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Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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In the plainest terms it's poor sportsmanship. It's purposefully choosing to use means other than skill to force an advantage, and by implication admitting a lack of conviction in one's skills.

On the subject of lack of conviction in football skills I'll mention another tournament match, Scotland's World Cup qualifier against Denmark a couple of months ago. In a close game that went to extra time Scotland went 1 goal up. With scant minutes left to equalise Denmark reacted by throwing everything at Scotland, leaving the Danish goalkeeper off his line as he moved up the pitch to support the attack. The ball broke to Scotland, who quickly moved it to the midfield where one of their team was faced with nobody but the goalie and a golden opportunity to lob the ball over the keeper to go 2 goals up and seal the match. If you've seen the match you're probably thinking "yes, that's what he did!". It is, but on the second opportunity. Scotland had had the exact same opportunity a few minutes before but instead of lobbing the keeper and securing personal glory from his nation this player looked up, then decided to carefully guide the ball to the corner flag where he cynically kicked it out of play and started imploring the referee to check his watch and blow the whistle to end the match. The referee ignored him and then, with seconds left to play and holding a match winning 1 goal advantage, then his teammate successfully lobbed the ball from the halfway line over the hopelessly backpedalling goalie. And the crowd went mental.

If I was the Scottish manager the guy who turned down the ball to favour the clock would have been off the team.

I'm sorry, I simply disagree that it's poor sportsmanship. If you can fake out the keeper - through skill in misleading him, as Panenka did - it's a good play, if you can't, it's a bad play (if anything, a Panenka is usually having too much confidence in one's skill). That's like calling dummying a pass or nutmegging a defender bad sportsmanship.

Agree with you on the Scotland example, though.

With most rules of sportsmanship or unwritten rules, the question is who has escalation dominance on the field. People rarely ask this question well.

True, but escalation dominance in football is basically "will this make the guy mad enough to flatten me on the next tackle." This is why you don't see a lot of the street-football tricks to really style on your opponent - sometimes you see it in peripheral leagues in South America and Africa. Penalty kick stuff is kind of apart from that. I recall one game in the South African league where a player on the dominant team tried doing keepie-uppies and such to get round his defender, and then it got ugly from there.