Hello. It’s been a while. Since the last time we talked, the bulk of the World Cup has taken place. Some of the weirdest results ever have happened, such as Morocco beating Spain and Portugal, Japan beating Spain and Germany, and Croatia beating Brazil. This was truly the World Cup of upsets. And it isn’t even over.
We have seen the understudy, Kylian Mbappé, become the leader of the France pack, leading them back into the semi-finals, scoring 5 goals and getting 2 assists in 5 games. We have also seen the return of Lionel Messi, with 4 goals and 2 assists in 5 games as his career games mark ticks over 1000. Furthermore, we have seen Olivier Giroud overtake Thierry Henry’s France goalscoring record with 4 goals in Qatar.
We saw the utter collapse and burning of the Belgium dressing room as they stumbled to defeat in Group F, Germany lose out on Qualification to Spain after a loss to Japan, Argentina bounce back superbly after a historic loss to Saudi Arabia, Uruguay miss qualification by one goal after South Korea’s huge victory over Portugal, and Denmark capitulate to one solitary point in the group stage games.
We’ve also seen unprecedented managerial change at this tournament. Roberto Martinez, Luis Enrique, Louis van Gaal, and Tite are among the names to leave their roles after their countries’ respective eliminations, with potentially Gareth Southgate and Fernando Santos set to join that list.
We’ve seen the ending of the World Cup Winner’s curse, with France still in it. We saw the continuation of the “Too Many Goals” curse, with both Spain and Portugal not winning another game after scoring 6 and 7 in one game respectively. We also saw the continuation of the Netherlands curse, with the Dutch still not winning it after going out to Argentina in the Quarter Finals, and the same case with the English curse, making 56 years of hurt.
However, the thing that stands out the most about this World Cup isn’t the sackings, curses, or anything like that. It’s the amount of upsets. All this started on just Day 3 of the tournament, when Saudi Arabia came from behind to stun Messi’s Argentina. The day after that, Japan did the same thing to Germany, and then later Spain. Belgium lost to Morocco in matchday 2, Tunisia beat France, South Korea beat Portugal, and Cameroon beat Brazil. This was all in the group stage.
The story of the knockouts was Morocco beating Spain and Portugal to get to the Semis, and Croatia stunning Brazil on penalties. Overall, with all this, the 2022 World Cup will go down as one of the absolutely craziest ever. As a bonus, here are my Semi-Final predictions.
Croatia-Argentina: you don’t even have to bother watching the first 90 minutes, as it will be a 0-0, with many Livakovic saves despite another Messi masterclass. He will finally break the deadlock in extra time, 1-0 final score.
France-Morocco: Another terribly boring match, but instead of being settled in extra time, it will go to pens after a Kylian Mbappé disallowed goal around the 65th minute. The pens will go like this:
🇫🇷: ✅✅❌✅✅
🇲🇦: ❌✅✅❌
Argentina-France final.
I’m Jim James, until next time.