hope Mirallas starts.he was ridiculous when he came on.Lukkau has to start too.Origi is overall better technically but he doesn't have that killer instinct and Lukkaku will know how to take advantage of the space Argentina leave for counters.

If Origi and Mertens start they will bottle it, calling it here.one choker in the frontline is enough

BarrileteCosmico wrote:On paper...

That's on YOUR paper.

RealGunner wrote:Jokes aside, the Belgium team have such an amazing potential if they can click more often like they did in few moments against USA(and Algeria).

Yes last night they rose a lot in my esteem.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:
Fernandez < Kompany
Garay = Buyten*

Wouldn't it be better to compare Garay with Kompany? Best central defender of each team against the other. In that way I think Belgium will be ahead in both comparisons.

How is van Buyten managing? 36 years old. Hardly played all season. He could get exposed sooner or later and the likes of Mario Yepes run the same risk.

Natalie Portman wrote:Mertens > Lavezzi imo

also, a used condom has looked better than Higuain so far this WC, I don't think we can count him as "better" than any single individual at the moment, even Gil.

I understand your point of view. Overall Lavezzi may be the more established player but Mertens has done a good deal in this tournament. Since he replaced Nacer Chadli in the first match he hasn't given the Tottenham man a sniff at that playing position. Lavezzi was disappointing yesterday. We need to see more from him.

Higuain has been awful. Overall he is a great goal scorer but in this tournament he is just not cutting it. dani mentioned in yesterday's chat we were having that he is being denied space and without that he cannot do anything. Origi and Lukaku are currently able to do more. The former has skill and is a sort of versatile mobile player who even when he is not scoring can do other things. The latter is a presence in the box and would have regained his confidence after last night.

neuro11 wrote:

rwo power wrote:If Belgium manage to draw this to extra time, Thibaut Courtois could win it for them on penalties ^^

Thibaut Courtois would be too good for that....any keeper would be enough for us since our players mostly will kick towards gallery

So you mean that if we hadn't got that extra time winner we would have lost in the shootout against Switzerland? I was counting on our pedigree and overall favourable past records in shootouts to take us through.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:Paper means absolute f*ck all when you don't play as a team and act and like a bunch of spoon fed, arrogant individuals.

I didn't see any arrogance in Belgium. Instead what I saw is inexperience at this level leading to fear and panic.

neuro11 wrote:

Lumiere_Blanche wrote:hope wilmotts will stick with that afrohead scrub bros in the midfield. he is an incredibly poor coach luckily and if Sabella can capitalize on that, we can edge them.
zabaletta can handle hazard, no concerns there. But all the concerns lie on the left side where Basanta might get raped by mertens. not to mention federico fernandez's consistent moment of madness. origi

sternest test by a mile its gonna be. Its all upto the Messiah obviously.. Help us legend.......
Hope we will live the day to fight LvG's boys.  

you made a mistake....LVG boys not going there..Costa Rica will do the repeat of 2002  

What did you mean by repeat of 2002?

neuro11 wrote:i would start palacio the next game.

Palacio should have earned a start by now at Higuain's or Lavezzi's expense. All the praise is going to Messi and Di Maria but let's not forget Palacio started that move. If he didn't it was almost certainly going to penalties.

@messixaviesta

Well, Sergio Romero's PSO quota is not so great (1 saved pen of 10 pens in 2 shootouts). Diego Benaglio saved 1 of 4 pens in one shootout.

If Ottmar Hitzfeld would have let Yann Sommer play, I would have been sure that Switzerland could have won a PSO - he saved 7 pens of 17 in 4 shootouts

neuro11 wrote:
vs Swiss, i think Sabella was too cautious. even rojo who did great job going forward in group games did not do the same. perhaps  worry of vulnerable is the reason.

Most teams will do just that in the knock out rounds. Fear is often the overriding factor in such situations.

rwo power wrote:@messixaviesta

Well, Sergio Romero's PSO quota is not so great (1 saved pen of 10 pens in 2 shootouts). Diego Benaglio saved 1 of 4 pens in one shootout.

If Ottmar Hitzfeld would have let Yann Sommer play, I would have been sure that Switzerland could have won a PSO - he saved 7 pens of 17 in 4 shootouts

Didn't know that. Some very interesting information.

I am going with my team but have to say not very confidently. The quarter final really is our mental block. This is the point we have not crossed since 1990. It's so shocking that producing such quality players, considered one of football's superpowers and among the favourites in pretty much every world cup in recent history, we actually have such a poor record. I believe that if we can cross this point then we can go on to win this tournament. We are not the best performing team at this moment but reaching the semi final will give us a lot of belief and who knows suddenly some of those who have been non-performers so far may also step up. Of course no one can say for sure but we would have a good chance. This is the pivotal moment in the whole scheme of things the way I see it.

Maradona is thoroughly disgusted with Argentina's performance in the tournament so far.

http://www.goal.com/en/news/3790/world-cup-2014/2014/07/02/4930311/maradona-bitter-and-angry-over-argentina-displays?ICID=OP

Disgusted is far too strong. Especially considering the state of the team the last time we saw them in this competition, in which he was responsible for lol

So far Argentina have looked like utter garbage. Don't care what they have "on paper" they are horrible and if they don't improve it soon won't matter if Messi can score a goal or two because that won't be enough. Don't know if Belgium is ready to kill them of though. In theory they should be (not because of their players but because of how bad Argentina have been so far) but they've been a bit like Argentina tbh just not that bad.

http://as.com/videos/2014/07/02/portada/1404316039_588069.html

the obsession won't stop not saying that our team is made up of saints but our players will never sing anti Argentina songs like these mofos.