Meh. No feels. Iceland coulda had better luck. Gotta root for those crazy bastards.

quote:

Originally posted by rdevito 1) Argentina in the Group Of Death again...with Nigeria again; 2) Not that bad for Brazil.

I'm booking my flight to Russia as soon as next semester ends!

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That's not much of a Group Of Death though. Nigeria and Croatia are solid Last 16 material, nothing more. England were in a real group of death in 2014 with Italy and Uruguay, although all of us turned out to be relatively shite. And Holland were with Spain and Chile, as I recall. With Holland, Italy and Chile not even qualifying this year, there's no genuine hard group, for once.

Some thoughts:

1. Germany, France and Brazil are my favourites.

2. Argentina can't get it together at the moment. Spain have yet to convince post-Xavi. Belgium have an idiot for a manager whose teams can't defend. Portugal were one of the worst international teams I've ever seen with a trophy two years ago.

3. Poland are my dark horse. Easy group and a solid, coherent team with a couple of top class players adding the stardust.

4. Hosts Russia were so bad at Euro 2016 I can't see them doing much more than getting out of their group.

5. England are still awful. We're probably even more boring to watch than ever before. Expect us to crawl boringly out of our group in second place and get knocked out by Poland in the round of 16. The match will be a huge political flashpoint as we have over 1,000,000 Polish immigrants living here, including my girlfriend. There will be headlines of recriminatory violence against celebrating Poles by sour-loser obnoxious Brexit scum. SYSTEM-J will bet £100 on a Polish victory and clean up at the bookies. Pictures of his new golden teeth on Page 2 of The Daily Mail the following Monday.

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Last edited by SYSTEM-J on Dec-02-2017 at 08:41

with no italy in this world cup i only have to cheer against portugal

Italy and Holland don't want to play at Qatar 2022, unfortunately both peaked too early.

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I pretty much agree with Jack on all but I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think England might do better than previous years. Boring as shit right now but it only takes one player like Hazard or Alli to step and find some magic and it might just make all the difference.

With Italy out and Argentina a mess (especially if anything happens to Messi), there's two less teams that have always been the bane of England. Having said that, I don't see them realistically beating France or Spain at any stage so I doubt they'll get past the Quarters.

All right, seriously this time, here are 5 of the 4 probable semifinalists. Fivethirtyeight has not looked in the future yet, so I'll have a go at this clairvoyance thing:

• Portugal aka Brazil lite: Would I like to see Portugal finally win a World Cup? Yes. Is this likely? Probably not as much as I wish it was. But, they can sort of make it. They'll probably beat a weakened Spain in their group, and advance with Morocco to the knockout stage. The bad news? They're probably going to the semifinals after beating Iceland in the quarterfinals.
  
  Oh, those lovely Vikings. I'll be sad to see them leave
  
  
• Brazil aka Neymar Deluxe: I'd pick either Germany or France, but we all know they tend to fail miserably in Russia. We're not playing at home this time, so it's unlikely we'll have an emotional breakdown. We breezed through the qualifiers, so I guess there's a chance we can get our sixth star. We'll probably have to beat England to move forward to the semis, which brings me to my next team...
  
  
• England aka Engluuuuurnd: Come on, you can't just invent a sport and then suddenly suck at it so much you win once in the 60s only to wait for all the former colonies to have a go at it. As a matter of fact, why isn't Gareth Bale playing for the UK!? Having four weaker teams instead of a single behemoth isn't exactly a smart way until the Aussies get their act together and win a cup of their own.
  
  Are you listening, England? I'll always remember you reaching the quarterfinals in the very first World Cup I watched. It was epic. Also, I once fell asleep in 2002 during one of your matches and thought you had trounced some other team in the knockout stage. You lost the game, but you haven't lost my heart. Yet. I wouldn't mind losing to you. You gave us drum'n'bass, we can give you a World Cup.
  
  
• Senegal aka The Coolest Winner Ever: Seriously, how awesome would this be? If not Senegal, then Belgium, because we all know Germany and France fail miserably in Russia, but we've yet to see if the countries between them will also be trounced in the motherland.
  
  However, no African country has ever reached the semis, and even Asia's been there with Turkey and South Korea. Turkey, for goodness' sake, and they only qualified once in the last thousand years! It's been long overdue. Come on, Senegal, we're counting on you.
  
  
• Uruguay aka The Other Argentina: They bark AND they bite. They reached the semis just 7 years ago, and they did better than Argentina in the qualifiers. They're pretty much just Argentine Brazilians anyway, so replace them with Argentina if you will and they're still in the top 4 if Brazil also makes it... But don't tell them that, or they'll chew you out.

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quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J 5. England are still awful. We're probably even more boring to watch than ever before.

I don't know what happen with England. Every time it seems that you guys have a good squad, but always end in a melancholic way. I truly believe that, this time, England will reach at least the quarter-finals. All you guys need is bit of "blood in your eyes".

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN I pretty much agree with Jack on all but I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think England might do better than previous years. Boring as shit right now but it only takes one player like Hazard or Alli to step and find some magic and it might just make all the difference.

I'm going out on a limb here, but I don't think Hazard finding some magic in the middle of an England match will help us much, given he plays for Belgium.

quote:

Originally posted by rdevito I don't know what happen with England.

Psychological pressure. There's a huge amount of self-disgust in England about our football team. I know English/British people are seen as very arrogant by other nationalities, but we're really not a patriotic nation. The national psyche is that of a nation that used to be the greatest in the world, but has steadily slid into mediocrity since the Second World War. And we take a lot of those feelings out on our team, meaning there's always a poisonous atmosphere when they fail. Most of the players now are even younger than me. All they will have grown up with is years of national disappointments, and a great fear whenever they play a big match that they are going to disappoint the whole nation again.

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quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J I know English/British people are seen as very arrogant by other nationalities, but we're really not a patriotic nation.

I beg your pardon? Except for the outdated Downton Abbey stereotypes, I'm struggling to remember someone thinking of Brits as arrogant. That would be the French (or the Germans):



As a matter of fact, I felt much more at ease in London than anywhere else I've travelled to because the moment I told people I was Brazilian on route to Japan, the usual reply would always be "And you came to fucking London?!"

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I like how even the French vote themselves as most arrogant.

There was a discussion in the COR a while back where my country's collective character got a thorough kicking from numerous posters. I think it started with Jay talking about British ex-pats in China.

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