World Cup Final and 3rd/4th Place Play-off Live Match Chat
Putin must be delighted at the thought of Europe’s finest taking over Moscow on Sunday. But it is what it is and the stadium will be covered in red and blue as France take on Croatia in the World Cup Final. These two have only met once before in the World Cup, in 1998, when the French triumphed 2-1 in the semi-final on the way to winning the trophy for the first and, to date, only time.
Croatia have never beaten France in their only previous five meetings, losing three and drawing the last two.
The 3rd/4th place play off sees England meet Belgium – a match dominated by Premier League involvement, unless of course Belgium make mass changes, which they may well do. The two have met three times previously in World Cup competition – in 1954 when the teams drew 4-4 in what must have been a tremendous game, in 1990 when David Platt’s last gasp goal saw England progress to the quarter-finals and of course in the group stages earlier in the tournament when both sides played their reserves in a 1-0 Belgium victory.
We will see the line-ups pre-deadline for the 3rd/4th place off match so maybe it’s best to wait to see which players are selected before making any transfers. It’s also worth noting that in the previous four World Cup tournaments there has been 17 goals in the 3rd/4th place play off compared to just 8 goals in the last four finals.
We are again allowed five free transfers and can now select a maximum of eight players from any one team.
THE GAMES IN FULL
Saturday 14th July
Belgium vs England (3pm)
Sunday 15th July
France vs Croatia (4pm)
So that you have them to hand in one place here’s a reminder of the substitution rules, transfer allotment, wildcard and boosters. AKA the rules…
SUBSTITUTIONS
TRANSFERS
Keep track of all the action, the goals, the talking points, right here at FF247 Live Match Chat, an interactive chat which encourages you to keep involved and share your thoughts and emotions as the matches take place.
Good luck!
*** NEW ARTICLE ***
It’s ain’t coming home after all. Never mind. Good luck to France and Croatia for Sunday. Our final World Cup Fantasy article is live!
What’s the email address for the regulars leagues?
Morning Smasher, all ok mate ? There is a hot comment somewhere and we will have a regs page when the new site is up and running for the season. For now you can do elleffce@gmail.com
Just to let everyone know, i have received mails and will reply shortly.
Cool thanks mail sent. Yeah I’m all good thanks looking forward to all the rate my teams
You won’t be once Mitro starts.
Received Smash.
Smash, missed an ‘e’ out there. It should be :- elleffcee@gmail.com
Re send mate.
I guess you got my mail Elle or should i resend it?
Got yours Wafflez.
What info you need in the email?
Kenedy back at Newcastle, if only we could have him at £4.5 again!!
Yeah no chance unfortunately
What do you reckon Smash, £6.0? If he’s £5.5 I’d be happy and wil consider him when our fixtures improve!
Yeah I reckon 6. Ritchie is 6 that’s why though I think 5.5 is probably fairer
Kenedy’s price is out at 5M
Conte (officially) fired by Chelsea….
Do you reckon that should mean we steer clear of any Chelsea players for the first few games? I was considering Hazard because he’s been brilliant in this world cup but now I’m not sure. Is that Sarri fella from Napoli still the forerunner for the job?
I’m not sure I like any of the Chelsea players prices this season. Only ones are Pedro at 6.5 and Luiz at 5.5 if they become back in favour
I was looking at Pedro as well and would be straight in my team if I knew he’d actually play but that’s not a guarantee.
Yeah one to watch. Barca have gone after Willian so you never know but then new manager could also bring someone in
Yeah exactly. The Willian to Barca move is kind of confusing me. I don’t see why they would want him or if he’d even play.
He’s coming in Matt, the Napoli president confirmed it yesterday by saying their lawyers were in severance negotiations.
Ah okay then. Cheers Init. Will be keeping an eye on Chelsea preseason now.
Sarri orchestrated a very tight Napoli team last season, I believe with a 4 at the back formation, but I stand to be corrected on that last bit.
The defenders or Courtois may well be worth keeping an eye on…..
If he actually comes in! If he does I will until then I don’t know.
Well Sarri is coming in
Azpi looking attractive once again!
Yeah I’d say it’s good for Aspil and bad for Alonso if they go to a back four
Smash, did i mail you back ? If not i’ll do it in the morning. Off out now, its getting dark.
Nah not received any mail
Do it in the morn mate.
Mornin all. How’s everyone doing the day after? 😉 Gutted over here and I’m 3000 miles away!
Anyone know anything about Jean Michael Seri who just signed for Fulham? Heard Barca, Chelsea, etc had been after him in the past but don’t know anything about his game. Just glad to be signing enough players to field 11 come week 1!
Hey Colriles. Gutted is an understatement but we have to be proud of the boys really went above and beyond what was expected of them.
I haven’t watched Seri play before but he’s been linked with pretty much every top club in England and a few in the other major leagues so there must be something about him right? I’m not sure if he’s a left or right winger but I hope he doesn’t cut into Sessegnon or Cairney’s minutes. They are the two I’m keeping an eye on particularly Cairney who I believe took some set pieces for Fulham.
He’s a defensive midfielder who can pass I’m hearing. He won’t be much of a fantasy asset
I would second what Smash says, bit of a coup signing for us given the clubs he’s been linked to but I can’t say I know much about him. Barcelona nearly signed him last year but chose Paulinho instead so that might be a bit of a clue; I would think that he would be slightly more attack minded than your Barrys and your Fletchers.
In terms of fitting into the team there’s no way he’ll cut into Sess’ or Cairney’s game time. My guess will be depending on the type of fixture he’ll play instead of Johansen or McDonald. As Matt says I’d keep a keen eye on Cairney, top quality player and could be a real bargain at £5.0m. At times last season he played more of a deeplying playmaker role and fell foul of the assisting the assist fantasy problem but I think this signing might be aimed at giving Cairney a bit more freedom in the middle. Quite literally everything good we did last season went through him.
Devastated Col. Mentally and physically shattered. I’m still on the floor and struggling to get up, this could take a while. Went to bed at 10pm and anyone who knows me will tell you that’s unprecedented. A minute before 1am is usually a minor miracle. My wife thought I was ill.
Put it this way if FPL started tomorrow I doubt I could enter a team. I missed MLS last night.
Not been great today Col either.Staggered up the hill from the pub last night and hit the sack. I couldn’t even get out the house until the afternoon today
It’s not like I have never seen a team I support lose but
we had it in the bag and we let it slip away.
I think that’s it. Plus 3 guilt edged chances to put it to bed before HT.
Yep Init. A second goal would have it killed it off
Yikes guys I thought I was taking it bad but I suppose it’s reasuring to know I’m not alone.
Init I think as we’re the same age we’ve been through all the sane tournaments and probably have similar thought patterns when it comes to England. I’ll watch the final but can’t bring myself to watch on Sat – sad times
I’ll watch on Sat for sure. That’s probably why I’m so disappointed too. We are now playing how I always wanted us to. CB’s playing one-twos around forwards? Yeah I’ll have that. Using the keeper as an outfield player? Yeah I’ll have that. I gave up watching England outside of tournaments a long time ago as it was turgid. This is exciting now. I’ll watch that and I’ll watch the friendlies and the qualifiers or whatever the new league thing is called because I like what I’m seeing and want to see their progress now. Feels like we finally have a plan and an identity. We even deliberately played long early doors last night but it felt right as it was part of a clearly well thought out plan and not just because of a lack of any other ideas.
Completely agree, as I said in my article at the start of the tournament, I’d given up on England long ago but this tournament has reinvigorated my passion for the national team. Going forward I’ll watch friendliest and qualifiers and once the dust has settled I’ll look back with a sense of pride on this World Cup.
I also think Southgate has a point in regard to this team not being the finished article. Yes players like Dele and Kane play every week in the EPL but they’re still just kids, they’ll improve and mature and who knows in 2 years we might Be better again. I’ve read a lot of negativity on Twitter, I’ve had to stop going on for a few days, youbwiuld think we’d been turned over by Croatia the way they’re acting, in reality they beat us by a goal, and even then they needed extra time to do so.
Anyway, onwards and upwards, I think we have a lot of positives to take from this WC, next week it will be over and we have the new season to look forward to.
Agree with your assessment here init. Especially the part where you say that the team now has a plan. That has been England’s problem in recent years. Perhaps they lack depth but that will come with time. Having reached the WC semis will help immensely in future competitions. I also think that EPL’s ruthless schedule doesn’t help your cause. Many look exhausted from 60” on and that’s obviously due to that for otherwise one would expect England to thrive given the high pace of the league. Anyway, without FF247 I couldn’t care less about the winner last night but being here amoung many English people had me rooting for you whereas everybody else in the world was doing so for Croatia (being the underdog, in terms of history etc), so I can relate to your pain.
We’ll always have the next game.
The depth is nearly there now too, which is the beauty, it’s just not quite there yet as it’s not old enough but it will be in time. We just won a couple of youth tournaments and that’s not to be sniffed at as Germany and Spain built from similar successes. Next step will be Southgate blooding them gradually but also hoping / convincing their clubs to actually do likewise. Silva has said he will do so will Lookman (that kids very exciting), looked like Pep would do so with Foden but the Mahrez signing also illustrates the obvious barriers. Hoping Klopp continues to use and develop TAA and allows Gomez game time as he’s another exciting one. That Walker role looks made for him. I’m sure there are others too but they’re just the ones who spring to my North West biased mind. Distinct lack of any coming from the Jose stable right now though.
I wouldn’t get too excited for the future. I am not sure what they showed that would make it so. You couldn’t beat the two difficult teams you faced, you beat us (Colombia) on penalties and we are basically Scotland without James. Almost all your goals came from set pieces. Panama was the worst team at the World Cup and Tunisia wasn’t far behind. Sweden is the slowest team I have seen in a long time and I watched a game from an over 40 league two weeks ago.
You need midfielders, one, anyone. Otherwise it be another 50 years of nothing, you won’t get such an easy rode to something again, at least I don’t think you will. I realize a lot of the English players were on the young side, but France is just as young, so…. plus one can only assume Spain and Germany’s young players will rise and I expect those to be better than the current lot of English players. Maybe years of watching young Colombian players come through and still seeing Uruguay and Brazil produce guys that were not even on the radar that surpass the supposedly bright future we were supposed to have has made me very negative, but I didn’t see a whole lot to be excited about.
In 2014 we (Colombia) made a decent run and had a young team, but I wasn’t high on Colombia for 2018 despite us returning a lot of the players at a good age. I knew better, thought about who we played in that WC and how lucky we were to get a very weakened Uruguayan side in the knockout stages. The first time we faced a decent side we lost and that same side that beat us lost 7-1 the next game. We got lucky how things were set up for us and my guess is that will likely be true of England also.
As far as u17 and u20 tournaments go, maybe that is a good sign, but most of those players won’t be on the national side down the road, new players will surface. So a good accomplishment, but I find it hard to take much from tournaments that have teams like Nigeria winning a bunch of them or a team like Venezuela playing in a final.
I know, I am d**k.
You got the last sentence correct at least
Mito, you heartless b*****d :big-lol:
Scotland isn’t full of drug factories Mito!
Judging by stats, maybe they should be. Sure be a lot cheaper.
Cheers everyone. Hang in there, we’ll have FPL for new torture soon enough 😉
Good info on Seri, thanks. Agree AK, can’t see him threatening TC. Probably stabilize that holding spot and even possible push TC further forward. Interesting now to see what value we place on Mitro (the player, not the FF247 RMT king…) and how much they’re willing to pony up.
Ramsey looking nailed on for Arsenal who have a good run of fixtures after the 1st 2 GWs…
From skysports:
In his first press conference since beginning work at Arsenal, Emery told reporters that he sees Ramsey as a key player and that he has informed the Arsenal hierarchy of the player’s importance.
“I am very happy with him. For me, every day, every training session, he has the ambition I want,” he said. “He is working with a quality, the type of ability that I want. I want to work with him.