Click the 2022 World Cup Quarterfinalist

It's impressive how Senegal could keep strong even without Mané. Mendy and Koulibaly are great components to the team, and for sure I would root for Senegal if I had choose any African country. Amrabat also had a great game against Spain, and Bounou was a true hero or maybe the Spanish players were too bad to score

Let's say that Morocco has a good team for the African standards. Maybe equivalent to some European national teams, but I didn't expect that they could evolve a nice chemistry between themselves, mainly considering they could face Croatia and Belgium at the group stage.

and a potential Germany/Spain match-up in R of 16

If it matters a lot to 75% of Dutch people, but matters a lot to only 5% of Americans, that's still 3 million more people impacted positively if the Americans beat the Dutch... but my 5% figure may be an overestimate.

Junior high & elementary school kids who play soccer may take an interest in the first 2 or 3 scoreless hours of one game. Adults not so much.

While I'm also sorry to see that the US is not here, I don't mind that the Dutch won. They have a great squad and have come tantalizing close to winning the World Cup multiple times. They certainly deserve so at some point. And I also have a good feeling the US team might reach the quarter finals next World Cup when they play on our home turf :)

As a Dutchie, I sure am happy!

Netherlands has been advancing on this World Cup more by luck than by sense. The game against the USA was a great exhibition tho, and no wonder they are going to bother Argentina. I personally also preferred Netherlands to the USA, because the meaning it would be to a Dutch, would be way worse than it would be to an American. More like the bad atmosphere felt in Peru after their saddening lose to Australia in the recap. If it would be the opposite, the Australians would feel that less than the Peruvians.

And another! And I effin live there! Doh!

Yep, I was shocked by that question and ended up getting it wrong :/

Just my personal subjective opinion but I feel like every sport is pretty objectively boring and silly unless you have some personal or emotional investment in the outcome of the sport... a favorite team... or player... or participation of your school or country or city's team and out of some national or municipal pride you care if that team wins... or even if you have bet money on the game. Otherwise... it's hard for me to fathom how anyone can watch for the 1-2+ hour duration of a typical match (or the 3 years or whatever it takes for a cricket test match to resolve) and stay interested. I'd make some possible exceptions for a couple things that are more visceral and with more obvious components of direct competition/performance and have less esoteric rules or scoring systems... such as... MMA... or auto racing... or some extreme sports... but they're all unbelievably dull to me, and I imagine that this is mostly because I don't care who wins.

Differently from net sports like tennis or volleyball, the invasion sports like football or basketball are probably more appreciated because of the "freedom sensation" it gives to the player, as you can build amazing plays with the ball. Basically everything can happen on this type of sport, and, as you said, the victory means a lot of pride to a fan of rooting for their nation or club, if you consider that there is a lot of free space to provocations if the opposite happens.

I also have to say that football is a great sport because of its league organization, although of a long calendar. At least to a Brazilian club, you have a lot of competitions to play almost simultaneously, and winning them would be symbol of eternal glory. Or else you can bitter a melancholy relegation.

For the first four characteristics, you could have an alternative sport: futsal. 5 players each side, small court, small goals, and two 20-minute periods. I don’t think these changes would be adaptable to football, because the premise is to difficult the player’s way to score a goal. Depending of the game, 90 minutes is sufficient, but I agree it may be kind of boring. I wouldn’t decrease the players’ number, because I don’t think the game would be that evolving if you had one defender, one forward, although you can use different formations to make that “possible” with 11 players. About field and goal size... I don’t know :/

But here we come to a point: if the football was played on the ice, it would be a really restrict sport to Arctic clubs and countries. It wouldn’t be an accessible sport, which is the main premise of football: being it easy to play, and accessible to everyone.

But yes, I can relate to passing the ball all way back to the defense being boring...

Lol. Lol. :/ But about ice hockey, it’s painful forcing the vision to try to see the disk on the ground. JUST PAINFUL.

and i was almost forgetting, please dont talk about neymar without brazilian authorization

Jesus Christ... I guess the graphic elements are useful when the ball, the disk, or whatever is not in play. Like a foul at football.