lemon revolution

remember Bob no fear no envy no meanness

Lukaku, Hazard, De Bruyne. De Bruyne the thrust, dropping slightly deeper, picking passes, sliding passes, driving eating up the yards like a bullettrain. Hazard constantly dipping weaving clipping his heels round corners, an absolute slipstream, an absolute trace of a player. Like the fucking moon - you see him where he was half a second ago. Lukaku a whole other blade in himself. How much has this man improved from the lumbering, slow inflatable we saw at Old Trafford in August? Dominating centre halfs in the air, for speed, positioning. These three tore Brazil a new one in the first half hour. Belgium could have had three or four by half-time. I'm not Martinez' biggest fan, but he set the team up to allow these lads to flourish today, and for half an hour they cut Brazil, one of the strongest defensive sides in World Cup history to absolute shreds. Brazil - goes against any actual rationale, but I did kinda feel sorry for Neymar, slumped, dumped, almost in tears as he...

You don't have to be great to win a World Cup. You gotta be smart, sure, but you don't need to win each game five-nil at a canter, playing the most superb football ever seen and leaving teams scratching dust as they chase you all over the pitch. Columbia and England showed signs of this theory earlier tonight. Columbia started the game in the garage, nevermind which gear, but slowly, surely worked themselves into something of a coherent team performance, enough to snatch a late equaliser and very nearly enough to win the game. Quintero, the man who's sublime Gascoigne-isms in the group games had even forced me into ordering a fucking Columbia shirt was way off key, short of both room and options on the ball, while Falcao spent the first 70 minutes battling 3 defenders on his own. England by contrast, started brightly but soon faded. Gone were the fluid attacks of the Tunisia game in a first half which eventually saw Harry Kane dropping into the number 5 position t...

So fucking gutted. Again the team selection simply didn't make sense. What is Di Maria? What is this man who oscillates between pub football and world class every ten minutes? Where is he meant to play? What is he supposed to be doing on the pitch? Fuck'sake. Dybala? Where? Aguero? Nah? Mascherano? Sampaoli's attempt to gegenpress France was never going to work with the players he has at the back there. It's hard to tell - rumours are divided - as to whether it's him or Messi picking the team. What needs to happen though, is for a manager to be able to tell Messi where to go on the pitch himself - someone not afraid of picking Icardi or Dybala, people it's rumoured Messi has an issue with, not afraid of dropping the Messi-chums (Mascherano) from the squad, but then also willing to build up a team that attacks through Messi, without him being just another counter-attacking outlet upfront or on the wing. The most frustrating thing for me about watching Messi at W...