Since we have more than half of the teams already qualified and from now on, a bunch of them will start their preparation for Qatar, I believe we'll need this thread. For starters, today Serbia will play Hungary at Budapest.
Well, Serbia begins positively by beating Hungary 1-0 with an own goal. Meanwhile, although none of them have made it yet, we had a 1-1 tie between Scotland and Poland. Tomorrow we'll have an interesting match between France and Ivory Coast. Although the elephants are eliminated, they still have one of the most talented sides in Africa and should be a nice tune-up for the World Champs.
Going to Croatia vs Slovenia + Qatar vs Bulgaria doubleheader on Saturday. We'll see how that goes...
Am I wrong or the qatari invited those 3 teams to a friendly tournament but will not play Croatia? If it's like that... what a cowards lol
I'm not sure. It's just something that showed up on my Facebook page and I decided yeah why not? I'm more interested in the Balkan derby than the Qatar-Bulgaria. You'd think they'd have arranged a match against Croatia as they are the one qualified team and that would be a better warmup.
Qatar are not ready at the moment to play a team of the calibre of Croatia. It would most likely end in a thrashing if the opponent would take it seriously. They prefer to play teams on their level now. Once they have held some camps they might play also some high profile teams.
France won with a late goal 2-1 against Ivory Coast after trailing early on. Today we'll have the following: Croatia will receive Slovenia Belgium will visit Republic of Ireland Qatar will receive Bulgaria Spain will face Albania Germany will play Israel And in probably the two main courses England and Switzerland will play in Wembley while Netherlands and Denmark will play in Amsterdam. Both should be fun.
I wonder how the qualified CONMEBOL and AFC sides will have friendlies with while the UEFA and CONCACAF nations leagues and AFCON qualifiers are on in June?.
Argentina will play Italy in Wembley on June 1st and then the pending Brazil game... somewhere. I think Brazil was trying to get a friendly with an european team but no idea if it was succesful. As for the rest I suppose the Uruguay/Ecuador/Peru x Korea/Japan/KSA crossovers are simply bound to take place. Edit: Forgot Iran. But they usually skip playing tough friendlies.
Actually in the second window The top 3 concacaf teams will be available. Maybe we can see the USMNT and El Tri can on Korea or Japan.
You mean September? I read that Mexico and Argentina have a friendly in american soil almost confirmed (conditioned to them not drawing each other for WC).
I don't think there are "tough" or top class opponents lined up to play a country under strict sanctions and more. But Iran has another problem right now: our football federation chief was sacked a few weeks ago and we have temporary replacements who are part of a group who are focused mainly on winning the battles to replace our coach. As long as he remained undefeated, they had their work cut out but now the rumors of his impending replacements are headline sports news in Iran. Until we know who is going to be our coach and what are his preparatory plans, it isn't easy to work on friendlies.
World Cup favourites England and Spain will kick off their year today with friendlies against Switzerland and Albania respectively.
Croatia-Slovenia 1-1. Result at the end is average but i liked what the team showed in several parts of the game. I think except in case of injuries we will come to the next World cup with way more depth than in 2018. Jakic Orsic Majer Pasalic Brekalo Vlasic give a serious bench. If there is a run again Dalic has to keep the guys in form till the end.
Turn over with quality helps. There are also more technical skills than 4 years ago from the backline Gvardiol Caleta and Pongracic are good players in possession. The team should keep improving in the next 6 months. We will see.
I want to see Bulgaria or Slovenia beating Qatar. Still can't believe these guys don't have the balls to play Croatia even in freaking friendly.
Qatar is planning the to raise the difficulty of the opposition gradually which makes perfectly sense to me.