Spain Prevails, World Cup Winners and Losers, and Damon Vs. Leo With Chris Ryan and Anthony Dabbundo
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How did Bill and guests react to Spain beating Argentina in the World Cup Final?
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Bill Simmons podcast. We are live on Netflix. Anthony DeBundo is here. Chris Ryan is here. We're going to talk about the world cup final and a whole bunch of other things. Wanted to mention, I have a new rewatch of us coming tomorrow night. We're doing hitch. Um, one of the best rom-coms of the last 21 years, or at least one of the most successful. All right. Uh, I've been cooped up for a week and a half fellas. I have a lot of sports thoughts. See our go big picture for us as the soccer historian. Um, What did that, Spain, the second time they ever won, Messi falls short, comes damn close to winning two in a row. What was the biggest historical storyline for you?
Yeah, I would probably say the best team won the tournament and the best team won the game. So they played like, Kirk Goldsberry was just texting me. He was like, that was ethical football. And that's what it was. Like those guys came to play the game, came to play the sport. Argentina tried to get into a street fight and the right team won. Dibundo, what do you think?
I think that was actually one of the most dominant World Cup finals of all time. And it ended 1-0, and it took more time for them to actually find the goal than we thought it would. But going through the stats, going through the box score, I mean, they pitched a no-hitter for 117 minutes, Bill. No shots. They only had one touch in the whole box of Spain, the 18-yard box, for an hour and five minutes. That is unbelievable. So yes, it took them a lot of score, and we kept saying, well, they're hanging around, they're hanging around. But Argentina got their ass kicked.
Well, the first half just felt like everybody was playing it safe, feeling out, and it was like the worst of soccer. If you have all your casual soccer fans just coming in for this game who haven't watched any of the World Cup, they'll be like, oh, yeah, this is why I don't watch soccer. This sucks. And then in the second half, it became... you know, a resemblance of what we watched for the whole world cup, Spain, phenomenal Argentina, just turning into a cross between the bad boy pistons, the okay. See thunder the last couple of years, um, doing all their garbage stuff and somehow you always getting a favorable whistle, C-R-Y. What was happening with this somehow?
So what Argentina does is, you know, God forbid, but this is also what some people accuse the Oklahoma City Thunder of doing, which is pushing the ref all the way to the limit where if you're not going to call everything a yellow, then nothing is going to be a yellow. And obviously Enzo Fernandez went over that line at a certain point But it's not an idiotic thing to do to basically put all the pressure on the referee to be like, if you guys don't want me to ruin the match, I basically need to let you get away with a bunch of crap here in this game. You know, the thing with Argentina that was crazy was... Lionel Messi is the greatest player of all time and probably one of the two or three greatest athletes I've ever seen in any sport.
But I actually think there was... the way they play today show the limitations of building a team around a 39 year old who doesn't run. And they, they did not have an outlet and they did not have like any kind of central forward to go towards because they were still looking to messy who was kind of like wandering out in those mid spaces between the wing and the midfield there.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
How did Bill and guests react to Spain beating Argentina in the World Cup Final?
0:06–7:32
2
What tactical differences made Spain dominant and Argentina struggle in the final?
7:32–55:35
3
How did hosts and guests debate VAR's impact on World Cup moments?
55:35–58:06
4
What went wrong at Real Madrid and which World Cup individuals underperformed?
58:06–1:01:56
5
How did the Damon vs. DiCaprio showdown compare careers across categories?
1:01:56–1:14:34
6
Why is The Odyssey a potential Best Picture and how did Damon’s performance change the debate?
1:14:34–1:46:07
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Bill Simmons Podcast
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