Time to review my group stage picks:

A: Mexico won three as predicted, and look like the strongest of the host teams. No goals against. South Africa advanced, which I got right, but in second place instead of third, which I got wrong. Poor South Korea had to wait four days before learning they were knocked out. Czechia dead last as expected.

B: Exactly right: Switzerland in first, then Canada, Bosnia advances, Qatar out– but at least they got a point and some goals this time. Good for them.

C: Right order– Brazil, Morocco, Scotland, Haiti– but Scotland did not advance. Brazil looks a little better than some of the commentators are giving them credit for. It looks like they’re treating Neymar as a locker room guy instead of forcing him into the lineup a la Portugal/CR7, but we’ll see if that persists.

D: US won their first two and won the group earlier than ever before, which was nice, and then lost one when the backups who decided not to play defense. First touch still seems sloppier than most other teams, but the speed, aggression, tactics, and general skill level still seems like an improvement over World Cups past. It was nice to have the highest expectations in a group, and it was nice to mostly achieve them. I pooched the rest of the group. Congratulations to the Socceroos for finishing second, Paraguay advanced in third, and Turkey finished last, which was surprising. They were horrifically unlucky against Paraguay in particular.

E: Germany Germanied to first. Curaçao finished last as predicted, but scored a goal and earned a point, which will earn the players knighthoods or something back home. Ecuador underperformed a bit but got through, Ivory Coast is just plain stronger than expected.

F: I thought Japan would win the group and Holland would finish second “after struggling with Japan and Sweden.” Netherlands-Japan was one of the better games of the group stage, but Holland certainly did not struggle with Sweden, to the tune of 5-1. Sweden advanced in third, Tunisia went home. This group might’ve been my worst.

G: Nailed the order, but Iran was cruelly eliminated at the last second of the group stage. For me, that makes the Algeria-Austria match the game of the tournament so far. We’ll get there a few groups from now. Belgium looks meh. The US might meet them in the Round of 16, and Belgium looks beatable.

H: Spain won the group– nice of them to show up after the Cape Verde game. Cape Verde is this tournament’s Cinderella. I love that Vozinha is 40 years old and is saving the team’s rear end, rather than just being along for the ride. I love that the coach, Bubista, looks like Smokey Robinson. I hate that they’re paired with Argentina in the next round, so by hook or crook that’s going to be the end of their tournament. Uruguay badly underperformed, and are flying home commerical. If they’re smart, it’ll be in as many separate flights to as many different countries in as many different disguises as possible. Saudi last, as predicted.

I: Almost exactly right. “Almost” because France didn’t win on a tiebreaker, they just plain won. They looks like the best in the Cup for now. France has blown out everyone put in front of them, which is as much as you can ask of a team, and they have more than one guy who can score tons of goals. Granted, Norway played their subs in the third game, and we’ll see how that plays out. Lots of teams put lots of starters on the bench for the third game– we’ll see whether momentum or rest turns out to be more important.

J: Exactly right. Argentina did as well as expected, and– most importantly– somebody other than Messi scored. So maybe a strategy of designating a pure Messi-stopper would work, but you actually do have to worry about their other players.

I’m going with Austria-Algeria as the game of the tournament to date. Not the most star-studded, or most skilled, but maybe the most compelling. It was the last game in the group stage, and the last that affected three teams. A victory for either Austria or Algeria could knock the loser out (it might have depended on margin-of-victory), and allow Iran to advance. If they tied, both teams would advance and Iran would not. There was no game left that could alter that calculus. The incentive to let zero-zero happen was strong. Instead, both teams tried to win. Maybe not for the entire game, but for enough of it. They were tied at 90 minutes, with both teams knowing perfectly damn well they both were minutes away from safely advancing– and then both teams scored in stoppage time. Algeria scored, which would put Austria out and Iran into the next round. Then Kalajdžić bailed out the Austrians, and sent the Iranians home. Dramatic, yes, but also noble of these teams to try to win when they didn’t have to, and when it risked their own elimination.

K: Colombia deservedly wins, though I had them finishing second. CR7 isn’t washed, but the team is too locked into feeding him the ball. He needs to be a supersub. Bring him on the last 30 minutes or so. Congo in third, as predicted, but I didn’t have them advancing.

L: England beat out Croatia, so I got that wrong. That was my favorite match until the Algeria-Austria one. I worry that England is on a bit of a downward trajectory– they advanced, safely, but like the US their performance got weaker as the group stage dragged on. Croatia recovered and advanced with two wins, Ghana advanced in third, as predicted, Panama last.

My overall performance depends on how we’re counting. I had 31 of 48 teams in exactly the right spot, including 9 group-winners. Percentage-wse, that’s on par with past predictions. I got 27 of the 32 knockout teams right, though in varying position. Maybe that’s good. At least it sets a bar for future 48-team tournaments, but watch them go to 64 in 2030.

Now that a knockout game has already taken place– and for the record, I did take Canada over South Africa (good for American Jesse Marsch), let me predict the rest of the round of 32.

Germany is methodical and improving, and should have no trouble with Paraguay. France pummels Sweden.

Netherlands over Morocco after extra-time, I think. Croatia puts CR7 out of Portugal’s misery, maybe that’s an upset but I don’t really think so. Spain over Austria.

THe US should beat Bosnia, but I worry that we’re looking past them to the likely Belgium game. We shouldn’t. We’re not good enough to look past anybody. At this stage, I guess nobody’s good enough to look past anybody, but the US is definitely not good enough to do that. We should be Bosnia in regular time.

Belgium has been kind of flaky. They finally turned it on against New Zealand– if it stays on, they’ll beat Senegal easily.

Brazil over Japan. Norway over the Ivory Coast. Mexico, the strongest of the hosts, over Ecuador. England over Congo.

Argentina over Cape Verde is the only lock in this stage. Not simply because they’re better, but because the other, bigger “they” won’t let Messi get knocked out this early.

Egpyt over Australia. Algeria over Switzerland in a minor upset. Colombia over Ghana.

Too many teams. This is exhausting.

Some thoughts, now that everyone’s played two:

I don’t mind the water breaks per se. I do mind that they’re a mandatory three minutes long, which is way too much of a lull in the action. Cut them down to one minute, period. Have FIFA personnel run water onto the field, or have drones fly the water out there, or turn the sprinklers on. Run a TV ad if you need the money, but we need to get on with the game.

I’m in a love-hate relationship with VAR. I love that it’s made it possible to right particular wrongs, as in the case of Tim Ream and Miguel Almirón in our win over Paraguay. I hate that it interrupts the flow of the game as much as it does. I hate when it puts the game in limbo: maybe there was a foul or an offside, but play is continuing knowing that the referee might blow the whistle at any moment to check on something that might have happened 15, 30, 45 seconds ago… and even then it might turn out that it was nothing and play will continue. And I hate that it’s made me hate the current offside rule even more. It hasn’t fundamentally changed offside, it’s just brought my complaints about offside into sharper relief. I’ll write more about that in a different post.

The new tiebreaker arrangement is interesting. Used to be that if teams were tied in the group stage, the first tiebreaker was overall goal difference. Now it’s the “greatest number of points obtained in the group matches between the teams concerned,” i.e., the head-to-head results between the tied teams. One the one hand, I like the idea that if my team beat your team, but we finish tied in the group, then I’ve locked in the tiebreaker. It doesn’t matter that you beat other teams in our group worse than my team did– we beat you, so we win the tiebreaker.

But there are some weird effects. As of this writing– before any of them have played their final group stage game– five teams have clinched last place. They cannot advance. Five feels like a lot. I’ll grant that under the 32- and 24-team formats, you could get eliminated after two games, so technically this is nothing new. And with 48 teams in the tournament, you’re bound to have more teams knocked out after two. I don’t know. Maybe that’s just your incentive to get better results in your first two games.

The flip side is that four teams have clinched first place in their group. Congratulations to the USA and Mexico in particular. Don’t get the wrong idea, I’m thrilled that we’re through to the next round, that we’ve won consecutive World Cup matches for the first time since the Depression, and so on, but it is a bit weird that Turkey could beat us a million to nothing and it wouldn’t budge either one’s standing in the group. Oddly, there’s an extremely slim chance it could affect tiebreakers for the second and third place teams. Anyhow. I’m not sure which order of tiebreakers is better from a purely neutral standpoint, so… good thing I’m not neutral. Whatever favors the USA.

…

We’re only two games in, and I don’t have a “Game of the Tournament” favorite yet, but this past Monday might’ve been the “Day of the Tournament” so far. Messi, Mbappé, and Haaland scored two goals each on Monday. They’ve combined for 13 in 6 games between them. I cannot remember a World Cup, never mind a single day, where the biggest stars were scoring this fast. Insane.

The Greatest Month in Sports is back, and this time it’s at the right time of year. We’re hosting for the first time since 1994, Mexico’s hosting for the first time since 1986, and Canada’s hosting because reasons. Neither Italy nor Ireland qualified so I have no backup favorites going in. I’ll have to pick up a few along the way.

FIFA introduced some new rules right before the World Cup. The good news is that they may have finally figured out how to properly punish some timewasting. Take too long to take a goal kick? Give the other team a corner. Take too long to take a throw-in? Give it to the other team. Hopefully this will apply across the board on all restarts, but I’m not sure that’s the case. Take too long to make substitutions, or to address “injuries”? Play short for a bit. These are perfect punishments, so long as they’re enforced.

The bad news is that there’s no guarantee that they’ll be enforced throughout the tournament, especially since the rules are brand new. We’ve seen several sports leagues in recent years bring in rules or “points of emphasis” to fight diving, timewasting, and poor sportsmanship in general, but enforcement fades as the season progresses. Worse, there’s no guarantee the lost time will be restored, which ultimately is the real problem. We’ll see how it goes.

On to the predictions. I follow international and club soccer even less than I did four years ago, and we’re back to the goofy format of having some third place teams advance while others don’t, and I’m not even sure I’ve heard of some of the countries in this tournament, so take my predictions with a mine of salt.

Group A: Mexico, with all three games in Mexico, should win the group. South Korea second. South Africa will overperform somehow and advance, Czechia is out.

Group B: Switzerland first. American-led Canada will finish second despite having all three games in Canada. Canada playing on home turf in summer does not have nearly the same advantage Mexico does, and besides– they’re Canadian and will screw up somehow. Bosnia third, and good enough to advance. Qatar will finish so horribly dead last that people will keep questioning why they got to host three-and-a-half years ago.

Group C: Brazil should finish first. They have no excuse for not finishing first. If they decide to play for real– by which I mean if Neymar, Vini, et al decide not to flop or flake out or whine– there’s nothing anyone in this group (or most others) can do to stop them. The problem is, that’s a really, really big “if.” Morocco hopefuly wasn’t a flash in the pan last time, and will finish second. Then Scotland, who advances. Then Haiti. World ranking order.

Group D: The US will mercy rule every other team and finish first. This is pure, raw patriotism talking here. We’re hosting, it’s America’s 250th birthday, we finally have Stars and Stripes jerseys (hopefully the concept sticks), we have the talent– why not hope everything comes together? Paraguay overperforsm and finishes second. Turkey third, and advances. Australia last.

Group E: This is the real Group of Death, because if Germany doesn’t absolutely mop the floor with everybody else in this group, they should be executed. World ranking order, because Germany’s too good, Ecuador isn’t at home but it’s close enough for second, Curaçao will finish 45th to 48th overall which puts them at fourth in this group, and that leaves the Ivory Coast in third.

Group F: Japan will somehow upset the group standings and finish first. Holland second after struggling with Japan and Sweden. Tunisia squeaks past Sweden in the confusion. Sweden finishes last and flies home severely depressed at the missed opportunity.

Group G: Belgium first. Salah’s last (?) hurrah will be good enough for Egypt to finish second. Iran third, and advances, because that will definitely glue eyes to the screen. New Zealand last.

Group H: Spain overwhelms its way to first. Uruguay has lost some of its bite, so second. Cape Verde and Saudi Arabia tie and finish with one point each after both get wiped out by Spain and Uruguay. Cape Verde wins the meaningless tiebreaker in a three-legged sack race or whatever they’re using this year.

I and J are the actual Groups of Death, despite my comment on Germany. I think both of them are sending three teams through, but this is where you’ll see the most variance. Anyhow:

Group I: France will win the group on a tiebreaker. Norway Haalands to second, and but also show the world they’re not just Haaland. Senegal third, and advances. Iraq last.

Group J: Argentina wins, but in non-villainous fashion, unlike the last time they were defending champions. That was 1990, when Argentina was dragged to the final by Maradona, Caniggia, another Hand of God, and the most ugly, negative football ever seen outside of catenaccio. Maradona was at the height of his evil powers, and it was glorious to hate him.

Sorry, I got off track. Austria second. Algeria third, and advances. Jordan last. I’ll add that the Argentinians not named Messi better step up, because as great as Messi is, they don’t want to have to find out the hard way that he’s an all-time great, but he’s no Maradona.

Group K: Portugal wins the group in Ronaldo’s last shot. At least I think it’s his last, who knows. The guy’s aged better than LeBron. They might win all it this time, but if they do I hope it’s for Bruno. Portugal first, Colombia a strong second and hopefully nobody gets killed this time. DR Congo third, Uzbekistan last.

Group L: England really should win the group, but I’m going with Croatian Pirlo to lead his country to first. Then England. Then Ghana, because if anyone’s going to unexpectedly knock the US out eventually it’ll be Ghana. Panama finishes last, in their final tournament before becoming the 53rd state.

…

I think that’s all the groups. This took much longer than I thought. Hopefully the next month or so will be filled with great games, consistent application of the new rules, relative peace and calm, and a US victory when it’s all said and done. We’ll see. More later.

Time for Gram’s digital birthday card, as today marks her 116th birthday. Here she is with her daughters, at what is presumably my older aunt’s first communion:

This might have been some other religious occasion– I’d know better if I attended Mass more than every third C&E– but it’s still a great photo.

Happy birthday!