Azeem

Bellingham also penalized for obscene celebration vs Slovakia. Will play the Euros but suspended for one match.

14 minutes ago, Rucksackfranzose said:

You mean like the last WC match Spain won 1-1?

big occasions = SF Finals QFs

Likely to be the most boring QF

12 hours ago, 6666 said:

Demiral banned for his Kevin Nash celebration. Will be a big miss for Turkey.

caused a bit of diplomatic row this incident and not unexpected if Turkish players do that celebration again.

Reminds of that eagle celebration Xhaka Shaqiri did back in the WC against Serbia that caused similar drama.

This is discrimination against politicians

I think Spain were good at the last WC. They wasted a lot of chances against Morocco plus a little luck was not on their side.

best chance for Switzerland to reach a semifinal

Turkey's position on this symbol is somewhat understandable but like Swastika it is now tainted regardless if it has been in use way before in other meanings. 

Will be a good game but not a goal fest people are anticipating. Spain will win, like they have against Germany on big occasions over the past years.

Turk nationalist mobs are attacking Syrians refugees in Turkey. Some have been killed. The main impetus for this xenophobia is the shit economy under Erdogan and naturally people just find an easy scapegoat for venting their anger.

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/7/2/protests-and-arrests-as-anti-syrian-riots-rock-turkey

Riot is a very wrong word to frame these racially driven mobs which media does so often imo it gives the impression that there is equal monopoly on violence which is not the case most often. Just call them violent attacks if pogrom is too strong a word

Friday 5th July, 2024
Spain 2-1 Germany, 17.00
Portugal 0-2 France, 20.00

Saturday 6th July, 2024
England 1-0 Switzerland, 17.00
Netherlands 1-1 Turkey, 20.00

4 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

That was at least interesting but there's been some dour football served up in this round after the beautiful chaos of most of the group stages.

That is just international tournaments KOs rarely continue the momentum of the group stages.

2-3 Netherlands

3 minutes ago, Bluewolf said:

The Belgians and French have an ongoing dispute about where fries were invented.^[38]

The Belgian food historian Pierre Leclercq has traced the history of the french fry and asserts that "it is clear that fries are of French origin".^[39] They became an emblematic Parisian dish in the 19th century. Frédéric Krieger, a Bavarian musician, learned to cook fries at a roaster on rue Montmartre in Paris in 1842, and took the recipe to Belgium in 1844, where he created his business Fritz and sold "la pomme de terre frite à l'instar de Paris" 'Paris-style fried potatoes'.

Despite its name and popularity, the French fries are not French. The origins can be found in Belgium, where historians claim potatoes were being fried in the late-1600s.

According to Belgian lore, poor villagers living in Meuse Valley would often ate small fried fish they caught in the river. During the winter months when the river froze, fishing would become an impossible task and forced villagers to find other sources of food.

This is when the villagers turned to the root plant, potatoes, slicing and frying them just like the way they prepared fish. 

American soldiers were first introduced to the fries while they were stationed in Belgium during World War I.

5 minutes ago, Bluewolf said:

Fries may have been invented in Spain, the first European country in which the potato appeared from the New World colonies.^[34] Professor Paul Ilegems, curator of the Frietmuseum in Bruges, Belgium, believes that Saint Teresa of Ávila of Spain cooked the first french fries

Many sources say the crispy spuds were most likely invented in the country's northeast neighbor, Belgium. According to lore, the dish was born in Belgium in the winter of 1680, when the fried fish-loving denizens of a city called Namur had to find something else to cook when the local river froze over

French fries were actually invented in Belgium

Battle of Karansebes was fought as part of the Austro-Turkish wars. The Austrian army, stationed in anticipation of the Turkish attack, was made up of soldiers of different linguistic backgrounds. Night before the battle, some Austrian soldiers sneaked in alcohol and overtime everyone became drunk. Not understanding each other's language, the drunk Austrian soldiers had a fight which turned into a mass brawl and eventually 10,000 Austrian soldiers died in the ensuing violence. 

This makes it the worst case of friendly fire in history. When Turkish soldiers came the following day, expecting a heavy fight, they found everyone was dead already and took the city without doing anything. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Karánsebes

@Eco