My prediction performance so far:

A: Uruguay, Russia. Right teams and order.

B: I picked Portugal to win and Spain to finish second. Right teams, wrong order. The last 10 or so minutes of the Group B games were the most intense of the tournament to that point. It went from the sharks jostling for the top spot to a minnow, Iran, almost knocking off either one of them. Great stuff.

C: France, Denmark. Right teams and order, though I thought Denmark would need a tiebreaker. They didn’t. FRA-DEN was the worst game of the tourney so far, and neither team should’ve gotten a point for that scoreless blah.

D: I picked Argentina and Nigeria. Argentina squeaked through at Nigeria’s expense, and Croatia beat everyone, which I didn’t see coming largely because I pay no attention to international soccer aside from the World Cup and the Euro tournament. So one right pick, but in the wrong spot.

E: I picked Brazil and Costa Rica. Brazil won the group and is getting better. Switzerland finished second, which would’ve been the smart pick to begin with, but refer back to my commentary in the previous paragraph.

F: I picked Germany to win and Mexico to place. Group of Death indeed. Sweden surprised everybody, Germany flopped, Mexico did well despite the breakdown in the last group game.

A few words about Germany: I was disappointed to see zem fall victim to Alfredo di Stefano’s warning that “goals are not deserved, they are scored.” But it’s not like ze Germans were outclassed or outgunned. Zey averaged 67% possession, out-shot zeir opponents 67 to 31 (20-15 on target), and had 25 corners to zeir opponents’ 7.

Zey didn’t play negative soccer. Zey attacked. If anything, maybe zey attacked too much, given zeir lack of a defensive midfield. Zey just couldn’t buy a goal. Such is life. Shouldn’t have taunted the Swedish bench after zeir win.

G: England, Belgium. Right teams, wrong order.

H: I picked Senegal to win and Colombia to place, so everything was going to plan until Colombia scored late. I was rooting hard for Senegal at the end; they fought hard but fell victim to “diStefanoism” much like ze Germans. A lot of folks have called Japan disgraceful for not attacking late in the game, but they did what they had to do to advance.

The actually disgraceful part was that Japan advanced because they received fewer yellow cards than Senegal did. Here are the tiebreakers as they currently stand:

1. Points obtained in all group matches;
2. Goal difference in all group matches;
3. Number of goals scored in all group matches;
4. Points obtained in the matches played between the teams in question;
5. Goal difference in the matches played between the teams in question;
6. Number of goals scored in the matches played between the teams in question;
7. Fair play points in all group matches (only one of these deductions shall be applied to a player in a single match): First yellow card: minus 1 point; Indirect red card (second yellow card): minus 3 points; Direct red card: minus 4 points; Yellow card and direct red card: minus 5 points;
8. Drawing of lots by the FIFA Organising Committee.

FIFA needs better tiebreakers to replace #7 and #8. A few ideas:

Proposal 1. Best performance against the highest-ranking non-tied team in the group. In this case, Japan would advance because they beat the group winner, Colombia, whereas Senegal lost to Colombia.

Proposal 2. Repeat the goals scored/difference sequence in tiebreakers 2, 3, 5, and 6 above, but with corner kicks instead of goals. That might make the last matches of the group stages a little weird; imagine Japan and Senegal trying to play for corners instead of goals. In this case, Senegal would advance due to having a +1 corner difference against Japan’s -2 corner difference.

Proposal 3. Same as Proposal 2, but with shots-on-target instead of corners. Problem: this would be more subjective than using corners. In this case, Senegal would advance due to having a +4 shots-on-target difference against Japan’s -2 shots-on-target difference.

Whatever the drawbacks of Proposals 2 and 3, they would’ve gotten Japan to attack at the end of that mess instead of sitting back and accepting a 1-0 loss.

Proposal 4. Tie goes to the lowest-ranking team according to FIFA’s World Ranking. In this case, 61st-ranked Japan would advance instead of 27th-ranked Senegal. The higher-ranked team should’ve done better. They didn’t? Punish them.

Proposal 5. [Warning: This proposal is sheer lunacy, but still better than this “fair play points” tripe.] Conduct a shootout at the beginning of each group stage game, so after tiebreaker 6, you can look at records in the shootouts. The shootouts would only matter if it is necessary to use tiebreakers; they would not affect the scores or results of the matches themselves.

Anyhow, back to the larger point of this post. I got 12 second-rounders right with 7 in exactly the right spot. I’m losing it; in 2014 those numbers were 12 and 11 respectively. Oh well.

I had some other ideas but I’m too tired to think of them right now. VAR commentary, seeding commentary, and picks tomorrow.