Roly

@Dreb26 @AlexiLalas I agree that this has been a problem especially past 10/15years, but it’s one thing game management/skullduggery from players and another that corporate suits trying to crowbar adverts in under the pre-tense of hydration. It’s antithesis of football in my opinion.

@rpatts82 @AlexiLalas Ebb and flow where players constantly sell foul calls for 1+ minutes. Sometimes they get nasty fouls but sometimes they lay there to delay the game.

I have no problem with hydration breaks. It benefits players and advertisers. Win/win. Yes, it changes how you play/coach/watch, but so did substitutions, 3 pts for win, VAR, etc. Evolve and adapt. There will be a generation whose version of the beautiful game includes quarters.

@Dreb26 @AlexiLalas Because it disrupts the ebb and flow of the game, football has a certain rhythm to it. Also I want to see the players handle it and that’s an element to it aswell.

@rpatts82 @AlexiLalas Why not? Almost every game you will see players cramping. As the heat goes up it gets worse so I’m confused why you wouldn’t want to see the best players at their best. Everyone has their opinion but it doesn’t make sense to me.

@kendallbaker Arsenal just won the league after 22 years and Liverpool won in 2020 after a 30-year wait. Football is more than just winning tho — it’s the community and suffering together in the rain. Not hot dogs and which celebrities are courtside.

Outside of a miracle (Leicester City), fans of the vast majority of Premier League clubs will never get to celebrate what Knicks fans just got to celebrate: a league championship They can get excited about all the Europa Leaugue and FA Cup wins they want, but it’s not the same

Are you sure the Premier League is better for fans when ~75% of their teams don’t have a realistic chance of winning the title? The NBA has had eight different champs in the past eight seasons. The EPL has had seven champs in its entire existence. Room for debate, just saying

@AlexiLalas Under extreme heat then off course I agree, but it shouldn’t be a prerequisite for every game and 3mins is pretty long.

@rpatts82 So you don't think players should be given an opportunity to hydrate?

@post_liberal 2014 had bernand,Fred and Jo playing. That was definitely a worse team

@Nadeem83Shafqat This is not true. They didn’t show all group games live, that is correct, but once knockout started every game was live. I remember watching them(at strange hrs).

@StanCollymore North Korea in 2010 or Saudi Arabia in 2002 take some beating.

This is the 7th World Cup I've been to and 13th I've watched. Pound for pound and taking modern pro conditioning versus teams who, for example in 1978 or 82 were semi pros, this Paraguay performance is the worst I've ever seen.

USA ’94: The World Cup That Changed Football youtu.be/xX-FcBMmw9U?si… via @YouTube

@ManagerTactical English culture? You’re swimming in it and don’t even realise it, you plonker.

England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 should NEVER be allowed to host a World Cup. They have no culture, old stadiums, terrible cuisine, people get stabbed in London and it rains every day… FIFA has made the right choice to not have them host any World Cup since 1966. They have a lot to work on, unlike the 🇺🇸

Anyone wants to get in the mood for World Cup and watch all of England 60years of hurt. I’ve done 3-part documentary series 06-26 - So close,yet so far 86-06 - Hope and heartbreak 66-86 - The fall begins

Part three of England 60 years of hurt (06-26). Enjoy youtu.be/yRnKef2eEVE?si…

Part two of England’s 60 years of hurt (86-06). Part three is out tomorrow on my YouTube channel 👍 youtu.be/WmQvHmmlgxc?si…

@pvsportaunz The rivalry started long before, in late 80s and in 1990 had the massive brawl.

The start of the Man Utd and Arsenal rivalry, sparking years of iconic battles 🔥 Could we see a new era of dominance from both clubs next season? 👀

Part one of my - England's 60 years of hurt begins (1966-1986) youtu.be/l6FKkWXqvy4?si… via @YouTube

Jeden rozdział się kończy. Rozpoczyna się nowa era... 🥺 Mistrz Świata @Podolski10 w najbliższy weekend zakończy karierę pełną sukcesów. Został właścicielem Klubu swojego dzieciństwa – Górnika Zabrze. Dziękujemy za wszystko, Poldi!

This is slightly odd as Joe Hart was definitely on the decline. He just came off a really poor Euro 2016 and at fault for bale and Iceland goal

@McFlybowy Hart was coming off a terrible euro 2016 where he made some horrendous errors (bale goal and Iceland game), Pickford was taking his spot no matter what happened at man city. Unfortunately he was on the decline

It’s actually normal he feels the Regret, He changed the General Perception about Joe Hart with the way he treated him. Because if you strip away the ending and look at the actual career, Joe Hart was one of the defining goalkeepers of early modern Manchester City. 4x Golden Glove winner in 5 years, 2x league titles, huge performances in Europe, England’s undisputed number one for years. He wasn’t some average keeper that stumbled into trophies. He had genuinely elite shot-stopping ability at his peak. But when Pep arrived, football was entering that hyper-positional era for goalkeepers. Sweeper-keepers, buildup structure, calmness under pressure, distribution angles, circulation all of that became almost as important as actual saving ability in elite possession systems. And Joe Hart represented the previous era stylistically. Pep looked at him and basically saw a tactical incompatibility rather than a club legend. He didn’t also even treat him like one. It was more like an outcast. And lot of fans often confuse “doesn’t fit this manager’s idea” with “was never that good.” Those are two completely different things. Pep did something similar with other players across his career, good example is Yaya Toure. Once he publicly moves on from you, the football world starts treating your flaws as if they were always fatal flaws. The aura of the coach reshapes the narrative. Suddenly every bad pass from Hart became evidence he was “never good with his feet,” every mistake became amplified, while the years of top-level performances started fading from discussion. And timing matters too. Social media football discourse exploded around that period. A lot of younger fans mainly remember: the mistakes late in his career, Pep replacing him almost immediately, clips of awkward distribution, and the idea that “modern football evolved past him.” So the memory of peak Joe Hart became distorted. What gets forgotten is that goalkeeping evolves in eras. Hart was elite for the demands of his era, he’s top 5 greatest EPL Goalkeepers. Put him in a more transitional, reactive team and he thrives, left Man City and was still winning trophies at Celtic. Put him in a Pep positional structure where the keeper is practically an extra midfielder and his weaknesses become impossible to hide. It’s similar to how people now talk about old-school strikers who “couldn’t press” or centre-backs who “couldn’t progress play.” Sometimes the game changes so aggressively that players from one tactical age suddenly look obsolete in the next one, even if they were elite before the shift. The saddest thing is that endings shape memory more than primes. Football fans usually remember the final chapter louder than the middle chapters. You will hardly see anyone put Hart in Greatest EPL Conversation, and he deserves it. But the way his time at City ended contributed to that a lot.

Most fans waited for the day Pep would leave the EPL because he was just too damn good. But now that it’s happening, you reflect on how great it’s been to have 10 years of him in the league. Hard to think of any managers above him in the pantheon of greats.