Group E's General Discussion Thread

Should be a real interesting group, will Germany's struggles, a kind of diet version of Italy's struggles, continue, or will they snag group winner status. Part of me thinks Germany should take it, otoh, Ivory Coast and Ecuador have been legit really good, especially defensively, which means it may come down to GD, and whether Germany can take advantage of their superiority as an attacking team to win by GD, if that's necessary?

Matchday 1 feels like...
Germany thrashing Curacao....(I hope Curacao keeps it close, over the past seven years of their rise from total nonentities, to knockout round contenders in the Gold Cup (they were unlucky to lose to the US in regulation in the '19 Gold Cup for instance), they've qualified for 3 of the past 5 Gold Cups after not having qualified for 40 straight years, so the program is clearly doing a better job, but they couldn't make the final round Ocho of qualifying in '22, but in those past two Gold Cups ('19 and '25, they missed '21 and '23), they won 1 game, tied 3, and lost 3, but they also never lost a game by more than a single goal, and that wasn't against utterly hopeless sides either (Honduras, Jamaica, Canada, USA etc) so maybe they keep it close? Otoh, in qualifying they beat and tied Jamaica, and tied a really bad version of Trinidad and Tobago twice, so????

The Ecuador vs Ivory Coast game will be played in Philly, hot and moderately humid.....both can handle those temps so no advantage.

However after that Germany is going to have to play its late June games in Toronto, and just outside of Manhattan in New Jersey, in June it can be hot as hell in NY in late June and very humid, Toronto will be milder, but still moderately humid....I would say just based on weather conditions, Ecuador and Ivory Coast will have advantages, especially Ecuador.

So I would keep an eye on this, Ivory Coast and Ecuador will handle the conditions on matchday 2 and 3 better than Germany is likely too. I'm still going with Germany, but I wouldn't be shocked at all if Ecuador or Ivory Coast pull it off, they absolutely will need to beat one another or Germany to get it done though, as I would imagine Germany is most likely to have the best GD of the three sides and best TG numbers too.

 

Of course, actually winning this group may not lead to much of a reward. Granted, France's group is among the more unpredictable ones, but its still quite likely that the winner of this group would be lined up to play France in the R16. Whereas the 2nd-place finishers could play Norway/Senegal in R32 and Brazil in R16.

I know it never works out like expected on paper, but just the fact that there appears to be little advantage in winning the group could impact how Ecuador and Germany approach their final group match.

 

Its quite possible that 3rd place may be a better reward than first or second lol.

 

I wouldn't go that far. Third place means you most likely play group winners in both R32 and R16 rounds. Plus uncertainty when your next match is after the group stage, or even if there will be a next match.

 

So long as its not Portugal the 3 other likely group winners possible are

Mexico
Canada/Switzerland
USA/Turkey/Paraguay

Those are very favorable matches for comming 3rd place.

Getting first place in Group C would get you a tougher R32 opponent than 3rd place would get you in this group.

I'd definitely take those over Senegal/Norway for getting 2nd.

 

Tahith Chong
They danced and they jumped into the well-filled away section. Curaçao had seemingly stopped Scotland's attack waves for more than fifteen minutes with ease when it was time to do something themself.
Tahith Chong slid past the Scottish defenders, cut himself free after a rush in the enemy penalty area and shot the ball into the near corner past the 43-year-old keeper Craig Gordon.
The goalkeeper of Hearts then saw the players of Curaçao run past him to celebrate in front of the away section.

Chong, playing for Sheffield United, did what Curaçao wants to gamble on in the United States next month. In the first instance, a tight organization will have to keep the number of chances given away to a minimum and then strike in the transition.

Chong seemed to be on his way to Gordon again fifteen minutes later when defender Aaron Hickey of Brentford held him. The attacker stopped immediately, but the Georgian referee Goga Kikacheishvili did not whistle. Striker Jürgen Locadia then went in hard for Hickey. That resulted in a yellow card, but when Kikacheishvili was called to the screen, the game was over for Locadia. Curaçao had to continue with ten men for almost an hour against the country that will participate in a World Cup next summer for the first time in 28 years.

 

According to the Athletic, Curaçao’s road yellow shirt is one of the most popular being sold by adidas. It is already sold out.
They also mentioned that it will probably not be worn in the tournament because they probably won’t advance out of the group and will wear their blue every group match.

 

Advocaat will have a word, as his objective is to reach the ko round

 

Anyone can dream.

I will keep an open mind. They are not as bad as people around here think they are.

 

Yup.

 

"Brutal" is too strong a word for this group. Looking at who Curacao got from each pot, Germany is a bottom-half pot 1 team, Ecuador is an average pot 2 and CIV is probably one of the top 3 teams from pot 3.

Their luck wasn't all that bad. Could have been better but could have been worse.

 

There are so many of these things. I finally built my bracket the last few days and just started looking at how my groups feed the brackets and it is pretty crazy, and there are some scary knockout matches in my round of 16:

Germany vs France
Spain vs Portugal
Brazil vs Norway or Ivory Coast
Argentina vs Turkey

That's half of them anyway that would make for great QF's and it makes me pretty sick to note that 4 of the top probably 6-8 sides of the tourney would likely play do or die matches against one another in the R16s which is just ridiculous this early, for now I tend to think that makes for these quarterfinals....

France vs Netherlands

Spain vs Belgium

Brazil or Norway or Ivory Coast vs England

Argentina vs Colombia or Senegal

 

My sadness in a lot of ways with this tournament in one particular way is that the most wonderful of the Cinderella long shot stories basically systematically got brutal draws with maybe just one exception.........just thinking about Haiti having that group, Curacao having an even tougher group, Iraq having to contend with France, Norway and Senegal, the only kind of exceptions were Cape Verde and DRC whom got off a touch lighter with each nation having at least one side in their group that's beatable so a 3rd place route is technically quite possible (I do have DRC seizing this opportunity, but Cape Verde just falling due to GD).

Curacao would have probably put up a bigger fight than South Africa, Qatar, New Zealand apparently, the Saudi's maybe, Jordan maybe etc.....but they got a tougher draw than all of those nations, same with Haiti.