Munkar

thats really sticking it to them lol. holy moly talk about petty.

Elimination rd of 32 starts in a few hours with Canada v S. Africa.

Scotland is out but England will play a Scotland in disguise(Congo) wednesday.

USA vs Bosnia wednesday too

gd Canada and America should both get through to the round of 16.

Iran dropped to third place in their group after their third tie. 9th place out of all the third place teams, top 8 advanced heh

In the final match of the group stages, Algeria scored the 3-2 in minute 90+3 which would have seen Iran go through to the knockouts at the expense of Austria, then Austria scored the equalizer which sent them through at the expense of Iran in minute 90+6. Absolute hearbreak.

But then again, if you play 3 games in a weak group and can't win a single one of them, not even against New Zealand, you simply don't deserve to advance.



Also, isn't it funny how hosts Qatar and many other Muslim countries justifed the bans of alcohol and rainbow armbands at the 2022 WC in Qatar along the lines of "guests should show respect to the culture and norms of the hosts", yet now that the script was flipped, the Iranian and Egyptian team refused to show the same respect to the hosts and denounced the LGBTQ*#-celebration ahead of their game in Seattle. Muslims are always conspicuously quick to demand "respect", but refuse to show the same respect to others. It's almost as if they don't actually seek "respect", they seek subjugation.

a good argument.

Yeah, I hate this system because it’s impossible to figure out what’s going on but I did have a fun time trying to come up with a theoretical outcome whereby Scotland could advance heh. I was praying for a Ghana +3 goal difference over the tablecloths lol turned out wouldn’t have fkin mattered anyway tho.

Also I was actually excited during the congo-uzbek game yesterday, which is wild. Gave England an easier path to 16 tho, Congo instead of Senegal.

But yeah, I mean half these teams don’t deserve to be there in the first place. Lol fucking Curacao in there and not Italy? FIFA is trying way too hard to include everybody. Pretty soon there’s gonna be no qualifiers, just 200 teams in the world cup.

The rainbow armbands are banned by FIFA, which interprets them as political in nature(they were explicitly planned to be used as political symbols in Qatar by several European teams). This was already against FIFAs rules. You can’t dress your players in political statements. That’s a good rule.

Iran and Egypt wanted to prevent fans from bringing in rainbow flags to the game tho lol

Edit: Also it’s illegal to drink in public in Qatar. FIFA made the dumb choice of letting them host, obviously that makes the fans in attendance subject to their laws.

This post was edited by Shadowoffury on Jun 28 2026 01:22pm

Qatar promised to make an exception for the sale of alcohol in the fan zones when they bid for the WC all the way back in 2010. Then, a few weeks before the start of the tournament in 2022, they went "nah, lol... what you're gonna do about it?" and FIFA sucked it up. At the time, Budweiser was still "the official beer partner of the FIFA World Cup", so everyone clearly expected alcohol sales to be possible. Budweiser were not amused, to put it mildly.

Exactly.

Oh yeah I remember the Budweiser thing now. 2034 in Saudi tho and no alcohol there either

With such a long run-up, it's fine and everyone can plan accordingly. So if some fans from, say, Scotland don't want to attend a WC where they can't get beer, they know to stay away. Dito for gay fans etc. FIFA doesn't need to contract a dedicated "official beer sponsor" for the event and teams will get told no rainbow-anything.

My main gripe is that the fan culture and stadium atmosphere in Saudi Arabia will suck, but Infantino and his posse will line up their coffers with copious amounts of Saudi money, so they don't give a fuck.