Ok, time for some recap. First of all, the city of Dortmund is not worth a visit. Looks like every other city in the region, nothing special and on normal occassions probably way dirtier. The stadium and the whole area around is beautiful though. I think it's way more impressive when the yellow wall is in full force, for the international games unfortunately they have to fill the standing areas with seats. Atmosphere was fantastic, no aggression whatsoever, everyone peaceful and happy before the match, during and after. As expected, the Turks were very loud and some of them were thinking about booing the opposite anthem, but they quickly realized to leave it be. Game was great until the own goal which I kind of missed, because everyone was watching Ronaldo having a tantrum due to the bad pass by Cancelo. After that the stadium became mostly quiet and the game was practically over, apart of that because Pepe is still a monster at age 41. Some excellent defending you simply cannot appreciate when watching a game "only" on TV. Would've wished to see a game that is open until the final second, but it was still great to witness, Portugal have the assets to win it all. On the negative side, it was too bad that my tickets were in some kind of tourist section and people constantly left their seats for snacks. Like, congratulations, you paid 60 EUR a ticket to wait 10 minutes in the beer queue while someone scores. Prices were abhorrent anyways. Decency and shame also get kind of lost: We had four(!) incidents during the game and two after the game with people running on the field towards Cristiano. Hope for a lifetime ban to all of them, at some point it's getting annoying. Oh, and I missed a celebrity.
Only got tickets for that one game, will be impossible to find some for the next round, at least to humane prices. Maybe I'll go to the fan fest here in Essen oder in Düsseldorf/Köln for the knockout stages, been to the cities multiple times already. Guess I will have to consider UK in 2028 or even US/Canada in 2026.
We'll have a lot of games in Houston...but it's also not the most pleasant time of year to be here, temperature wise.
What a sequence. Modric missing the penalty but scoring 30 seconds later. Defending champions Italy on the verge of elimination.
Group D has been fantastic, highest quality and big upset with Austria ahead of France and Netherlands. Good thing all three of them advance.
Sigh...that was a terrible game. I really hope Koeman puts depay on the bench... let's hope we avoid Spain in the next round. But with the way we are playing we could lose to anyone...
To me you would've deserved a draw and like I said, that was by far the best group. Just look at the shitshow in Group C. Maybe you play England or the winner of Group E (probably Belgium), both should be 50/50. Other than Depay, sure looks to me like Van Dijk is done.
Denmark has looked like the best team on the pitch in each of their three matches, but the goals have been hard to come by. still, 2nd place and through, on fair play.
I agree that we actually have a chance against both England and Belgium. We are lucky that we are in teh easier side of the bracket. It is just that we are playing badly. We are really missing any offensive creativity and guts. We play scared. I really do not understand why Koeman keeps on playing Wijnaldum, just give some of the young players a chance to bring energy. If we ignore the own goal Malen actually played with some energy and tried to do something. Van Dijk is not playing well. We gave away way to much. With the players we have in our defensive line that shouldn't happen.
Not sure. For some reason Koeman prefers de Vrij. I think I would prefer de Ligt, but I always appreciated de Vrij (I always like players that played for Feyenoord). That being said I think that with van Dijk, de Ligt and de Vrij we have a pretty good defensive line. During the first two games our defense was solid so I think Koeman didn't want to mess with that side of the ball. However we gave away to many chances against Austria, so maybe there will be some changes..
