Playing Saudi Arabia and Egypt is also huge. We should get worse teams in the first round with a 48 team field. It is the Round of 32 and on that we have to worry about.
Benefit of being the home side...getting into the Group of Life. Which will be even more apparent in a group of 3, I think.
With every goal by Belgium and England the pain goes away for me. We would have probably gotten slaughtered by those two squads.
Defend tightly, make the most of your few chances. Nothing new! Doesn't it seem like more contact is being allowed and fewer cards issued? Sorry if this has been discussed already. The field seems unusually wide open.
Way fewer cards which was probably a mandate handed down. I don't mind it most of the time, but today Geiger really needed to hand out a couple yellows early on to keep that game from getting away. If for nothing else, dissent. That said I honestly don't mind them letting them hack away, as long as its called the same on both ends, players adjust and move on.
USA has not entered one tournament as favorites to win the world cup so why do we even try? But no, I don't speak for everybody's pain.
I don't believe in conspiracy theories. But even if I did, I believe that it will be much more difficult to fix Groups in the future. I believe they will be based on FIFA Rankings and not so much on region. We already saw a bit of that in this draw. So in a nutshell it is difficult to "fix" something when it is all based on FIFA Rankings and math.
It's not exactly "fixing". But as the hosts, Russia were placed in "Pot 1", which were for the top seeds. Meaning, Russia's group effectively did not include a #1 seed. Dunno how they'll do it in 2026, with three teams.
No one does. FIFA has not really announced the details. But my gut feeling is that they will just do away with the two countries from the same Confederation (save Europe) can't face each other thing and just seed the whole tournament by FIFA rankings.
Anyone who has ever visited Russia would agree with me but American women can learn a lot from Russian women, that’s for sure
Are you sure about his? I thought only group winners will advance, and it will still be a round of 16.
The plan is 16 groups of three-teams. Top two advance from each group into a Round of 32. It will make the group stage a joke. And top seeds will have the easiest possible track to the Round of 16. It's the dumbest thing ever. It will be the exact opposite of what this WC has been. Lots of one-sided blowouts + lots of no-effort draws from teams who can mutually advance with that result.
I'd heard it was suggested, but I don't know if they're actually going through with it. It sounds like something the traditionalists would fight against strongly.
They were the lowest ranked nation because host nations don't play in qualification, which tanks their ranking. It's a pretty screwed up system in that regard. Russia definitely overperformed, but not nearly as much as their ranking would indicate. There is a decent amount of talent on that team, although not "should beat Spain" levels of talent.