Best World Cup ever?? (Some thoughts after the 4th Round)

How does this tournament compare to those of the past - is it possibly the best ever??

I really think it might be!

1970, of course, had some moments of unbelievable magic - mostly from Pelé. But the combination of some brutally hot weather, unaccustomed elevation at some of the venues, and the generally much lower level of physical conditioning in those days meant that the matches were mostly played at walking-pace. 1974 and 1978 were illuminated by the dazzling 'Total Football' of the Dutch, but not that much else; and they were, for me, and many others, ultimately somewhat marred by the chronic injustice of that fabulous Holland side twice being robbed of their deserved victory in finals against the host nation. 1982 and 1986 were surely the pinnacle - mainly thanks to the legendary Brazilian and French sides of the first half of that decade; although, of course, Germany, Italy, Argentina, Uruguay, Holland, and even England were also very good for most of the 1980s, and 1986 was further enlivened by Michael Laudrup's wonderful Denmark. 1998 and 2006 weren't bad; but really, all the tournaments since the 1980s have, I think, been somewhat disappointing - until now.

Over the past quarter of a century or so, the increasing physical demands of the modern game have taken a heavy toll in injuries and fatigue towards the end of domestic seasons, and we've usually had to suffer a number of the expected stars of a tournament either being missing completely or at least operating well below their best. But this time, apart from Jamal Musiala (who missed much of last season after breaking his leg in last summer's Euros) and Nico Williams (injured again at the moment, but hopefully available for the quarter-finals, if not this next round), all the big names are present - and in absolutely banging form. I really don't think there's been another World Cup where there were so many leading players all looking absolutely at the top of their game. And who would have dared to hope that 'over-the-hill' Leo Messi would somehow produce his best World Cup performance yet??

Tournament hosts have often had weak teams who might otherwise have struggled to qualify, and couldn't make much of an impression in the competition. But this time, the three hosts, Mexico, the USA, and Canada, have all looked very capable - and I'd expect at least one of them to reach the quarter-finals.

We've seen lots of drama already, especially in this first knockout round: tight games, late winners, late equalisers, extra-time and penalty shootouts. And there have been some intriguing tactical battles as well. While the 'hydration breaks' have been universally derided (they are necessary for player health in such hot and humid conditions; but they don't need to be more than 30 or 60 seconds long - and they could happen under FIFA supervision, well away from the coaching areas), they have added to the tactical intricacy of matches by allowing coaches a major reshuffle three times each game instead of just once.

Most previous tournaments have also been marred, at least occasionally, by erratic, sometimes outright poor refereeing. But this year, I really think the refereeing, and the operation of the VAR room, has mostly been exemplary. In the 'Round of 32', I felt there were a few penalties that were strangely missed, and one or two goals that were perhaps wrongly disallowed; but these were all tight calls, arguably "50-50s", not really egregious errors. Prior to this, there hasn't really be any major controversy at all. I remarked last time how remarkable - and enviable - it was that in 70-odd matches so far, we'd seen fewer dubrious decisions than we typically get in any single week in the Premier League!

The expansion thoroughly vindicated

Though many people have carped at the enlarging of the tournament, I think you have to accept the value of giving more of the 'smaller' footballing nations a chance to participate. And in fact, it has only been an enhancement to the entertainment of the competition; most of the 'expansion teams' were more than half-decent, and a few of them proved capable of threatening a major upset. Cabo Verde's astonishing performance, deservedly finishing second (in a tough group!), and then just scaring the bejesus out of Argentina in the first knockout round, has been the great story of the tournament so far - and should serve to shut up all the naysayers who've been ridiculing the enlarged format.

A proper shoutout for the Golden Boot

We've seen much the highest rate of goal-scoring in modern times (nearly 3 goals per game!), with very few 0-0s - and even those have often been very entertaining games. There have been some absolute belters amongst those 257 goals to date; it's going to be really hard to pick a 'Goal of the Tournament' this year (although I suspect Sidny Lopes Cabral's extra-time equaliser today for Cabo Verde may claim it, as much for the emotional impact it had as for the sublime technique). And the race for the Golden Boot is just ridiculous: Messi now on 7 goals, Mbappé on 6, Kane on 5; Vinicius Jnr., Oyarzabal and Dembélé on 4; Cunha, Quinones, Saibari, Manzambi, David, Balogun,.... and Cristiano all on 3 (that's just among those who are still playing). I don't think there's ever before been a tournament where so many players were all scoring so freely. Often, the title has been cruised to with a relatively modest total haul, mainly from one or two big performances in easy group games right at the start. This time, it looks set to be a proper contest, going right down to the wire.

'Boring'???  Are you kidding??!!

So,... I really don't understand people online whingeing about how 'boring' this tournament has been! I think they must not have been watching many of their games. Or they're peeved that their team hasn't done as well as they'd hoped. Or... they just don't understand football. It's been an absolutely fucking brilliant tournament.

It may be too early to call it as the 'best of all time', when we're only half-way through. Obviously we'd like to see some more thrills-and-spills in the later rounds, and a big final with a deserving winner. But it looks very much as if we're going to get all of that. I think it's going to be between France and Spain, and Brazil and Argentina; but teams like the USA, Mexico and Morocco are certainly in with a shout as well.

My 'crystal ball' mojo is back

I'd been having a pretty wretched start to my perennial 'Nostradamus Challenge' with my best friend, predicting fairly few correct results, and almost no exact scorelines during the Group Phase. But in the 'Round of 16', I nailed 5 exact scores (and was very close on Argentina v Cabo Verde!); only Egypt's hard-fought draw with Australia and Paraguay's surprise win over Germany eluded my precognition this time.

Fantasy strategy recap

I went into the strategy considerations for this tournament in some detail at the start of the week. I feel fully vindicated in recommending the use of the 'Qualification Bonus' chip in this Round just past. I achieved a maximum haul of 24 points from it. (That gave me my first ton of the competition so far; although I was also very close on MatchDays 1 and 2, and would have breached it on MD2 as well if the damn game had allowed me to enroll Mbappé as my '12th Man'.)

Every batch of games from here on is just going to get harder to call, I fear; so, those who didn't play the 'Qualification Bonus' in the last round are likely to suffer - it will be very difficult to achieve a maximum return from the chip now. In the upcoming 'Round of 16', only France, Morocco, Spain, and Argentina look likely to be able to progress fairly comfortably (and even venturing that much may be 'tempting Fate'...); the other four fixtures are a bit of a toss-up. However, I feel it should be safe to play the 'Clean Sheet Shield' chip in this round, since it's hard to envisage any of the top teams conceding more than 2 goals, even if they do have a bit of a rough time. '12th Man' and 'Maximum Captain' will probably do quite well in the quarter-finals or semi-finals; although I might save the latter until the final. (You have a pretty good chance of 'maximising' your captaincy anyway in the earlier rounds by rotating it through your best players until one of them strikes a big haul. In the final, you can't do that.)

I'm a little nervous about how long Messi may need to recover after having to play a full two hours in that thriller against Cabo Verde. It wouldn't surprise me to see Nico Paz start instead of him against Egypt on Tuesday. But the form he's in, he can probably register an attacking contribution even with a short run off the bench; so, I imagine everyone will be keeping him in their Fantasy squads. (It really is astonishing that his ownership in the game is only at around 52%. The way he's been playing, 95% would be low!!!)

Fantasy irritations

I had thought that the 'Date of next game' option had been restored to the during-the-Matchday display on the FIFA Fantasy website during MatchDay 3 - but it seems to have disappeared again (which is a bit of an irritation when you're trying to remember when you need to bring in your substitutes or swap your captain's armband around). 

And I've suffered another of those infuriating glitches where a 'saved' captaincy change somehow got unsaved again, denying me 6 extra points from Kylian Mbappé in this MatchDay - Gggrrrrr......

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!!!

Ooops - they did it again!

I am cursed with Kylian Mbappé! In the group stage, the damn FIFA Fantasy webpage wouldn't 'save' my selection of him for the '12th Man' booster chip on MatchDay 2. When I brought him into the main squad for MD3, it failed to save my selection of him as captain. And now, on MD4, the same problem. I've had problems with the captaincy on other players too, but.... there does seem to be a particular obstacle about accepting the selection of Mbappé! 

So, now I'm left hoping that Yamal or Messi can save my MatchDay. But I very much doubt they'll match Mbappé's 16-point haul. Bugger.  [Indeed, no. I suppose I shouldn't complain about a 10-pointer from Leo. Although I'm bummed he was denied the assist for the winner.]

A little bit of Zen (101)

"Everywhere is walking-distance - if you have the time."

Steven Wright

A great line from one of my favourite comedians. Deeper than you think... 

For me, the wisdom of it lies in recognising how much our thinking is constrained by the categories we unconsciously impose upon things.

Best of the analysts

I've often said on here before that it's very valuable to watch some good quality analysis of football games, to improve your understanding of what's gonig on - of why teams are performing as they are, well or badly, and thus how they're likely to do in an important upcoming game.

The standard of punditry on the mainstream TV channels inevitably tends to be somewhat superficial. And, with so much football to get through at the moment, I just don't have the appetite for sitting through the pre- and post-match and half-time discussions as well as the actual play (I'm having to watch most of the games in 'as live' re-runs the following morning, since the kick-offs are in the middle of the night in my timezone!). But I have been enjoying some of the Youtube content from my favourite online football analysts. Here are some of the best videos I've enjoyed in the last few weeks.

Conor McAinsh of Football Meta recently produced this excellent breakdown on how defensive discipline has been enabling some of the 'smaller' teams to embarrass the big boys of the game in this tournament. (He's just added another specifically on how Germany were undone by this.)

The Purist Football has also been putting out some great coverage of the competition (just before it started he had an interesting series of short videos assessing the prospects of each of the favourites to win the competition). This is a particularly good breakdown of why Morocco have looked so formidable so far far.

Football Made Simple has also put out some good videos on the tournament, particularly this recent one on Brazil's success in their knockout win over Japan.

And my pal Adam Clery of ACFC, a huge Scotland fan, just did a sombre post mortem on their disappointing tournament (ultimately pretty savage on Steve Clarke, but deservedly so). He also had a very good assessnent of Brazil last week.

Do give these a look. Analyses like these can be very helpful to your Fantasy endeavours.

Ha-haa!

 

Schadenfreude is not Germany's new holding midfielder, but the concept of taking pleasure in other people's misfortune. And most of the footballing world is surely feeling that this morning, as mighty Germany find themselves preparing to come home from the World Cup - after messing up a penalty shootout??!! For decades, the Germans have been viewed as the masters of the shootout - invincible, almost flawless in them on so many occasions (well, particularly against England!). And now at last..... they've discovered human frailty and learned how to be really bad at them. Joy unconfined rings around the globe! [To be fair, though, it did look as if they were the victims of the first really dodgy piece of refereeing so far in this tournament: Substitute defender Waldemar Anton appeared to be blocking rather than pushing the big Paraguayan keeper, Orlando Gill, who fell over theatrically, but was perfectly able to stand up again to try to save Tah's header. Calling that decision 'very soft' - as most of the TV pundits ultimately seem to have gone with - was something of an understatement.]

But as my old college buddy always likes to say:  "Cheer up, Fritz. For you, ze VAR is over!"

The Nostradmus Game

For many years now - at least 20, I suppose - my best buddy from college and I have regularly been indulging in our 'Nostradmus Game' during summer footall tournaments: each round we'll trade lists of predictions for the scores in every game, and see how well we do.

I have almost always been well ahead on the number of exact scorelines guessed, but I felt bad for him that he often seemed to notch up a lot more 'near misses' than I did. So, I devised a scoring system where we get 5 points for a spot-on scoreline, 3 points for a correct result that's only out by a single goal, and 2 points for a correct result but inaccurate scoreline.

I'm pretty sure this tournament so far has been my worst ever. In fact, until the weekend, my buddy was actually ahead of me; and he's still got a lead in exact scores, which is what he still cares about the most.

In general, during the group phase, at least (when ties are often a bit unbalanced, results against the weaker teams usually rather easier to predict), I mostly get the right results about 70%-80% of the time, and the exact scoreline a least once in every 5 or 6 ties. This time,... I've only hit the nail on the head once in every 18 games, and I've only even had the right result in 42 of the 72 matches (less than 60%). Of a potential maximum of 360 points from the opening phase, I've only garnered a paltry 128 points. Oh, the shame!

I believe this tends to confirm my general impression that this has been a more than usually topsy-turvy kind of tournament so far, one that is particularly hard to predict. Most of the supposedly 'weaker' teams were not as poor as generally expected; even the weakest of them weren't really complete pushovers. And a number of the big names stumbled out of the starting-blocks rather. Nobody foresaw Qatar taking a point off Switzerland in their opening game, or tiny Cabo Verde holding European Champions Spain to a draw, or Ecuador nicking a win off the mighty Germany, or Congo frustrating Portugal, or Turkiye going down to Paraguay, or Iran and Ghana holding Belgium and England to impotent goalless draws.

I am not a great fan of gambling: I am wary of its addictive potential, disdainful of the supposed thrill of risking money you can ill afford to lose. But I do like to back my own judgement occasionally; I like to think of it more as 'investing'. I only make bets very occasionally, and only when I feel fairly sure that, even if I have less than 50% confidence of success, at least the odds on offer are strongly in my favour, and so, if I make enough of these well-judged bets, I should come out with a net profit. And I almost invariably do - not usually a very large profit, but some.

Unfortunately, what tends to happen is that I get well ahead during the group phase of a tournament and the first round or two of the knockouts, and then start pissing my winnings away again - usually only redeeming myself with mostly successful pre-tournament bets on the semi-finalists and finalists. I've realised that my weakness is sentiment; in the later rounds, I am more inclined to back the teams I want to win, rather than assessing the pros and cons of betting on them more objectively. I wonder if I can finally reverse that trend this year??  (Well, I won't have the chance to do so with an actual betting campaign this time, since I've lost my UK bank card, and am thus unable to top up my online betting account. Bother. But, given how badly I've been doing with my Nostradamus-ing so far, perhaps that card loss was a happy accident; it might have saved me from a first loss-making campaign. Funny how 'luck' seems to have a way of balancing itself out like that!)

Oddly enough, though, despite my thus-far fairly disastrous attempts at prognostication on the results, I'm having one of my best-ever campaigns in a summer Fantasy tournament. It is a funny old world, indeed.

World Cup Fantasy 2026 - Strategy for the knockout phase

The bracket for the knockout phase of the 2026 World Cup 

So, now that the Group Phase is over, we get into the real meat of the tournament - sudden death, put up or go home. And FIFA's Fantasy game is kindly giving us unlimited transfers (during this tiny 15-hour gap between the end of the 3rd Round and the beginning of the 4th!!): a de facto 'Wildcard', so that we can completely rebuild our squads for the second half of the competition.

In the Group Phase, we were concerned to try to optimise returns from the more mismatched fixtures, where the strongest teams and players seemed likely to have a better-than-average chance of really high returns because they were up against one of the competition's weaker teams (although it often didn't work out like that; none of this year's 'expansion teams' were completely toothless, and a few of them have proven to be quite formidable). This often means that the teams with the best prospects in Round 2 are completely different from those in Round 1, and there can be a case for playing the game's Wildcard chip straight away in that round to optimise for the apparently vulnerable fixtures (though that's a very risky ploy, as you often need your Wildcard later to fill huge holes suddenly appearing in your squad); but that didn't really happen this year, as the best performers were looking so much better than everyone else, you could trust them to probably give good returns against anyone. The other major hazard of the Group Phase is that there will be a huge number of rotations in the 3rd Round, with teams that have already secured first-place qualification resting most of their star players; but again, that didn't really happen this time - only four teams had secured top spot in the group after only two games, and two of them, surprisingly, fielded full-strength teams in the third match anyway. Messi and Pulisic, though rested, got decent run-outs and could contribute some points; Haaland was the only big name who didn't feature on the final MatchDay.

But that's all behind us now. How should we prepare our Fantasy squads for the knockout rounds to come?

Some things to keep in mind....

Elimination roulette - In the knockout phase, you need to take care to spread risk by never taking too many players from one team. You can't afford to leave yourself short for the subsequent round by landing yourself with a lot of eliminated players. The game tempts you toward self-destruction by allowing you to take far more players from one team than you should sensibly want; you don't want to be taking anywhere near the full allowed 'quota' of players from one country until the Semi-Finals and Final. Moreover, the larger number of transfers than we're used to in extended league format competitions encourages the dangerous hope that we might get away with it, that one wrong guess about a result won't leave us having to take 'hits' for additional transfers. But, oh yes, it can; it very often does. As a general rule of thumb, I'd say - try to take no more than 2 players per team in the 'Round of 16', 3 players per team in the Quarter-Finals, and 4 players per team in the Semi-Finals. Of course, this may vary, depending on whether there are any fixtures in the round that you feel you can trust as absolute gimmes (always a bit of a gamble!), whether you're making do with any empty spaces on your bench, and how many Free Transfers you have available for the next round. 

In the Semi-Finals, and perhaps also in the Quarter-Finals, you should consider spreading risk by taking roughly even numbers of players from both sides in a match. Although this guarantees that a certain number of players will be lost from the subsequent round, it also guarantees that a certain number will be saved. If you only take players from one side in each fixture, you lay yourself open to the possibility that you might guess the results wrong in every game and be left with no squad at all!

Also, of course, in this World Cup, there's a Third Place Play-Off game forming part of MatchDay 8 along with the Final; so, you don't necessarily lose anyone from the Semi-Finals. But you'd rather have as many players in the Final as possible, because it will be a more competitive match, and isn't likely to omit any of the teams' top players. The Third-Place game is usually quite unpredictable; neither side is hugely motivated by it, and often they play their second-string teams. 

Also, you need to be mindful that, if you max out your number of Free Transfers replacing eliminated players, you may be further screwed by injuries or suspensions, which tend to become more numerous towards the end of a month-long competition; then, you might find you have absolutely no wiggle-room for additional elective transfers to swap out players who've shown disappointing form.

Gambling on a thinner bench in the later rounds - In the last two or three rounds, you can consider gradually emptying your bench. As the games in each round become fewer (and less far apart; and, often, much more closely contested - meaning there might be low points for all attacking players, and perhaps scarcely any for keepers and defenders), the value of the manual substitutions is progressively diminished. In the Final, manual substitutions are no longer posssible (unless you have some players in the Third-Place Play-Off - not recommended), and the remaining value of your bench in being able to replace any unexpected non-starters by automatic substitutions (as in the regular Fantasy Premier League game) might be fairly minimal; so, you can consider having at least one or two gaps on the bench for that last game, perhaps even leaving it completely empty. For the 'Round of 16' - and sometimes, perhaps, for the Quarter-Finals too - with multiple games spread across multiple days, it is still worth trying to keep a full and strong bench; but after that, you can hang on to one or two eliminated players - ideally a cheap goalkeeper or defender - as a 'budget enabler' to leave yourself more transfers, and more money, to use on the rest of your squad. However, leaving gaps in the squad puts you more at risk of needing to use large numbers of extra transfers to rebuild the squad if some of your players are unexpectedly eliminated from the competition - that's why I would try to avoid it until the last couple of rounds.

It's even worse this year! - In last summer's Club World Cup, there was quite a broad stratification of ability levels among the participants; and so, many fixtures were relatively easy to predict - even in the early knockout rounds. In this World Cup, such disparities seem to be fewer, and not so dramatic; I fear most of the knockout games are going to be quite tough to predict the results of with any confidence. Moreover, the ridiculously biased bracket ths year means that most of the leading contenders are stuck in the same half of the draw and will all play each other relatively early on.

Also, I think this Fantasy competition is being especially niggardly with the extra Free Transfers. I can't remember for sure, but I think last year's Club World Cup, and most of the summer tournament Fantasy competitions I've played in before, gave 1 or 2 more transfers per round than this one is! That is going to make things particularly tight: suffering losses to your squad if you make some wrong guesses on game outcomes in a round will more easily necessitate having to resort to taking multiple 'hits' (at least additional transfers only cost 3pts each in this game, rather than the 4pts we're used to in FPL).

Hence....

Selection Strategy - In an ideal world, we'd try to focus on choosing players that we were reasonably confident were going to go deep into the competition (so, even if we were only right about some of them, at least there would be that strong core of players in the squad that we'd never have to change, never have to use precious transfers on). But with the way the draw is this year, half of the competition's best teams will be gone before the Quarter-Finals, and some of them might fall out even in the 'Round of 32'.

So, I think we have to spread our selections especially thinly - no more than 1 or 2 players from each country (because even if they do get through the current round, most of them are sure to be eliminated in the next round or two after that).

I would also avoid taking any players from a fixture that is hard to predict in the 'Round of 16' - because we're going to get enough grief from unforeseen upset results in this round, and from the inevitable carnage in the immediately subsequent rounds; we just can't afford to take any risks on players who look like they might not progress beyond this next game. For me, Holland v Morocco, Portugal v Croatia, and Belgium v Senegal are too close to call - so, I'm not touching players from any of those teams (even though I love Ismael Saibari - he's been my breakout 'player of the tournament' so far!). And I'd be wary of taking anyone from Germany, Portugal, Norway, or Switzerland - because, even if they do well in the coming game, they're almost certain to lose in the 'Round of 16': so, those are players you're going to want to be replacing before or after the next round. And there are enough unexpected changes you're probably going to have to make; you don't want to be loading your squad up with entirely expected changes you have to make!

Chip Strategy - This competition is rather over-cluttered with chips. And, if you didn't manage to offload one or two of them in the Group Phase (I tried, but failed - owing to an infuriating glitch with the FIFA website!), you might well find yourself with one left unused - probably the Wildcard, which is really a 'luxury' in competitions like this that is often not needed, best kept in reserve for possible emergency firefighting (if you find yourself missing half or more of your squad after a particularly bruising Round...!)

Moreover, most of the chips are probably going to work best in the same Rounds of the competition - but you can only use one per Round, so..... Yeah, it is pretty much impossible to choose how to make optimum use of them.

The Maxmimum Captain is probably the most flexible chip: it could work well in any Round. And I fancy it might actually yield the biggest advantage in the Final - where probably only one player will deliver a really big points-haul,.... but it's impossible to know for sure who that will be out of so many capable players on the pitch.

The other three, however, the 12th Man, the Qualification Bonus, and the just-announced Clean Sheet Shield, would probably all work best in the 'Round of 32' or the 'Round of 16'.

The Qualification Bonus, where you can get an additional 2pts for every member of your starting eleven who progresses to the next round, is probably going to work best in the 'Round of 32' - where you can have the highest confidence about anticipating almost all the results correctly. In the 'Round of 16', anticipating the game outcomes immediately becomes a lot harder - and you're much more likely to get some of your picks wrong. To have a good chance of getting somewhere close to the optimum 22-point haul from this chip, I think we really have to play it in the 'Round of 32' (although you might fancy that some of the 'Round of 16' ties are also sufficiently predictable to make this a valid option for playing this chip).

The Clean Sheet Shield (only revealed as such after the 3rd Round was under way; previously referred to only as a 'Mystery Booster') is rather more flexible, could go well in any round. I think it's a badly designed chip: it would have presented a more intriguing challenge if they only raised the threshold for earning 'clean sheet points' from 0 goals to 1 goal. But they're saying you can get 'clean sheet points' for any player who doesn't concede more than 2 goals. - which is basically everyone: very few teams have conceded 3 goals or more in this World Cup so far; and you would imagine that that is going to become even rarer, as the ties become more closely matched and more high-stakes. However,... we have quite often seen in recent tournaments that there can be some high-scoring games in the later rounds - partly because teams have to chase the result if they're behind, and may leave themselves vulnerable; and partly because there's the possibility of extra-time to factor in. Also, of course, some unexpected, unpredictable events may occur that lead to a team crumbling disastrously: an injury to a star player, an early penalty conceded or an early sending-off can lead to a very one-sided final scoreline. Something like this can happen in any round; but I think it seems slightly more likely to happen from the Quarter-Finals onwards. Also, of course, in the later rounds, you have fewer teams to choose your squad from, so the chance of you having one of these unlucky disasters impacting the points of multiple players in your squad is elevated. In earlier rounds, where you don't have any representation from some teams, and only 1 or 2 players from any one country, such disasters won't impact this chip too heavily. So, I'm inclined to regard it as a coin-flip option with the Qualification Bonus: you play one of them in the 4th Round and one of them in the 5th Round - you don't really want to risk hanging on to either of them any longer than that.

There is a temptation to play the 'individual bonus chips', the 12th Man and Maximum Captain, during the Group Phase - when we're likely to get some higher-scoring games, and it's easier to predict which those will be. But these chips can also work well later in the competition. The 12th Man (which allows you to field an additional player in your 'starting eleven', free of all the usual restrictions on budget, formation, and country quota), in particular, I think, will be an attractive option in the Quarter-Finals or Semi-Finals - when, with a bit of luck, nearly all of the top-performing players will be pitched against each other; but... we probably can't afford them all and/or we don't want to run the risk of having them all in our permanent squad, knowing that some of them must certainly be eliminated.

ADDENDUM:  Looking at the bracket now, I reckon the Quarter-Finals are going to be.... France v Morocco, Spain v USA, Brazil v Mexico, and Argentina v Colombia.

I hope these observations may have been of some use to someone.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!!!

Thoughts after the Group Phase of the World Cup

Davison Sanchez allegedly offside - but only because the computer imagines him wearing ludicrously outsized boots?!

I'll try to confine myself to just a few brief notes here on topics of interest that have come up during the first two-and-a-bit weeks of the World Cup (um, OK, not that brief; I'm not good at 'brief'...). I'm planning to write a little more on considerations for the Fantasy game going into the knockout stages later this afternoon.

The ball - This has caused quite extensive discussion (well, in a World Cup, it almost always does!). Former England goalkeeper, now BBC TV pundit, Joe Hart has been rushing to the defence of some of the goalkeepers who've let in shots that they probably shouldn't have, suggesting that the speed/trajectory of the ball is strangely difficult to read. That sounds to me rather like classic Goalkeepers' Union excuse-making, since the examples in question all seemed to involve keepers reading the flight of the ball just fine and getting at least one hand to it, but.... not a 'good hand'! UK newspaper The Guardian had a piece on this a few days ago. Some scientists have suggested that there is a 'drag crisis' associated with this ball, which seems to mean that the airflow around it rapidly becomes more chaotic at a certain threshold speed; but this is actually a good thing - at least for the kicker - since it appears to reduce aerodynamic drag behind the ball, and thus speed it up, or rather reduce the rate at which it decelerates. Balls hit very hard, it seems, may fly a bit faster and straighter than balls hit only very slightly less hard, and this may be bamboozling keepers who are as yet unfamiliar with the characteristics of Adidas's new 'Trionda' ball. We have certainly been treated to a feast of long-range pingers in this tournament so far - and nobody except goalkeepers is complaining about that! 

However, we've also seen a lot of efforts from distance flying high, and it has seemed to me that this ball seems to gain elevation more than you'd expect. I suppose it might just be an optical illusion caused by the alleged slower deceleration characteristics just mentioned above; if the ball doesn't slow down as quickly, it's not going to dip as quickly - and that may fool our brains into thinking the trajectory is actually curving upwards slightly. But I really think it is sometimes lifting more than we'd expect; and I wonder if these odd aerodynamic effects around the ball are somehow producing a little bit of extra lift at certain critical speeds (perhaps with the help of a certain type of spin on the ball??). 

The behaviour of the ball is not so erratic as to cause any major problems, I don't think; so, we should all be fairly happy with it. But I do also wonder if the constant rush towards novelty - sometimes, perhaps, rather than genuine worthwhile innovation - and a shortage of testing-time may lead manufacturers to produce some non-ideal equipment for tournaments like these.

The draw - It is strange, and obviously undesirable, that the bottom quarter of the draw contains none of the tournament favourites except Argentina. (while the top half is stacked with France, Spain, Germany, Morocco, Holland, Portugal, Belgium and the USA!!), There was something very much amiss in the tournament design here. And it does indeed appear that FIFA are rather too nakedly trying to engineer another win - or at least another Final or Semi-Final appearance - for Leo Messi. I think the truth is a little different - equally shameful, though probably not quite such catnip to the conspiracy theorists. I don't think FIFA are particularly concerned for Messi/Argentina to win another World Cup per se; I just think they want to maximise their revenues across the tournament as a whole. And Messi is a proven draw, he's got a reliable record of selling out US stadiums in the MLS (and last summer's Club World Cup!) on his own. So, there's no need to pair Messi with another top attraction to ensure good ticket sales. The likely Argentina v Australia 'Round of 16' tie will probably fill more seats than Spain v Portugal in the other half of the draw.

The Cabo Verde fairytale - I mentioned yesterday that it seemed rather cruel for the plucky little island nation to be pitched against Messi's Argentina in the first knockout round. But, given how relatively weak the rest of that half of the draw looks, if they do somehow get past that obstacle - the possibility of them going all the way to the Final will suddenly start to seem not so far-fetched. They have looked the second-best African team so far (after the superb Morocco), and possibly the best defensive team; but they also showed in their 2-2 draw against Uruguay that they can offer some attacking threat. The bookies are currently offering something like 15/1 against Cabo Verde progressing to the 'Round of 16',... 400-500/1 against them reaching the Final, and up to 1,500/1 against them winning the tournament. Those are probably the best value bets in the tournament. Well, since, in the unlikely event that they can get past Argentina, Australia or Egypt in the next round shouldn't be too much of a problem for them, I think it would be well worth having a little punt on them to reach the quarter-finals (25-40/1) and/or the semi-finals (80-100/1). Take those odds now; they will tumble if they can pull off an upset against Argentina.

The tiresome 'GOAT' debate - Yes, that's raging again (does it ever stop?) in social media comment threads. The great Italian former player Antonio Cassano added more fuel to this fire the other day when he averred that Cristiano Ronaldo was 'not in the conversation'. But that seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable and indeed incontestable statement. Because Beckenbauer and Cruyff and Zidane et al aren't 'in that conversation' either. If you're talking about a player whose technical abilities and lasting impact on the game are head-and-shoulders above every other player in history (so far), then.... even the greatest of the greats are not quite good enough. There are only three candidates: Pelé, Maradona, and Messi. For me, Maradona, whatever his undoubted skills, is disqualified by having been such a cheat and a thug and a nutjob - and by having almost always played the game with a scowl of seething rage on his face. And Messi - I feel we should probably wait until after his retirement to start fully appraising his achievement in a wider historical context. For me, the 'GOAT' is a silly concept: you can't meaningfully compare with each other players from different eras, or players in different positions, or players who might have had radically different styles even in the same position. But if you absolutely insist on nominating one player as standing above all others in history - it's always got to be Pelé, if only because he was the first: he created the very idea of a 'superstar player': none of the subsequent holders of that mantle would have been viewed in the same way if Pelé hadn't come before them; and even today, half a century after his retirement, every great player still has to bear comparison with Pelé - and is almost always found wanting. All the great players since Pelé have been trying to emulate him, and few have come anywhere close; I still don't think anyone has yet truly matched or surpassed him - although at least with Messi, there is a case to be made. With Cristiano there is not, not even remotely.

The Haaland outrage - The main point of complaint for World Cup Fantasy managers in these last few days has been the shocking decision of Norway head coach Ståle Solbakken to omit Haaland entirely from the 3rd Round game against France. In fact, he rested almost all of his usual starters (although their outstanding right-back, Julian Ryerson, had injured a hamstring in the previous game), presumably giving way to sentiment, thinking it would be kind to try to give as many of his squad as possible a taste of World Cup football. His proffered explanation that he wanted to 'rest' players ahead of the 'Round of 32' was less convincing; two not terribly hectic games spaced over nearly two weeks is not going to tire or stress anyone; and there's a four-day gap until they would play again. Spain didn't rest or protect the recently injured Oyarzabal or Yamal (admittedly, they did rotate much of the rest of their usual starting lineup; although their squad is strong enough that they can do this without really compromising team performance!), Messi at least got half an hour or so off the bench (and another scoring contribution), likewise Pulisic for the USA (although he didn't manage to score, despite threatening to do so multiple times), while Germany and France, to their credit, put out full-strengh sides, despite having already assured themselves of first-place qualification. Zlatan Ibrahimovic on US television castigated Solbakken's decision, accusing him of a lack of ambition or self-belief. I tend to think that Zlatan is a bit of a knob most of the time (like a more stylish Roy Keane...), but on this I'm inclined to agree with him: I don't think it's good for the psychology of the team to basically admit that you feel you have no hope of beating France (you'd have to beat them, or someone better than them, to get to the last rounds of the tournament) and that you don't care who you face in the next round,... and thus - impliedly, I think - that you don't fancy your chances of getting beyond the 'Round of 16', that winning just one knockout tie is the summit of your ambitions. [But then, perhaps I'm just bitter because I'd hung on to Haaland in my squad, expecting that he'd at least get some minutes off the bench, and might pick up another goal even from a short outing.]

This may be a harsh wake-up call for people who'd been fancying Norway as a possible 'dark horse' to go deep into he tournament, and possibly even win it - just because of Haaland's great form. I don't think the City striker can do it for them on his own. Odegaard still seems to be misfiring rather, after his injury-ravaged season at Arsenal; and their second-best player, Ryerson, now looks set to miss next week's game. I'm not sure I even fancy their chances against the Ivory Coast; they'll surely get massacred by Brazil.

A feast of football - Although many of us suffered with the omission of Haaland, the short minutes for Messi, and the surprise defeat for Germany, we were blessed, really, that rotations were so few in this Round, even among the handful of teams whose first-place qualification was already secured, and that the Round was so surprisingly high-scoring - far more so than the 3rd Round usually is, as so many teams content themselves with playing out draws. We've again seen some banging goals, and some last-minute changes of fortune. And thus far disappointing teams, Belgium, Senegal, and even Turkiye (though too late to save themselves), finally woke up and showed what they're really capable of. And damn, Colombia v Portugal was one of the best games we've yet seen in the tournament, and possibly the best 0-0 game I've ever seen! Colombia, who only needed a draw to top the group, went after the game from first to last - an effort which should endear them to all neutral fans and make them one of the favourite 'underdogs' going forward.

VAR, etc. - In general, I have found the standard of refereeing in this tournament very impressive. There have been only a handful of moderately contentious big calls; and, as far as I can recall, I think only two penalty awards (or non-awards) looked as if they were incorrect. This is so, so, so much better than the weekly fiasco that the refereeing in the English Premier League has become in recent years. Really, we've seen at least 2 or 3 really egregious errors almost every week in the last few seasons in the EPL, in each batch of 10 games; we've now had 72 games in this World Cup with hardly any. That is a remarkable achievement. The standard of recuitment and briefing for referees at this tournament really seems to have been exemplary. I hope PGMOL has been taking notes.

I've also been mostly impressed with how rapidly VAR is delivering its decisions (although they did blot their copy-book rather today by taking over 4 minutes to rule out an apparent late equaliser for Ghana's André Ayew against Croatia). The computer-graphic renderings of offside decisions are far more readily intelligible than the ones we've been having to suffer in the Premier League; but they're still taking 2 minutes or more to be generated (or to be shared with fans, anyway), which is far too long. And I've found that all of the calls so far looked accurate and convincing (so often in the English domestic season we've seen graphics that differ so drastically from what we saw with the naked eye that we have to suspect something amiss with the timing of the 'freeze-frame'), though there haven't been many really tight decisions - well, again, until today.  Davison Sanchez had looked well onside to the naked eye, but his early goal for Colombia was ruled out for what the graphic appeared to show as the length of the toecap of his right boot (the picture at the head of this post). However,... that graphic did appear to be showing him standing rather nearer the goal-line than he had actually appeared to be, and depicted him in clown-boots that looked at least 3 inches longer than the ones he was actually wearing. Something going wrong with that one....

The Fantasy points scoring?? - I don't think any of my players have yet earned any of the 'extra points' available under the special rules of this game. (Well, OK, I picked up one 'scouting bonus' on Aaron Hickey in the opening game. And I think a few of my forwards have earned an extra point or two for 'shots on target' - but that's it.)  And in scanning through other leading players, I haven't noticed that anybody else has either. Of course, it's pretty much impossible to count 'tackles' during the course of a game, and FIFA hasn't deigned to explain to us how it defines 'chances created', so we're completely in the dark about whether our midfielders should have earned such extra points or not. But I have now spotted several instances where forwards definitely had two or more 'shots on target' and weren't credited by the game with any, so... I'm afraid I just don't trust how the game stats and points are being tallied.

A few small improvements - But there is some good news for the Fantasy game itself. The overall UI design is still horrible, and it is maddeningly fiddly to make adjustments to your team, and there are almost no stats available to help you with your player selections, and, no, the site cannot be trusted to not sometimes lose your team information, but... two of the most irksome bugs in the layout do appear to have been fixed for the knockout rounds: you can now select 'Date of next game' as the key data point to be displayed in the player panels on your Team page during the MatchDay (to help you with planning the order of rotations from the bench, and the pass-the-parcel of the constantly upgrading captaincy selection...), and you can now switch your vice-captain directly to become your captain (or vice versa).  [I doubt if that was just down to me complaining about it. But I hope I may have been of some small help in the struggle...]

BE WARNED:  There is again no break in the hostilities - the 'Round of 32' kicks off immediately on Sunday; so, we have very little time to rebuild our squads for the knockout phase of the tournament. Don't get caught out!!

Cabo Verde's finest

I mentioned the other day that we probably shouldn't have written off Cabo Verde - just because they're a tiny nation that most people have never previously heard of... in any capacity, let alone as a footballing nation. I myself made that mistake prior to the tournament, having not been able to follow any of the qualifying from around the world. But I pointed out in that earlier post about how things were shaping up after the 2nd Round that Africa has become such a strong footballing continent now that we should probably be wary of anyone who gets through one of their qualifying groups. And, frankly, apart from the outstanding Morocco, the little Cape Verdean team have been looking the best African team so far - and one of the most impressive defensive sides in the entire tournament. It seems rather cruel that their stronger-than-expected finish has landed them a 'Round of 32' tie against Argentina. (Apparently the bookies have them at around 15/1 to get through that. I'm almost tempted to have a wild flutter on them.)

Many people, I suggested, might not even have recognised the name of the little Atlantic island nation, a former Portuguese colony. But, for various reasons, a very good friend of mine happened to be a fairly regular visitor there throughout the 1990s, and so I learned a little of the place through his stories. And I was particularly glad that he introduced me to the music of Cesária Évora, the islands' national treasure, one of the most remarkable female singers you'll ever hear - a voice so rich and drenched in emotion, it will send shivers down anybody's spine. The performance of Bésame Mucho above is from a celebrated show she did at Le Grand Rex theatre in Paris on 5th April 2004. It was recorded in full for a concert film, Live D'Amor, which you can currently watch on Youtube here.

A little bit of Zen (100)

"The true harvest of my daily life is... intangible. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched."

Henry David Thoreau  -  'Walden' 

Thoughts on the World Cup 2nd Round

 

It has continued to be a colourful and thrilling tournament, with the underdog teams continuing to show a lot of fight, and - in at least a few cases - proving to be much better than most people had expected. (I scarcely find the time to even watch much of England's qualifying campaign, and know next to nothing about almost anyone else's - certainly not any of the teams from outside Europe. But I suppose we should assume that, now that Africa is a pretty strong footballing continent, any team that qualifies out of one of the African groups is probably fairly decent - even if it is a tiny island group with an official population of barely 500,000....)  And Round 2, though it contained more goalless encounters and slightly fewer goals overall than Round 1, still produced an average of 2.75 goals per game - including quite a few absolute belters.

Some of the most fancied contenders - Spain, Brazil, Portugal, Holland, and Switzerland - 'woke up' rather, after very subdued performances in their opening games. Turkiye, South Korea, Belgium, Senegal, Scotland, and Ecuador, alas, did not - although all could still qualify. (If I have one gripe about the new expanded format for the tournament, it is that, with only 4 of the 12 third place teams being eliminated, there's too little jeopardy in this group phase; few, if any, of the 'big names' are in any real danger of going out until the knockout games begin.) 

And England.... stumbled rather, in a frustratingly sterile goalless stalemate with Ghana. We played about 20 minutes of excellent football in the opening game against Croatia, but have looked pretty mediocre for the other 160-odd minutes. And I am finding it a bit vexing that Tuchel hasn't actually played our best eleven yet; I cannot understand why he's rotated out O'Reilly and Guehi, and given only very short minutes to Rashford and Saka. I am tempted to downgrade my expectations for us from likely semi-finalists again to.... likely to exit in the 'Round of 16'.

The star players are continuing to shine: Messi, Vinicius Jnr, Mbappe, Haaland - and even the ageing Cristiano Ronaldo this time - all produced a brace of goals again.

Yet Morocco, the USA, and Mexico are continuing to look probably the best teams so far, in terms of all-around cohesion and consistency.

And, luckily for us Fantasy managers, the unexpected closeness of most of the groups so far - with some of the bigger teams not starting strong and/or supposedly 'weaker' teams proving slightly more formidable than expected - means that we shouldn't see too many mass rotations in this 3rd Round of games. Only Mexico, the USA, Germany and Argentina have definitely secured first-place qualification already; most of the other teams could still theoretically finish as low as third, if the last batch of results goes against them. And the appeal of getting a - probably - weaker opponent in the opening knockout game is usually sufficient to make it quite a big deal even whether a team finishes in first or second place, let alone third (which could put you in a very nasty corner of the draw). So, almost everyone still has a lot to play for over these next four days of competition; and hopefully that means that we won't see the likes of Vini, Haaland, Mbappe, Kane, etc. being rested, as we have so often suffered in the past at this stage of the tournament.

This in turn means that we should be able to hang on to our Wildcards until later in the tournament. If we found that several of the top teams and players were already assured, or very nearly so, of qualifying top of their groups, we'd probably be seeing a risk of huge holes in our squads, and might feel we needed to use the Wildcard here in MatchDay 3. But with the likelihood of accumulating absences from injuries and suspensions in the later MatchDays, as well as the ever-present risk that unexpected eliminations can - probably will - put some huge dents in our squads, it is nice to be able to hang on to the Wildcard as long as possible in these tournaments, as a safety-net. Very often, it proves otiose, because of the increasingly large number of Free Transfers we're given in the later knockout rounds. But if a lot of things suddenly go very badly wrong for us, the Wildcard is very nice to have in such an emergency.

I also tend to feel that this probably isn't a great round for playing any of the 'bonus chips'. Some teams are going to be able to take it easy: we might not see Messi, Pulisic, or any of the popular German players, for example; or only for token run-outs, anyway. Most of the other games could prove to be quite nervy, with so much riding on them; the final round of the group phase tends to be quite low-scoring. And it just so happens that in quite a few of the groups, two of the strongest teams are matched together in the last game, further reducing the likelihood of a one-sided goalfest, and indeed making it difficult to anticipate some of the results altogether: Switzerland v Canada, Japan v Sweden, Norway v France, Uruguay v Spain, New Zealand v Belgium, Croatia v Ghana, and Colombia v Portugal are pretty tough to call, I think. So, I'm hanging on to my chips - even though this now means that I'll have to use one in every round of the knockout phase (as a result of a glitch in the FIFA website that wiped out my attempt to play the '12th Man' on Mbappe in the 2nd Round - gggrrrrr.....).

I noticed more maddening glitches with the web version of the FIFA Fantasy version today: it was freezing up and refusing to process transfers for a couple of hours this morning (though this was outside 'office hours' in Europe, where I imagine the game is based). All seems to be OK again now, thank heavens - a massive 12 hours before the next Round kicks off!

However, I would reiterate my warning about the vexing captaincy glitch in the FIFA game. I recently discovered that you can't switch your vice-captain directly to being your captain - you always need a third player that you can transfer the vice-captaincy to, before he becomes available to select as captain. Since the vice-captaincy is completely redundant in this game, the safest thing to do is place it on one of your players who has a game early in the MatchDay - so all of your other players will be available as potential captains, without the vice-captaincy getting in the way. (This is not a trivial problem. In MD2, I wound up with my vice-captaincy stuck on Nuno Mendes for the last few games, which meant I was unable to transfer my captaincy to him. I wouldn't have chosen to, since I'd already got good returns from Haaland and Messi, but.... he did come up with a 15-pointer, damn him!)

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!!!

Another vexing flaw in the FIFA World Cup Fantasy game

 

I noted last week that among the many irritating shortcomings of the FIFA World Cup Fantasy game website is the inability to deselect your captain. However, I had thought this only a minor annoyance, since you can change your captain by selecting another player to replace the current incumbent.

But I've just discovered a further wrinkle to this - one which has the potential to be quite damaging. In fact, it is a huge bloody booby-trap in the game design!

The dratted game won't let you change your vice-captain into your captain (or vice versa).

And that is something you're quite likely to want to do. Especially if you have - reflexively, as a result of always naturally doing this in Fantasy Premier League and other such Fantasy games... - made your second-best player your vice-captain at the start of the MatchDay.

Again, it is possible to get around this. You have to appoint someone else as vice-captain, to 'free up' your current vice-captain as a potential captain selection. The problem here is that, later in the MatchDay, you might be running out of players you can transfer the vice-captaincy to (although the vice-captaincy is utterly otiose in this game, it won't let you transfer it to a player who's already played).

If Messi should have a poor game today, I find I'll have to transfer my vice-captaincy to Nuno Mendes, so that I can take a chance on Haaland with the captaincy. But if Haaland also disappoints, I won't then be able to try my luck with Nuno Mendes as well.

I'm annoyed with myself that I didn't realise this sooner. It is actually a pretty huge deal. Since the vice-captaincy is utterly irrelevant in this game (it is inactive, unless you fail to make any manual changes to your team during the course of the MatchDay - and who's going to do that??), except in this maddening obstruction that it creates in freely circulating the captain's armband, we must get it out of the way - by selecting a vice-captain who plays at the beginning of the MatchDay.

Also... I'm going to have to set an early alarm tomorrow, so that I can get up in time to move the captain's armband to Haaland if Messi has delivered only modest points. Damn, this game is exhausting....

Mr Fate dons his taunting-hat again...

 

I like Mikel Oyarzabal, I rate him very highly. And Spain, despite their flakey start to the tournament, are still one of my favourites to take the trophy (though it's a three-way battle with France and Germany, I feel).

So, I made the Basque forward one of my three picks up front in my MatchDay 1 squad. 

And he had a dog of a game, fluffing a number of decent chances as Spain were held to a goalless draw by lowly Cabo Verde. Oh, woe!

So, of course, I dropped him. And in the next game, against the much more formidable-seeming Saudi Arabia, he's on fire and notches a 13-pointer (despite being withdrawn at half-time). Bugger. There is a lot to be said for sticking with players - especially forwards - through one or two disappointing performances.

Well, I swapped him for Messi. So, that might still work out for me. But I'm not confident. Luck is not my friend. If the great Leo blanks in this one - I'm sorry, everyone, it was my fault: I must have jinxed him.

Hoping for THE WORST....

With the mercurial Frenchman looking bang-in-form, and with a tempting-looking fixture (though it might turn out not to be a stroll in the park...) against Iraq up next for France, I decided I wanted to use my '12th Man' booster chip on Kylian Mbappé in MatchDay 2.

Alas and alack, that selection was not 'saved' by the game! (I already inserted a brief gripe about this into my review of MatchDay 1 a couple of days ago.) 

It might be that I was merely flummoxed by the perversely idiotic game design. Although the final 'Confirm' button on the Team screen is large and prominent - it simply shouldn't be there, and so you don't look for it, don't notice it. Activating the chips (and selecting captain or vice-captain) is carried out through a completely separate pop-up window; and that process appears to have been fully completed and confirmed when you close that window. There shouldn't be any additional step required to 're-confirm' the selection you've just made. And, if there is, there should be a bloody prominent pop-up notice on screen alerting you to this fact - and there isn't.

But... I had already run into this problem with the captaincy, so I am pretty sure - 80% to 90% confidence - that I had 'confirmed' this chip selection on the Team screen too. And I had seen Mbappé appearing as the extra man on my MD2 teamsheet. But the next morning,... this chip activation had disappeared again! And, since the new MatchDay had started, it was too late for me to try to activate it again. (This too seems harsh, unnecessary. There is no need for chip activation to be 'timed out' like this; you should be able to activate them at any time during the MatchDay - so long as the relevant player or players haven't played their game yet.)  It thus seems horribly likely that the FIFA Fantasy site is subject to the same sort of gremlins that beset the Fantasy Premier League site, that occasionally (probably when site-traffic is peaking) it will glitch.... and just 'lose' apparently saved team selections.

Now, with such an over-abundance of booster chips in this game, and since I don't really fancy the Final as an attractive option for playing any of them (except possibly... the 'Maximum Captain'?), I am faced with having to play a chip in every round from here on.

What's more, I now find myself crossing my fingers for a poor performance from Mbappé, so that I won't be left regretting how much this glitch has harmed me. (One wouldn't want to wish injury on anyone. But... perhaps a little soreness in the calf that forces him to sit out this one game???)

The awful design of this Fantasy game has strangely worked out in my favour once already. In MatchDay 1, I somehow wound up with my captaincy on Oyarzabal before Havertz - and didn't notice (because the bloody game doesn't tell you who your captain is). I was fuming when the Spaniard missed multiple chances and returned a blank. But as it turned out, that left me free to move my captaincy to Haaland - who, of course, delivered a monster 17 points. If I'd started with the armband on Havertz, as I'd intended, I would certainly have stuck with his initial return of 13 points (26, when doubled for the captaincy), and would have missed out on 4 extra points. I very rarely get conspicuously lucky with any of these Fantasy games; but there I did.

It is inconceivable that Dame Fate should rescue me from disaster like that twice in succession. A 20-pointer from M. Mbappé is surely incoming....

[Well, damn, he did manage another brace of goals for a very useful 13-point haul. Not as bad as it might have been for me, but still rather galling. I now have to hope that I can do at least nearly as well as that, if not a little better, from playing the '12th Man' chip in one of the knockout rounds. Yes, unfortunately, since I don't fancy my chances with any of the chips during the final round of the group stage, I am now left having to use a chip in every round thereafter. There are too many chips in this game!]

A little bit of Zen (99)

 

"Intuition is cosmic fishing. You feel a nibble, then you've got to hook the fish."

Richard Buckminster Fuller

"We are all following hunches. We need to develop an intuition about which hunches are actually the good ones - hunches about hunches!"

GW

Thoughts on the World Cup 1st Round

It's that man again... 

So, the big names up front all came good straight away: nice early returns from Haaland, Mbappe, and Kane - and then dear old Leo outdoes them all!

There was also a strong argument for going for Vinicius Jnr, Havertz, Oyarzabal, Isak, Gyokeres, or Lautaro Martinez; only a couple of those promising forward prospects disappointed in the first game. In Fantasy Premier League, many of these players would be classified as 'midfielders', but in the FIFA game they're all 'forwards' - so, we are rather spoiled for choice. Any of these guys might have a huge game... or a sudden misfire; and there's certainly no way to predict who's going to produce the hugest haul of all. So, it's really just a lottery. 

But it definitely appears that the forward line is the place to concentrate most of our resources. Returns from midfield so far have been fairly disappointing. Only Morocco's Ismael Saibari and New Zealand's Elijah Just - and England's own Jude Bellingham! - look more like 'forwards', or at least attacking midfielders who could get amongst the goals regularly, in that position category. Until Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams come back into the fray - and Spain start getting their shit together - there's not a lot in midfield to tempt us to spend big bucks.

And the new additional points for 'tackles' and 'chances created' seem to have had little impact thus far. None of my selections seem to have earned extra points for this, anyway! And the dreadful FIFA website does not provide any information on these 'game actions': you can't check which players have done well under these metrics. As I'd anticipated, there are some vexing obscurities of interpretation and implementation around these supplementary points awards too. Do 'shots on target' for forwards include goals actually scored?? I would have thought not; but I didn't see Haaland have four non-successful attempts on goal in his game, yet he received 2 additional points under this heading. And I was especially galled that my Marcel Sabitzer didn't get at least an assist for the goal from his corner: does FIFA not allow corners to count as 'assists'?? (Frankly, I thought he might have been credited with the goal; his vicious inswinger looked like it was bound for the net anyway, and the slight deflection off the back of the Jordanian defender's neck was not material.) As with the 'shots on target' for forwards, there's no explanation as to whether 'chances created' includes chances converted (logically, you'd think not - since that would overlap with 'assists'; but the point ought to be made clear, and it hasn't been). And almost every corner creates a chance, surely? Again, I'm bummed that my Sabitzer didn't pick up 2 or 3 extra points for this!!

Also as I predicted last week, the extra point offered for goals from a free-kick looks as if it is going to be otiose. So far, we've seen only a handful of free-kicks awarded within shooting range, and they've all been driven tamely into the wall. There is a good chance that we won't see any free-kick goals in this tournament; it's certainly pretty unlikely that we'll see more than one from any one player - so, this points rule is of absolutely zero relevance in player selection.

A lot of the early leaders in World Cup Fantasy had Messi as their captain. That was utterly, utterly daft. Frankly, given the fact that he's only a week away from turning 39, and that the rest of the Argentine team doesn't really look all that good this year, and that he's been in 'semi-retirement' in the decidedly second-tier American MLS for the past three years,... there wasn't any compelling reason to take a chance on him in a Fantasy squad at all. No-one can seriously have expected that he'd be playing better than in the last World Cup! But even if you had taken that chance - out of sentiment - there was still no reason to be giving him the captain's armband.... after Havertz and Haaland and Mbappe had already delivered good double-digit scores. Everybody should have had at least one of those prime captaincy candidates playing earlier in the MatchDay; and, once they had delivered so well, they should have stuck with them. The same, of course, applies to anyone who gave the captaincy to Harry Kane. They might have got away with it this time; but to transfer the captaincy to Messi or Kane, when you already had 25 or 30 points or more in the bank from an earlier captain, was objectively idiotic.

I already commented the other day on how maddeningly badly designed the FIFA Fantasy website is, in regard to how absurdly fiddly it is to change your captaincy pick (and how nearly impossible it is to check who your captain is). I've just suffered a further huge disaster with it: I had tried to select Mbappe as my 12th Man - but the selection was 'lost'. I am tempted to just give up in a huff now.... The game design is just atrocious. There is a superfluous additional 'Confirm' button which is easily missed, because with things like the captaincy and the chips, you activate these through a separate pop-up window, and that 'action' seems to be already completed and confirmed when you exit that window. I'm not entirely sure whether the further 'Confirm' stage on the main team screen is also wonky; I was pretty sure I'd noticed that and remembered to hit it too - but the next morning, I found no Mbappe in my squad. The forums are awash with similar tales of woe.

It's also exasperating that there is no separate 'stats' page on the site. The only way to try to check stats is through the 'Transfers' page; but that, again, is incredibly fiddly and glitchy, and not built for searching. It is, for example, just about impossible to find options for the possible 'scouting bonus', because although you can select the listing to display according to the ownership percentage, you can only get a top-down or bottom-up arrangement; the best <5% men are somewhere in the middle of a list of 1,250 players - and the display (being one continuous list, with no page-breaks) will freeze, break down before you can scroll down anywhere near that far. So, the 'scouting bonus' candidates are effectively invisible, completely hidden from us. I must have a root around online to see if I can find some third-party stats resources to help with this.

Not that this would make a great deal of difference, I don't think. I observed in my World Cup Fantasy preview post last week that I thought the 'scouting bonus' was going to be too trivial, too rare and too uncertain, to be worth paying much attention to. I had 5 players who, I think, might have been eligible (I hadn't actually chosen them with this primarily in mind; I just happen to be an 'outside the box' thinker....); although 3 of them were displaying as 5.1%-owned by the end of the first MatchDay, and there is no way to check when they reached that level, and if they might have missed out on eligibility by the tightest of margins. As it happened, none of them scored enough points to earn the bonus, anyway - although I did pick up one 'scouting bonus' lift from Aaron Hickey.

The 'big news' of the tournament so far is that the 'minnow' teams are not to be lightly disregarded. Qatar, Haiti, and Saudi Arabia actually outplayed their more fancied opponents for much of their opening matches; Ivory Coast got a surprise win against Ecuador, and Congo and Cape Verde battled to well-deserved draws with two of the tournament favourites, Portugal and Spain, while two other strongly fancied sides, Holland and Brazil, very nearly got beaten by the slightly less illustrious Japan and Morocco. Even the teams that did end up taking a bit of a beating weren't completely overwhelmed, and managed to produce at least a few moments of danger themselves. Poor little Curacao too, who suffered the worst beating at the hands of Germany, at least managed to equalise in that game, and were actually on level terms for about a quarter of the match; the final scoreline was unduly harsh on them. Most of these smaller teams, I suspect, are ultimately going to be undone by a conspicuous weakness in one position (a lack of a reliable finisher upfront or a slightly flakey goalkeeper, etc...), or by shortcomings in stamina or self-belief, a little bit of a lack of nous in game-management: they are not going to be able to hang on to a result like the stronger, more experienced nations can. But they all look like they can play a bit of football: they have some technically gifted players, they can move the ball around well, and occasionally create some threat going forward. We might well get a few more 'upsets' in this tournament - at least in terms of favoured teams failing to keep an expected clean sheet, if not perhaps any surprise defeats (although that is something I'm sure we'd all love to see!).

The most exciting 'surprises', though, have been the USA and Australia - who we'd expected to be decent, but were far more than that, producing two of the best all-around team performances so far. And their young strikers, Falorin Balogun and Nestory Irankunda, look like they might be two of the tournament's breakout stars (adding to the already rather over-stocked roster of forwards we're interested in acquiring...).

The biggest disappointments of the first round have been Turkiye and Switzerland - two nations who've been fairly consistently strong for the past couple of decades or so, and, on paper, look to have enough talent to go maybe as far as the quarter-finals (they were two of my 'dark horse' tips last week); but they both started out with very flat performances that make you wonder if they'll even qualify out of their groups.

Brazil and Spain were arguably even worse; certainly the shortfall from people's hopes and expectations for them was greater! Brazil are lacking balance, and look very weak in defence and in central midfield; Vini and Cunha are always going to be dangerous, but I doubt if that's going to be enough to carry them very far unless Carlo Ancelotti can quickly sort out their numerous other deficiencies. (At the moment, I quite fancy Scotland to be able to put one over on them....) Spain, without their two talsimanic young wingers, were utterly toothless; and Oyarzabal looked woefully out of form; as did Rodri, who, after two years disrupted by injuries, currently looks a shadow of his former self (I'd be starting Zubimendi ahead of him in the next game). I think they have much more potential to turn things around than Brazil do, especially if Yamal and Williams are soon back to their best. (And the superstitious will claim that their opening-match hiccup is actually a good omen for them, since they lost to Switzerland in their first game in 2010, but went on to sweep all before them....)

Most people found Holland and Portugal and Belgium rather disappointing too; but, frankly, they were a bit better than I'd expected. These are teams whose key players are aging badly, and I don't think they have enough strength in depth to go very far in the knockouts. They might even find qualification a little bit of a struggle.

And I'm not yet getting too excited about England's promising start. Yes, it is nice to get a comfortable win over a classy opponent; and that was one of the better performances we've seen from our national team in a major tournament in a long time. It was reassuring that Tuchel was able to make tactical tweaks at half-time which galvanized us into a much more effective second-half performance. But I have misgivings about why we were so bad in the first-half, and why it took until half-time to start sorting any of that out. And even in the second-half, when, with the benefit of a huge psychological lift from Bellingham's goal out of nothing barely 90 seconds after the restart, we completely dominated for 15 or 20 minutes,... we didn't actually manage to create that many clearcut chances, and didn't score. I thought Kane, Bellingham, and Anderson were decent, but hardly outstanding; almost everyone else was frankly a little flat - and I'm concerned at how easily we gave up a couple of goals. Also, Kane and Rice appeared to be limping afterwards - which is a tad concerning.

And how differently might that game have gone if Kane hadn't been given a second chance with that early penalty??  This was a vivid example of how one refereeing decision - a VAR decision! - can have a huge impact on the momentum of a match, and produce a huge swing in the Fantasy points allocations. Big Harry was on that knife-edge between 2-goal hero and penalty-missing chump. And, frankly, the decision felt somewhat unjust: it wasn't one of Harry's better penalties, and Livakovic pulled off a very good save. I suppose it was the 'correct' decision, because Gvardiol had encroached very slightly - and that encroachment was actually of material consequence, since he reached the rebound first to clear it. However, Nico O'Reilly also looked like he was encroaching very slightly on the other side of the box. And ordinarily, such small incursions are ignored - otherwise we'd probably see almost every penalty getting retaken multiple times. And the decision that Livakovic was 'off his line', I just don't get: all the stills I've seen show the back of his right heel still clearly in contact with the goal-line - which is good enough. I think our Harry got very, very lucky with that call. But maybe that's going to be a good omen for England in this tournament....