The 32 teams left would have made for some fine group stage drama, if they hadn’t messed with the format.
Except these wouldn’t have been the 32 teams in the group stage. The expanded field allowed some underdogs and dark horses to make it to the 32.
Yes. I know. I’m saying that we could have just kept to the old format and had a quite enjoyable group stage with the 32 teams that are in a knock out round right now.
Why only one game on Sunday?
I see three games tomorrow, but certainly more people were off to watch today.
I think it was just logistics - this was the only knockout matchup where it was guaranteed that both participants played in the first set of final group games on Wednesday.
Three games per day for the next 5 days now.
The game was not the prettiest slog, but yeah sieze the moment of what’ll probably be their last victory.
Perhaps to give teams enough time to rest players?
South Africa & Canada both last played on June 24th - 3 days rest.
Tomorrow’s matches:
BRA-JAP - June 24 & 25, 4/3 days rest
GER-PAR - both June 25th, 3 days rest
NED-MAR - June 25 & 24, 3/4 days rest
30th:
CDI-NOR - 25th & 26th, 4/3 days rest
FRA-SWE - 26th & 25th, 3/4 days rest
MEX-ECU - 24th & 25th, 5/4 days rest
1st:
ENG-DRC - both 27th, 3 days rest
BEL-SEN - both 26th, 4 days rest
USA-BIH - 25th & 24th, 5/6 days rest
2nd:
SPA-AUR - 26th & 27th, 5/4 days rest
POR-CRO - both 27th, 4 days rest
SUI-ALG - 24th & 27th, 7/4 days rest
3rd:
AUS-EGY - 25th & 26th, 7/6 days rest
ARG-CPV - 27th & 26th, 5/6 days rest
COL-GHA - both 27th, 5 days rest
Any of the other matchups would have put at least one team playing on two days rest.
Australia / Egypt most even-looking match out of that batch?
Exactly right, according to DraftKings. Good catch.
Australia is +110; Egypt is -140.
Next closest odds is Netherlands/Morocco. Netherlands is -160; Morocco is +125.
Other relatively close odds include Mexico/Ecuador and Norway/Ivory Coast.
They should have made C2 play A1 or B1 to guarantee two games between teams on three days rest, but I guess they wanted all the winners of host groups to play third place teams.
Thats because the weaker continents, especially Asia, have less teams remaining now than they would have in a normal 32 team World Cup
0-0 for sure. A draw is $2.87 Egypt win $2.55. If I still bet I’d have some cash on those.
I agree on both points. A lot of the other goals I saw Canada make in the group stage seemed like it was just, I don’t want to say lucky, but kind of, if we swamp the goal area with players someone is bound to make a goal, which is what happened. This one was cleaner than those. Other teams had mostly clear plays, or created openings, that allowed their player to strike.
I think that overall, it was a fine game, especially the last half, especially given the knowledge that it was the first game that had to end in a victory by one of the teams unlike all the other games that I had watched.
Today the first match is Brazil vs Japan, which is during work hours for me. I work from home though, I just need to make sure I mute myself during the meetings. And I know who will be rooting for Japan to go far in the tournament…the stadium owners because as long as they are is in the tournament, they won’t have to clean up as much afterward 8]. I think I may have watched part of a Brazil game, so I don’t know how well they are they are playing, but if they aren’t on, they will have tough time with Japan.
//i\\
I guess every day is a big day, but wow. Today we have some great match-ups.
I’ll make my predictions here just for fun. Zero analysis, just my guesses:
Brazil defeats Japan
Paraguay defeats Germany ← Germany goes home and reflects on their losses
Netherlands defeats Morocco
Booooooo.
We’ll be at that match and cheering them on to victory. I hope.
That’s so cool that you get to go.
Paraguay’s path is basically Mordor.
Germany, France (or Sweden… yeah right), then probably Netherlands…
They had better chances in the War of the Triple Alliance…
Since soccer highlights here are often served up with commentary from British announcers and sportswriters, I have a question: are there any commentators as nasty as British ones? It’s like they get special joy from putting down competitors.
Commonly, attacks on losing teams, players and coaches are accompanied by a heavy dose of snide, with remarks like one side being “humiliated” because they lost. A couple of days ago Uruguay lost to Spain by one goal, which the British announcer immediately termed "a bad blunder!" on the keeper’s part and "a howler" (on replay it simply looked to me that the goaltender couldn’t get a save on a shot at close range).
Are such attacks what the soccer public craves?
Well, if the goalkeeper made a bad blunder, a howler (and from what I’ve seen it was a blunder by Muslera), or if a team gets humiliated (not by losing, losing by itself is not being humiliated, but there are ways of losing that are humiliating) Football commentators will say so.
The only British announcer that I thought could be unnecessarily snide was Jon Champion, who’s been calling for ESPN and NBC these past few years. (recalling some of his petty, unwarranted digs not so much at teams as much as at colour commmentator Jim Beglin, who was the recipient of one of the nastiest footy challenges ever, in his playing days - rivalling the one recieved by Haaland’s father)