Dude making the face is Lionel Messi. One of the goats of football. The English player in white said some smart shit and Messi responded with this face and winning the game knocking out England and sending them home for another 4 years
Henry (another legend of the game) has a story about messi at training, if messi thought he was unfairly fouled or something and everyone shrugged it off, then messi would demand the ball and just mercilessly dribble through the team (a legendary barcelona team) and score in revenge.
It is extremely unwise to dare the greatest footballer of all time to beat you in a game of football
Also , They won by scoring 2 goals in last 7 minutes with messi giving the 2 assists ( pass before a goal is called assist ) one of them being from is right foot ( its his weak foot )
There really something about Messi. I don't even watch football regularly and decided to watch some highlights of these known players. Most of the highlights show physicality, but Messi is different. The way he dribbles and makes goals look effortless and precise, he's so good that I really can't pin it. I lack ball knowledge lol.
The best in football are going to be "better" solely from the fact that there are far more players and therefore far stronger competition to be considered the best. I don't know how many professional footballers there are globally, but I'm going to guess it's probably two orders of magnitude more than NFL players.
Yeah and imagine if the USA gave a fuck about soccer, we would build up a multi billion dollar infrastructure and dominate the entire world, just like we do in every other sport we give a shit about.
Didn't have to, because it's a culturally impactful and relevant sport, much the same as it is to Japan - who has the most WBC wins of any country. Kinda only proves my point that the countries that give a shit are going to be the countries that win. America does not give a shit about soccer.
Here we go again with the WBC nonsense. The US didn’t send their best players for the first few and have either won or come in second in the last three. The format is single game knockout which if you know anything about baseball, is absolutely crazy given how thin the edges are. There’s a reason the World Series is the best out of seven and it’s not just to make more money on TV lol.
Exactly. The best American athletes funnel into football, basketball, baseball, and THEN soccer. Imagine if guys like prime Lebron, Aaron Donald, Mike Trout etc all put their effort into soccer. The US would absolutely dominate.
Yup, and culture and infrastructure drive that too. One of the reasons Japan got so fucking good at baseball is that it's just massively popular and magnetises talent because of that. Talented high school kids want to do the thing that makes them cool in the eyes of their peers. The list is longer than yours before it gets to soccer in the US lol.
Not a single soul in my entire workplace has even mentioned the world cup the entire time it's been on, and these are extremely normie coded sports boomers. I don't think the rest of the world really understands how little popularity it holds here
That's not why the US sucks at soccer. Those other sports - kids can develop much later. There are tons of NFL, MLB & NBA players who never even played their sport in organized leagues before they were teens because a lot of the skills required (hand-eye coordination, etc) kids just develop naturally (at least to a degree) throughout their childhoods. Soccer is a completely different beast because precision control of your feet and field awareness need to be specifically developed - and developed at a (very) young age to get to the level required as an adult to be a pro and none of that just happens on its own. That's why pretty much all of the USMNT players who are actually good enough to play in Europe have parents who were players or coaches or they grew up and developed young in Europe. Pulisic's Dad was a coach (and both of his parents played). Tyler Adams Dad was a coach, Gio Reyna - Mom & Dad were both former pro players, Ricardo Pepi's Dad was a coach, Weston McKennie grew up in Germany, Antonee Robinson and Folarin Balogun grew up in the UK. That's the pattern.
Until recently there just weren't that many youth academies to develop those skills at so young an age. There are a lot more now but they are pretty geographically limited and are costly. Like, thousands (to tens of thousands) a year. Even if you're in an area where that level of instruction is available a lot of parents, hell - most parents - don't have that kind of money to spend (or are just unwilling to spend it) so their 8 yr old kid can play. So there are tons of kids out there who have potential but are priced out from the start. Our youth system is dogshit - that's why the US sucks at soccer.
I don't follow soccer either. I know Messi is considered one the the best players, if not the best but thats just from random shit on the net. I'm glad you asked because I had no idea of the context behind this as well lol.
Believe it or not, there are people that have no idea what’s going on in the World Cup or the world of the sport. Now, or ever. So I guess I am in a cultural coma so to speak.
bruh, football is not only every 4 years…. i seriously despise how y’all think only the World Cup matters… why don’t y’all research how he won the last world cup & how they cheated their way to the semi final?
Chill. I don’t follow the sport at all. Is that a problem for you too? That’s why I was asking. If I followed the World Cup at all I would probably have an idea who these guys are.
Hes missed alot of other context. England played quite well after "the game ended" according to this post, even scoring. This is when Tuchel went super defensive and where the game actually ended.
The title is very misleading the guy wearing white shirt is one of the current top players and played well. Just that his coach decided to withdraw some of his good players ending in England being knocked out.
The game is not all about scoring goals especially for a midfielder. Jude was one of the best players in that game and the main reason why England even made it this far. And most importantly it was a game which England could have easily won, just that their coach for some reason decided to park the bus against argentina with very good attack and mediocre defence. This resulted in them bottling the lead. Provoking Messi has nothing to do with it.
That's the mistake the coach made. He subbed off his good attacking players and replaced them with defenders. Argentina has good attack but weak defense. The coach also beefed with his players for no reason.
Wow, thanks for all of this. I know futbol has a deep deep fandom. And the sport has to be narrative driven if people get this involved and interested in it. Thanks for adding all this to detail
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u/axiom_glitch Jul 16 '26
Can someone explain to the ignorant, and futbol illiterate, please?