France was going to play counter-attack the whole game. They very well could have held us to one and scored two from the run of play doing that for 90 min. Sure, fine, whatever thats knockout football.
It just feels really shitty when they get an opportunity to score (which unfortunately they did) because a guy intentionally flops. You know he did, he was pulling his legs and curling up well before strinic comes in and "would" have hit him*. Who knows how that play finishes if he stays on his feel, maybe strinic picks him clean, maybe he gets his body in the way and draws the foul anyhow. But you cannot say he didn't flop cause he did. If you want to reward that behavior that's your call. It was clearly the game plan. Counter faster and score on a break or at the very least get a set piece close to goal.
Same fucking logic for why France desperately wanted that handball, "who knows what would have happened if it was allowed to get passed perisic's hand". That corner wasn't going to do shit and was going to get cleaned up by another croat behind him if it didn't hit perisic by accident only cause the guy missed the header. That frogger ducking should reset the proximity test of ball to hand. Perisic wasn't trying to gain an advantage, he was shocked it came through. Its shitty that they get a 90% PK shot from a 1% chance shit opportunity.
The way the game was going croatia was pinning the french back and whipping in crosses all day. Like I said sure thing france could have cleared them all and kept us scoreless (they essentially did) but you basically gifted france two easy chances letting them get the lead twice. That suits counterattacking football to a T. We need to attack because we need to tie. That opens us to a counter and we got stung for real twice. Unfortunately poor defending was also our fault on goal 3 and 4 but the opportunities were there because we were playing form behind.
We could have lost 2-1 and I would have been like, whelp thats what the french wanted to do and they executed, good for them. The ref unfortunately gives the PK because its an easier position to defend in the court of public opinion. To not give it would have meant a shit storm for him and his career (read: good bye any future world cup matches). I did feel however he spent the rest of the game making it up to croatia in small ways. He let a lot of 50/50 tackles go our way and gave a couple yellows that really stopped france from tackling harder. But if we really wanted to be fair, call one of the shirt tugs in the box a PK. It would have been the equivalent bullshit 1% chance converting to 90%. If we get it back to 2-2 at that point it resets the game and then we could see if the french tactics would have won them the game. If we were tied in the second half maybe goal 3 and 4 don't happen ( and certainly madzukic doesn't chase down lloris for our second). Maybe we do get stung on a counter and lose 3-2, maybe we hold on to the shootout. Who knows! But playing from behind really screwed our tactics and it sucks that it was a result of a flop and a soft PK.
That said I am still happy with 2nd place. Its a very very good result for our small nation. Not everyone can win. You gotta make peace with that and be happy with your lot in life.
*Just an aside - fucking Lalas had the balls to say you can have a foul without contact. What a fucking asshat. Its a contact sport, what are we doing if we give fouls for brushing the air. The douche also defended the PK call adamantly saying its 100% a PK. Fucking guy was a defender, he knows what a shitty call that was, he's loves to stir the pot. I really hate him.
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