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Iran for me
You Cannot Be SERIUOS!
I reckon Mexico will be a bit of a dark horse this tournament.
They play their 3 group games in Mexico and if they top the group, their Ro32 game is in Mexico City. The winner of that plays the Ro16 in…. Mexico City.
They can reach the Quarter Finals without ever playing away, and 4 of their 5 games will be in Mexico City.
Pretty much every advantage is stacked in their favour, no Pot 1 team in their group, all home games, next to no travelling.
Then they have to win 3 games against the best teams in the world. I don't fancy them. As long as England don't win it, I'm OK.Originally Posted by Canton Kev
I suppose the only advantage not stacked in their favour is that other teams have much better players
Its coming home , footballs is coming home .....to France
Leandro Bacuna's Curacao?
My head tells me France, my heart tells me anyone but England, my nose tells me Collumbia.
I’ve thought that too.
For a country with a good deal of depth, a decent quality league, and a strong football culture, they have underachieved in international football.
This is to be an opportunity for them to go deep into the tournament, surely?
For the record, my team is Saudi Arabia. Lived there as a kid and so they are my “second”, or
“World-Cup”, team. (Then Argentina when Saudi get knocked out) Plus the home shirt is lovely.
There’ll be a bit of support from me for Iran too. If I hadn’t bought the Saudi shirt, the new Wales shirt, and the 150 shirt……I’d have tried to get the Iranian one.
France the most talented team by a decent amount, can they avoid doing a France and self-destructing at some point? Other than that think all the usual big names have gaps, I think Portugal look pretty strong top to bottom in terms of a starting eleven.
This seems to me like the weakest Mexican squad in quite a few World Cups, I can't see them getting past the first decent team they face.
Some facts I have just gleaned about the Curaçao national team:
Managed by Dick Advokaat, they are possibly the first national side to appear at the World Cup where both the team and the manager whose names are associated with alcoholic beverages.
The team captain, who is currently the most-capped player for the national side is a former City player i.e. Leandro Bacuna.
Like Wales, Curaçao is not a sovereign state. It's a constituent part of The Netherlands, Dutch is one of its official languages and the King of The Netherlands is the Head of State.
Curaçao has a smaller population than Newport and represents the smallest country to be present at a World Cup.
I never realised no country has won the World cup with a foreign manager!
They all have bar England. They are all foreigners, Spain's the worst everytime I go it's full of em, and a fair few brits too I suppose.
Helmut Schön was born in 1915 in what was then the 'Deutsches Reich', the German Empire.
His place of birth was Leipzig, which was part of the GDR (East Germany) when he won the World Cup with West Germany.
You’ve been waiting in the wings for years, for that question to crop up
Just looked into it this morning, old fruit. Sepp Herberger, who also won the World Cup with West Germany, was also born into the German Reich, albeit in Mannheim.You’ve been waiting in the wings for years, for that question to crop up
Me & the missus nearly got stranded there a few years ago. I could have been in the squad if things hadn’t have worked out
long before I knew this fella existed his name was used for a speciality tipple i'd make at Christmas time..
You seem to have caught up with the connection in respect of beverages that I mentioned then
You must be getting mixed up with Tony Moonshine. Ex Bolton defender and manager of Libya for three weeks in 1978.
There used to be a shop in Cwmbran that sold car flags for all of England’s opponents in the group stage.
Dick juice ?
Does the “Dark horse” term imply a team capable of winning the tournament? I always took it as a team that would make it surprisingly far. Wales in 2016, or Morocco in 2022 for example.
Mexico definitely won’t win the tournament, but I think they have the easiest run to the Quarter Finals. For a team that certainly aren’t one of the 8 best in the world, I think they’ve got a good chance of making the final 8.
If we’re talking dark horses purely on winning the tournament, I’ll go with the boring answer of Norway.
Will one of the African nations step up ?
Will Brazil hit form and mirror their super teams of the 50’s and 70’s ?
Gotta be honest, at the moment it’s not motivating me at all, will that change once it starts, I honestly don’t know !
I’m fed up with skill being coached out of players and the game becoming like a game of chess on a computer, boring, with back 4’s making a zillion passes
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