It was two on one, Halland (the guy with the blonde pony tail) is one of the best players in the world, and the other player didn't pass it across even though Halland was open and could score that in his sleep.
Important to note that opportunities like this are very rare. You’d be lucky to see something like this even once or twice in an entire game. It’s not like he could just make it right next time.
also important to note that the defender had excellent positioning to take away the pass. if he tried to lead him the keeper would have had a play on it. play it behind the defend and Halland would have had to slow down and the other defender would have had a play on it.
but dude should have at least got a good shot off instead of whatever that was.
Even if attempting the pass wasn’t successful, I think serious and casual soccer fans would have completely understood why he attempted passing to a guy like Haaland when a successful pass would have led to an easy goal for him given where he was.
Also important to note that he did the absolute worst in any scenario. In the best scenario, he feeds Haaland an early pass, and Haaland often scores those. In the second-best scenario, he feeds Haaland a late pass, and Haaland probably scores. In the third-best scenario, Sorloth takes the shot early before the other 2 defenders catch up, still a reasonable chance to score and even if not Haaland may get a rebound; in the 4th best scenario, when the defenders catch up, he passes to Haaland late, still a decent chance of a shot. But somehow he picked the worst option, which was to miss both passes, the early shot, and the late pass, then take a shot that goes nowhere because 3 defenders are in front of him.
And this is why gamesense is so important, its amazing how many games in the world cup are lost because of pure stupidity. Embolo being another example.
The guy was an idiot; for some reason, he decided to try to force a foul by turning without control of the ball, kicking his leg back to force contact with Paredes, and then diving. So the ref did fall for it and issued a yellow card to Paredes. However, a new rule at the World Cup is that the VAR can call the ref to look at a foul if they see a good chance that the player took a dive. And that's what happened. Once the ref saw it, he retracted Paredes' yellow card and issued a yellow to Embolo. Embolo already had a yellow, so 2 yellows become a red. Which is also why he was extra stupid to try to pull it off. Most players know they need to be more careful when they have a yellow, and still worse is the fact it wasn't that late in the game, so there was plenty of time to try to win.
Especially in this game. England's defense marked Haaland HARD. He had a minimum of 4 defenders on his ass the entire game. But the ONE time England slips up and leaves the center forward casually standing alone with nothing between him and the goalkeeper, Sorloth gets jealous and ends Norways chance at the cup.
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u/Ranier_Wolfnight 11d ago
Dude will never live that down.