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2018 Nations Cup Men's Open Predictions

Zima

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Slow day at the office. Taking a pop at guessing how the group stages are going to finish. Feel free to post your own.

@Regs - Hope I'm not stepping on your toes by starting this thread!

Group A
1) Italy
2) Ireland
3) Germany
4) Fiji

Group B
1) Africa
2) Saudi Arabia
3) Iran
4) Japan

Group C
1) India
2) Croatia
3) England
4) China

Group D
1) Canada
2) Scotland
3) Serbia
4) Portugal
 

machel

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Strangest goal I’ve seen in a while...In a must win second game for both teams in over-38 we(China) played Canada. With the score 0-0 and near the end of the first half our defender pulls his hammy. He calls for a sub but stays on the field until he gets the ok. Our coach asks the ref for a sub and says next whistle. Whistle blows, the ref looks at our player with his hand up and whistle in his mouth, the linesman is holding up his flag for a substitution so our player goes off the field and we(China) stopped playing. However, the ref didn’t ok the sub apparently. Canada plays the ball from their side of half and spring their forward in for a breakaway goal while we were stopped as our injured player was limping off the field. Lol.
The ref said he didn’t allow the sub even though it looked like he did. All I said to him was sure, if you’re not going to allow the sub then why don’t you just say “no, not yet” or something along those lines. Refs do it all the time. He took no responsibility for it and said, the ball was in their half and they still had to make their way to your end to score. I said, “it’s not that hard to do when the other team has stopped playing. (we lost 2-1)

Anyways, still had fun this tournament although it gets tougher every year when we band-aid a team together last minute and have to play the likes of Italy(Columbus players/pcov players), England (mix match of Westside players), Canada(All blacks).

Good luck to Italy for making it out of our group!
 

machel

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Looking at the standings and there’s all to play for in open group D. All teams tied on 2 points! Wow.
 

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Zima

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In Open Men, Canada through to the final. They beat India 2-1. Africa and Italy in the other semi final. Extra time...2-2

Africa down a man.
 

Canucks4Ever

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Africa took the piss out of Canada in the final, running out to a 4-0 lead en route to a 5-1 win.

Opener was a free kick on the ten minute mark, then, the big moment of the match came five minutes later. The Africa keeper came up with a massive save from a 1v1 after the centreback had been robbed by the Canada front man just outside the box. After keeping it 1-0 when it looked sure to be tied, the Africans went down the park, slipped in their striker and doubled their lead. Another big save for the Africa keeper to ensure it stayed at 2-0 just after halftime when a cross was turned goalward by a sliding defender. It was labelled for the top corner and destined to be an OG until a great bit of athleticism saw the keeper tip it around the post. Africa would add two in the space of five minute to put it seemingly out of reach, though a goal for Canada with fifteen minutes to go sparked a bit of a fight back. It looked like they had clawed another back within a couple of minutes, only for the referees whistle to blow for a foul and deny a potential frenetic finish. The Africans would add one more late to pad their stats before lifting the trophy.
 

machel

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fcuk all for interest on ttp this year. Just wondering, how many ttp members still play in the tournament and in which division? We could have a meet up in the gaaarden for next year. Someone make a ttp banner ;) haha
 

Stonehands

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Super disappointed in what has become of this tournament. Unfortunately what it has become is whoever has the most disposable money on hand wins. It is nowhere near a "Nations Cup", unless I have lost my nut and the Dutch Nick Soolsma is truly Fijian and Robbie Giezen is African I could be wrong but this is just a couple examples of this tournament just becoming Richmond Summer Soccer Tournament. Realistically the national pride left in this 16 team tournament is India, Italy, Croatia and Canada. For the rest of the 12 teams it is whoever can get the best players to show up and then throw money at the cream of recreational footballers.
Disappointing that local football has taken such a dramatic turn to who can clean the most dirty money wins. No longer is loyalty found in local football, what happened to playing on teams from your area with buddies and mucking the shite out of results and having copious amounts of pints after games and practice. Enter a modern local football change room prior to kickoff and you have the youth glued to their social media and post game fcuking off as fast as they can to get back to it. Well that's my shitty rant but Nations Cup has taken a terrible turn and does not have the same feeling as prior tournament.
 

4STGMP

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Are you surprised? Loyalty and tradition left the vmsl a decade ago. Hard to name any top talent who stays with a team more than 3 years....and who isn’t getting paid
 

robino

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You are correct!!! This is where the Nationscup directors need to step in. Have 3 max players who are not of origin. Lets stick to some rules. I looked at Portugal Open team and nobody there was Portugese. Many other countries the same thing. It has become less of a pride thing and more of lets put best players that we can get. Kudos to those countries who stick with rules and support their communities.
 

Zima

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For some teams, a three "foreign" player maximum rule would probably be tough to deal with. Would Portugal be able to field a team if they were limited to only 3 players who were not of Portuguese descent? I am sure that there are probably some Portuguese guys playing in VSML Prem, FVSL Prem and VMSL Div. 1 but asides from a few guys on Columbus, I can't think of anyone.

Agreed that credit should be given to those teams who stick to the rules and support their communities, but some communities have a large player pool and therefore, have the luxury of being able to do that. I am sure that the Portuguese (a proud bunch to be sure) would be very happy to field a fully (or almost fully) Portuguese team, but I just don't think that they have the resources to do that. I don't presume to speak for them but at this point in time, they are probably just happy to have "Portugal" in the tournament.
 

Canucks4Ever

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I have to say that I was perplexed by some of the players on the Africa team; perhaps many with a South African grandparent...

I can't see anything in the rules about allowing "three foreign players" per https://thenationscup.com/home/rules

Are these rules not current? Or not enforced?? @Rangerforever??? Or does it just come down to not wanting to rock the boat, aka be "that team" that is making protests about player eligibility.

Overall this year did seem to be a bit more low key altogether, and I think that is reflected in what @machel said earlier about interest, etc. Maybe it was just the fact that India weren't in the final along with their legion of travelling fans.
 

Rangerforever

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The integrity of the Tournament is a priority of the Organizing Committee while trying to maintain a level of reasonability in enforcing that to the best of our ability.
 

robino

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What does integrity mean? Please explain.
I think whole point of THIS tournament is to see which people, community has the best team in different age groups. Simple as that. Each country should be represented by its community. There are plenty of Portugese (using it just as an example) players in lower mainland. Organize your teams and get the playets out. If you cant then you shouldnt have a team in. Soolsma is playing for Fiji??? Thats bullsit. He also played for Germany. This is not VMSL. This tournament needs to have higher standards and regulations, otherwise it is going to lose credibility.
 

machel

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I think we all want to see the best soccer played and with the best talent around but the Nation's cup has a deeper meaning than that imo. Arguably if you wanted to watch All-star teams then just go watch some Premier games during the season. In regards to some players like Soolsma who don't have their nation represented then maybe let teams have a guy or two on each team like this because we do want to see the best of the best...don't we?

People taking pride in their respective backgrounds and matching up against one another once a year...it's something I look forward to every year and every fcuking year we get thumped which I don't really mind but if you lose to an all-star team that kind of sucks. lol. Arguably, it doesn't take an all-star team to beat us ;)

I think the tournament does a great job overall besides this one rule. In terms of other rules like age limits..I know they enforce it as Romania asked to see our ID's last year at half time or they refused to play the rest of the game. haha.

It's like @Canucks4Ever said, maybe you don't want to be the team that rocks the boat either.
 

FC Red Star

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Rules are simply not enforced. They should probably make it official with "three foreign players" and then try to enforce the rules but it would be hard anyway.

Teams are given an option to protest the game (up to one hour after the game) but no one does it anyway (probably because every team, with maybe exception of Italy and India which are huge communities in Lower Mainland so they have a large pool to draw from) have at least couple of "foreign players".

I can only assume that the rules are hard to enforce also because of the fact that, for example, team Africa can get players that are somehow connected to any of 54 countries in
What does integrity mean? Soolsma is playing for Fiji??? Thats bullsit. He also played for Germany.

"Any player who legitimately qualifies for more than one country who wishes to transfer from one country to another (not in the same year) must have the manager of the new country's team submit a request to the Tournament Committee with proof of eligibility and request approval from the committee." https://www.thenationscup.com/home/rules

This means that Africa's manager proved that Soolsma legitimately qualified to play for Africa, doesn't it?

I think the rules should change, allow maximum 3 foreigners and then enforce the rules.That probably would be fair to all teams (smaller communities could field the team with the help of three foreigners; if even three foreigners are not enough then the team should fold and make room for another team).
 

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