Coach Jill Ellis called it standard preparation, but Neville attempted to make a mountain out of this particular molehill in what is either an effort to motivate his players to think the Americans are already looking past them or an incredible piece of whining:

They actually stated that not having to put arms behind your body as one of the reasons for the rule change. The new rule is basically that you need to have your arms at your side unless you are falling. You won’t be penalized if a ball strikes your arms as you brace for a fall. I agree player here tried to move…

They have been though.  

The rule itself seems pointless—was anyone in the world really losing their minds when goalies, who already have a huge disadvantage when it comes to stopping penalties, inched “too far” forward when going for a save?

Sorry, but it IS a question of whether it comes off her arm. Possession or not the attacker puts the goal in with her shoulder. No goal. VAR was correct. Again. You guys are obsessed with trying to demonize VAR yet have every single example you give the VAR decision is correct. Give it a rest.

Jingoism?  You know these are national teams, yes?  The whole point is to root for your home country.

AYSM?  

Reaching pretty damn far here.

Cut the disingenuous bullshit. There’s a distinct difference between celebrating a home run by watching for a couple of seconds or a bat flip and yelling “Fuck you” directly at your opponent. Quit pretending these are the same things.

There are 155 ranked teams. Chile, whom the US beat 3-0, is 39th. Does more context help you out?  The US was just on their game that day.

They celebrated WC goals. BFD. And, really, there only one celebration that was arguably a bit over the top and even it wasn’t crazy by soccer goal celebration standards.

Same. I’m not putting any make-up on my face. I don’t give a shit how they advertise it.

Disagree on the complaining about calls. You can argue people now complain about VAR instead, but there is easily less complaining about bad calls simply because the video evidence is usually clear. Even here where Deadspin loves to whine about VAR they admit every single time that the calls are correct. Every time.

You guys spend a lot of time whining about VAR, but every single time you reluctantly admit the correct call was made. There are no problems with VAR here. The players following the rules shouldn’t be a difficult ask. If you think the rules need more flexibility then that’s fine, but that’s different than trying to…

It’s almost laudable how a network that’s been so focused on keeping politics out of sports has decided that the best way to achieve that goal is to make a large, loud-mouthed bigot their boxing champion.

So you’re going to complain no matter how they celebrate?  Useless.

I think maybe you need to go back and watch those celebrations again. You seem hung up on a single celebration, but most were fairly quick and boring. This whole damn thing has been a mountain out of molehill.

Being offended on behalf of others is popular these days.

Nevermind

None of these decisions have taken long. Thus without VAR it is extremely likely we would spend the same amount of time watching players and managers argue with the officials and/or watching officials confer with one another about whether it was the right call. I’d rather just spend that time getting it right than…