Danilo is back and available. And so is Neymar. I expect Danilo maybe pushed to the LB position and Militão to slot in at RB. We did play SK in a friendly earlier this year and smashed them 5 x 1 with Alves as RB though. But friendly is friendly, WC is WC ...
There seems to be some rule that at every game Infantino is attending, there must be a couple of shots of him in the stands.
Pretty much set up for ARG v Brasil semi. Both got easy draws. Korea and Australia are both basically last place teams that got bumped up to 2nd by lucky circumstances. Other half of the bracket is way more difficult to predict. I'd say it's pretty much 25/25/25/25 between England, France, Portugal and Spain. I really don’t see any big diff between the 4 of them. I do smell an upset on Tuesday though. We are due for one....
Yep. Bra x Arg isn't a sure thing. Netherlands have been a weird team. Not impressive on the surface but organized and maybe deceiving. On paper, I like Brazil's chances over Croatia compared to Argentina's over Netherlands. But Croatia could easily come out and play bunker defense and try to send the game into PKs make our lives tougher ... but I am not complaining about our draw.
Croatia are beatable in 90 minutes. If Japan had someone like Son Heung Min, they would have won. Brazil have great forwards and different profiles. Easy to damage Croatia.
Japan had what is maybe the worst PK shootout performance I've ever seen. The goalie completely read the shooters and even jumped before the kick in two instances. Just total rookie stuff from Japan. Maybe the pressure got to them. As for the QF, some juicy matches. Other than Brazil over Croatia that I'm pretty confident about all the other QF's could go either way in my eyes.
England have the worlds best penalty taker in Toney but didn’t select him … he’s probably the nearest there is to Kane if he gets injured
Need Spain to go through to take care of a possible Portugal going through. Don't think Morocco could take another game like this.