Skip to main content

3 is the magic number

Whilst South Korea vs Algeria represents an excellent chance to have a rest from the football tv marathon, it is not something I'd consider for a single minute. Tonight, after all is the final serving of 3 matches back to back. Tomorrow things get more complicated as the groups round off their games and we are into the realms of simulcast. Yes - picture it now. TVs, laptops, iPads all over the place, showing live coverage, league tables and calculators to work out potential qualification scenarios. Excellent. The downside though is that from tomorrow we only get 3 hours of football per day  instead of the now customary 4.5.)

Since I last posted, I've seen Ghana's epic performance against Germany, proving that no team is going to be untouchable. Nigeria beat Bosnia & Herzogovina too, which whilst a surprise to me, was thoroughly deserved. And this afternoon, Belgium staked their claim to be the new Switzerland - very dull and uninspiring, but they snatched a 1-0 at the last. The thing with Belgium is that they have the class players to be able to win any game, and I'm worrying that they may become the villains of the piece, grinding out wins without ever exciting us.

I'll leave you with my predictions for Group A qualifiers:

1) Brazil
2) Croatia

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Azteca

 Well, this one has crept up on me hard! I've barely had time to recover from Villa's Europa League win a fortnight ago; distracted all the while with SkySports trying to sell off our squad to The Big Six and reading stories of the thunderstorms and the visa complexities facing fans, players and referees of countries that Trump doesn't like today - and yet now here we are, listening to Gary Neville self reflecting on his own career as a scene setter for the World Cup. This one is a weird one. The expanded format and cruel time-zone scheduling mean that I go into it with no ambitions to 'watch it all'. The group stages are, on paper, almost devoid of any real jeopardy. The bloating of the tournament means there are now more groups than realistic winners, and with that, of course, no groups of death. And to cater for the stupid total number of teams which has to be 8,16,32 or even 64 dammit - just no other actual number; we have the awful spectacle of most  3rd place ...

Geography lessons

 I'm writing this as Cape Verdi's masterplan is 9 minutes in, versus the mighty (but missing some players) Spain. They are the second nation (after Curaçao) that I didn't even know was a nation - and I have a degree in geography. So, let me share my learning. Curaçao, a Caribbean island has been a country in its own right since 2010. Prior to that, its the usual depressing story of European colonisation, abandonment (when the Europeans realised it wasn't stacked full of precious metals), reinvigorated interest (slave trade) and finally a degree of independence.  Cape Verdi on the other hand is a country (Island nation off the west coast of Senegal) that is older than I am, so I feel I should know better in their case. Again it has history of being a European colony and is another epicentre of the slave trade.  With this in mind, the needle matches to look out for later in the tourney are Curaçao vs Netherlands and Cape Verdi vs Portugal. After Curaçao's outing last...

Pacing

 The teams that win this thing tend to pace themselves, or so the narrative goes. By that logic, France will burn fast and burn bright but ultimately fall short. Anyone watching their front four might disagree. My group chat were discussing the relative merits of Henry vs Mbappe last night, with the score at 0-0 vs Sweden. I declared for Henry and then over the course of 30 minutes he proved me emphatically wrong. He is so fast, hits the ball so cleanly, and a new thing at this tournament, actually seems to gel with team-mates. Whether you can do anything but gel with Olise remains to be seen. They certainly seem massively equipped to go all the way. Proper full backs, a dependable goalie, solid CD and CM options and the crazy front four with the likes of Doue and Cherki in reserve.  Another team surely doomed by being too good too soon are Mexico, who are playing with that lovely abandon that hosts usually do. They've been fun and I'm annoyed that all their games have been at...