[Football] World Cup Opening Game

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Marvelous use of a fish reference outside of the "ahem" other thread.

The keeper was certainly floundering

 

[KingKev]

Concacaf will be getting more than one more:

Africa - 9 (up from 5)
Asia - 8 (up from 4 or 5)
Europe - 16 (up from 13)
North, Central America and Caribbean - 6 (up from 3 or 4)
Oceania - 1 (from 0 or 1)
South America - 6 (up from 4 or 5)

+2 more from some sort of play-off system.

With Asia getting 3/4 more places, and people not being happy about the quality of Saudi Arabia, then I don't think they'll be too pleased about the quality of other Asian teams which weren't able to qualify! Clearly not all the additional teams which enter will be worse than the current worse team, but some of them will be. Certainly the overall average quality of the teams in the tournament will decrease.

But my biggest issue with the 48-team World Cup is not the expansion of teams, but the format which it will take.

Still lets very weak sides into the finals whilst real football nations in Europe risk falling foul of a haphazard seeding system. I hope European qualifying for 2026 is refined so that all the minnows play a tournament to qualify for the group stages, then it’s 8 groups with the top two in each going through.
2022 qualification Will be hugely difficult, and we need to do OK in this World Cup and Euro qualifying otherwise the chances of being in a group with one of Spain, France, Germany, Portugal or Belgium will be high and a play-off awaits England where we could come up against Italy or Holland or Eire or Sweden for example. Compare that route to USA having to finish above Trinidad and Panama and it just doesn’t make sense, nor is it fair.

I’m still a proponent of world qualifying groups in order to get the best teams at the finals rather than the widest geographical mix - but that’s not going to happen as money talks....

 

[Albion my Albion]

The Russian players today, written off as hopeless by the entire world beforehand, demonstrated amazing athletism. Each one faster, more powerful, with greater stamina, than their opponents. Almost as if on steroids and amphetamines.

And the sheikh thought they would be a bunch of hackers. Putin said "see, our best hackers are getting ready for my friend Donald's November elections. He's going to need all the help we can give him. No hackers on the pitch today."