It is not about the style of play it is about the fighting-spirit the Swedish players showed yesterday.
Denmark thrashed Republic of Irealand at Dublin 1-5 to reach the WC. @nipponbasse83 you've got your wish with 3 Scandinavian teams qualified to the WC (If I'm not wrong it is the first time in history). So if Australia does it we will have a WC with lot of firsts. First WC with 5 teams from AFC. First WC with 4 Arab teams. First WC with 3 Scandinavian teams. . . . First WC to be hosted by Russia. . . . Wishful thinking: First WC in which Japan will reach the quarter-finals!
Which is easy to show when the whole team is behind the ball. Actually I watched the entire match and didn't see anything special. Sweden were actually quite shaky, Italy just couldn't finish. Maybe in the first leg they were better. If Japan are to be successful they need to go above and beyond that.
I'm Italian-American, so yeh It's a shame though because the kickoff times are good here in Japan. I could've watched all my teams.
Here in Italy people are complaining about those "First Times" as they think "How is it possible FIFA allows a WC with all those Arab/Asian/Scandinavian weaklings teams and not us, the almighty Italians". And in a couple of seconds I totally forgot the sadness to being out of the WC and enjoy for a little moment.
Australia just defeated Honduras 3-1. Jedinak with a second-half hattrick (1 FK and 2 PKs), while Honduras got a late consolation goal in stoppage time. 5 teams from AFC.
For the first time ever, there will be 5 AFC teams at the World Cup. Now there better be at least one of them that gets out of their group.
I'll miss Buffon and DeRossi and wanted to see Florenzi get to play in the world cup. When I look back at Euro 2016 and see how Italy dominated Belgium and Spain and took Germany to PKs (and also beat Sweden+Ibra of course), it makes me confused and upset that this happened.
WC draw simulator: http://ultra.zone/2018-FIFA-World-Cup-Group-Stage-Draws For those of you who would like to have fun!
As I said, avoiding these teams and England and Mexico from pot 2 will be an advantage. As for pot 1 we have to avoid Brazil, Germany and France (maybe Argentina, but their current form is not so intimidating). Pot 3 has 3 Nordic and 3 African teams + Costa Rica (so I will he happy to get any of them except Senegal, due to their unpredictablity as I said earlier). This pot also includes Iran, but we cannot draw them as we are from the same confederation. So the most important thing in the draw is to get rid of heavy-weight opponents from pot 1 and 2. I still think that basing the seedings on the awkward FIFA rankings is horrendus. For example we can see a group with two big heavyweights like Brazil or Argentina + (Spain, England or Mexico), we can see also a group with France, Germany or Portugal + (Spain, England, Uruguay, Colombia or Mexico). While we can see groups with: Poland, Switzerland, Tunisia and Panama, or Russia, Croatia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, or Belgium, Peru, Costa Rica and Australia. Then we could easily see the winners and runners-up of this group face each others in the last 16 and we will get a totally outsider in the QF! The only good thing about it, is that Japan can have such a favourable draw! No offence to the mentoined teams, but having Poland, Belgium and even Portugal in pot 1, while having Spain and Uruguay in pot 2 (giving their last two WC performances) is horrendus.
Way to read the "Not to criticize Sweden" part And that is the one match we were discussing so I'm not sure what your point is.
Poland 1-0 Japan Colombia 4-0 Japan Senegal 1-0 Japan There is no way Nippon beat Poland, Colombia, and Senegal.
Could you pass that crystal ball of yours? Gotta know how far you'd get without getting banned. Pathetic troll.
Not sure if this was posted already but I just came across it. They are featuring 2 random players at a time I guess. Last one I saw was Son and Romero. https://oload.download/f/-RD9HJ6d6IE/Stars_Of_Russia_-_Bacca_and_Okazaki.mp4