|
Group I |
Group J |
|
France |
Argentina |
|
Senegal |
Algeria |
|
Iraq |
Austria |
|
Norway |
Jordan |
|
Group K |
Group L |
|
Portugal |
England |
|
Congo DR |
Croatia |
|
Uzbekistan |
Ghana |
|
Colombia |
Panama |
We have four more groups to preview, before the tournament starts today with the game between the cartels and Bafana Bafana.
Groups I and J are very similar, each contains one
of the finalists from 2022, there are three good teams and one very weak Arab team
in each group who are not expected to make any waves. Iraq is in its second world
cup and Jordan are making their debut.
Les Bleus of France are one of the favourites and to be
honest are fun to watch, interestingly, the squad they have picked caused
quite a lot of discussion back in Gaul when it was announced with a number of surprise
omissions, so we will have to see if “Napolean” Deschamps who has been the Gallic
emperor for the past sixteen years knows best or not and can retire with his
second triumph as manager.
Senegal are a very strong side, they are the other
current African champions alongside Morrocco, they will prove a handful for
everyone and of course to round out the group we have the Norwegian Blues who
hopefully will be able to put off pining for the fjords, long enough to
entertain us with lots of goals as they have two fantastic players up front.
I do not think that Los Gauchos will successfully lasso
a second successive title, their little maestro, in some fans eyes the GOAT, is four years older and they still rely on him for so much. They should win the group.
Algeria and Austria are both capable and will also advance.
As I mentioned, each of these two groups has one very
weak team and this is going to hopefully mean a flurry of goals and have huge implications on the finishing positions.
In general, one assumes that a hypothetically weaker team will finish in third,
but it is possible that l’escargot or the gods from Valhalla could finish in
third and set up a very interesting clash in the last 32 with a strong team from another group.
Group K has the poisonous jellyfish as the main team with the second part of the fan GOAT argument still playing for them and in reality, hampering their progress. Some people just do not know how to let go and Christiano Crybaby Ronaldo is one of them. The Portuguese Men of War are a really good team and if they manage CR7 well, and by that, I mean restricting his minutes then they are one of the candidates to go the whole way.
Colombia can be exciting, they still have James (Chamez)
Rodriquez who scored this wonder goal 12 years ago.
Add to that L Diaz and they will progress. Uzbekistan
is the 4th debutant at this world cup, and I know absolutely nothing about them,
so I’m looking forward to seeing what they have to offer. Their best player is a defender who plays for
Manchester Citeh in the English Premier league and that’s it.
When I was growing up, the DRC was known as Zaire, and
they appeared in the 1974 World cup. They lost 9-0 to Yugoslavia and were
involved in one of the funniest moments in world cup history in their game
against Brazil.
The new version of the team with a different name
had not qualified since them, but their fortunes have improved over the past few
years, they are defensively very strong and have a midfielder who played for
Sunderland in the EPL this year to great effect.
The closing game between these two teams promises to
be a classic.
This brings us to the final group to cover, and it is
the group that includes EnGerLand, it is now sixty years since England won
their only world cup, and for once and I do not know why, the expectations from
this squad are not as over exaggerated as they normally are. Perhaps, it is
partly because they have a German manager. If EnGerLand do have to face Ze
Shermans, in the later stages, will we still hear all the songs with their World
War two themes such as this classic?
As with other big teams, I hope that we will have
plenty opportunity to cover EnGerLand further down the road, so will stop here.
Since Croatian independence after the dissolution of
Yugoslavia in the 1990’s they have been a strong force in European football,
reaching the final in 2018 and they finished third in 1998 and in 2022. This
version is not as good as previous incarnations, but they could still cause a shock
or two. EnGerLand will be wary of them as the men from Kings Landing slew the
dragon of St George in the 2018 Semi Final.
Ghana have had a good record in previous world cups, but they have had wretched luck with injuries recently weakening their squad and chances to do well. As with so many of the other groups their game with the last team in the group Panama could decide if they advance or not.
Panama has a
Danish Manager who actually lived in Panama as a child before moving to
Barcelona as a player and then managing in Cyprus before he was manager at Leeds
United for a while. Both Canada and Uruguay are managed by ex-Leeds managers as a
little piece of trivia.
So, there we have it, all twelve groups previewed, I am not going to cover every game but will do some reviews and updates on anything interesting that arises until we reach the knockout stages where I will return in full flow, so stay tuned in. I hope you have enjoyed it so far, I hope we are blessed with some good football even if we only watch the highlights of a lot of the games.
Let the fun begin.
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