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.