One of the biggest sport events worldwide is about to start in Qatar: The Fifa World Cup. What are your thoughts on what's to come?

Australia are in it but, much like previous world cups, we are just going to make up the numbers. Even if we miraculously make it past the group stage, we will have to make it through stronger European and South American nations. No chance in hell.

Also, due to time zones, I won't be able to see many games, anyway. I'll hopefully catch some highlights.

I'm against it. I hope it goes terribly wrong for all teams involved who decided it's OK to play there.

Agreed.

It sounds like everything that went into making this was awful, but it's happening and I do love the World Cup.

I think the USA will do really well and surprise. Canada will go far as well.

You can see my predictions in the sport thread.

I picked Brazil to beat France for the championship.

England will scrape by Cameroon in the third place game.

Disturbing cryptic racism & Islamophobia in this thread....

I'd be surprised if USA makes it out of the group stage. They better play some great defense because they don't have a true finisher up front, put the ball in the back of the net guy, like a Clint Dempsey in the past. All the other teams in our group do.

Brazil over France in the final is a solid pick.

England won't make it to the consolation round.

I'm starting to lean towards thinking you're being a bit of a troll.

Plenty of reasons to not support this. The most immediate reason being the horrific treatment and deaths of thousands of migrant workers, some of whom were essentially enslaved by their sponsors.

Here are the groups, for anyone wondering

This. A country with literal slaves that died in the thousands just to play a goofy sport in the desert. There are no words to describe how wrong this is.

Yeah, there have been numerous reports about terrible FIFA corruption and abusive use of local workers. All the same, it’s weird to me to hear people calling for players to boycott it: that would basically be stepping aside from probably the most important dream of their whole career. Anyway, the Qatar team will suffer a lot of goal-related punishment. Hope they score one for the locals, but not optimistic.

Brazil and France are solid choices to get to the final, European teams like Germany, Spain, and England all lack what they have in recent years in terms of great players in every position. Once again, several African teams come in as underdogs, and maybe Saudi Arabia has a better chance than usual because of the location.

If their dreams are more important than personal integrity, sure.

It's not just that anywhere from 1000-6500 people died building this farce, but the people who didn't die didn't get paid, either. They estimate anywhere from $500 million to 1 billion in wages wasn't paid to the desperate workers who were hoodwinked by "agents" who are basically human traffickers. I guess Nepal is their go-to to lock men into contracts and exorbitant fees. One example was $9K was owed for three years of labor, but the man only received around $2k. And if I understand correctly, he owed $1900 for airfare, room/board, agent fees, etc. And then there is this unexplainable situation where when working in 120° temperatures, they gave them frozen water bottles because, "They'll drink less water if it is solid ice." To be honest, I don't fully understand that situation. Too cheap to buy more water? Didn't want them using the bathroom? Didn't want them taking breaks to drink water?

It's weird only insofar as this is mere wishful thinking. I hesitate to use the term "virtue signalling" given the environment it is predominantly used in, but yeah this is it. It's either some very naive thinking, or calling for a boycott, but not really calling for a boycott. As if any of the people associated with FA's care about some Asian workers (or workers in general for that matter). "Personal integrity" doesn't even come into the picture.

I may catch a final rounds match or two. Hope with all my heart "my" national team gets embarrassed.

Don't hate the player's, hate the game and by game, I mean FIFA for taking a shitload of money to allow this scarred debacle to happen. Next WC in North America will be much better.

That is my end to politics in this thread, Games starting up and all I'm discussing is results.

It's not only this World Cup that's been built by exploited migrants, but just about everything shiny built on the Arabian Peninsula in the last few decades. So hopefully this thing at least helps preserve the wider issue in people's minds.

I'll make this statement on the politics, and then will only be discussing the matches.

This tournament is just the latest example of the Middle East sports washing their image. The Russian World Cup four years back was exactly the same thing. Saudi Arabia do it with the WWE. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Qatar and Abu Dhabi do it with F1. Newcastle United and Manchester City are state owned football clubs, owned by Middle Eastern nations. There are countless examples globally and historically (anyone remember The Thrilla in Manilla?). It will continue to happen until companies such as FIFA (lol), WWE, F1 and the EPL take a stand and tell these countries to fuck off.

I will add that FIFA sycophantically licking Qatari boots with regards to the One Love arm bands is sickening. The European countries then capitulating, especially after being so vocal in their support of the One Love campaign was equally spineless. Nobody was expecting anything else from FIFA, who are probably the most corrupt governing body in international sports. The nations bodies though, such as Germany, France and England really should have done better. Yet another chance to actually demonstrate a stand that might actually mean something on the biggest stage in the sporting world is lost due to cowardice. These three nations in particular are all among the favourites to win the tournament. FIFA threatened the 8 European nations with "sporting sanctions" had they actually gone ahead and worn the One Love armbands. Had these nations gone ahead with the armbands, and forced FIFA into action, FIFA would have been left to publicly defend their punishing of nations who are standing up for minorities rights. I love football, and have all my life. But I fucking hate FIFA.



England managed the single most English of English performances against Iran. Admittedly Iran are hardly a world power, but England looked dangerous going forward, and absolutely pathetic defensively. I was very happy for Bellingham to get his first goal for England. Harry Kane didn't score, but he was involved in so much going forward. I'd like to see Sterling dropped for Rashford in the next game. Bring on the US, and it would be awesome if we could put 5 goals past them.

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Argentina just lost 1-2 to Saudi Arabia, first upset of the tournament

That's a MASSIVE loss.

Australia were humiliated 4-1 against France. So glad I didn't get up at 6am to watch it.

After catching the highlights, France's 2nd and 3rd goals - particularly the 2nd goal - really encapsulate the gulf in talent between Australia and almost any other nation. Looks like it's going to be a swift exit.

im not going to watch any games, just cant do it but i'm here for the memes.

Also politically while there definitely is a lot of hypocrisy regarding this world cup at least Russia for example is a country that actually matters footballing wise.

It will be a swift exit, and unsurprisingly so. I did get up at 6am to watch this. At least we had the first 20min to enjoy, before regular service ensued

The France B team still managed to destroy Australia. This Australia team is easily the weakest Socceroos outfit to turn up to a World Cup. Previous squads have had players largely based in the top European leagues. This team however, is split between players based in Australia, and, with a couple of exceptions, lower league European clubs. The quality just simply is there this time.

France looked good, but they have too many players missing, hence my jibe as a B team. Benzema, Pogba, Kante and Kimpembe are all out of the World Cup, and that is the real spine of this team. The keeper Lloris is also suspect, and not at the quality they need. They will not win the World Cup.

Japan WON Germany 2 to 1 today! Second huge surprise just happened. It's great to see this kind of things happening.

Costa Rica lost to Spain 0-7. That was not a surprise...

I wish workers and the families of the lost ones get compensation for things that happened before the games started. I suppose, that that does not happen, though.

Canada is not only holding their own on Belgium but should be winning this match.

Spain had themselves a practice game against Costa Rica.

Not surprised about Japan upsetting Germany, that group is probably the closest to the group of death in this tourney.

Germany look like repeating their 2018 World Cup. The result is a surprise, but Germany have been completely mediocre since the last World Cup. They didn't make it out of their group then, they were lucky to get out of their group in Euro 2020, and they were only saved from relegation in the Nation's League by an even more mediocre England. You have to assume that Japan will beat Canada, which means the only chance Germany have of getting out of their group is by beating Spain on Sunday. Don't bet on it.

Not surprised by Belgium struggling to beat Canada. Unfortunately for Belgium, 2018 was the tournament for them. This team is past it's best.

Tomorrow, we finally get to see Brazil in action. I'm looking forward to seeing them.

Thanks to night shift last night, I got to watch the first 3 games, and that Germany v Japan game was an absolute cracking game.

Is that good or bad?

Sorry, it means good. Bit of Australian slang coming out.

We beat Mexico today. I guess we still have chances, but if we keep playing this level... I don`t know...

Reading Americans commenting on “soccer” in this thread, I keep doing double takes. Every word that could be different is different to what I know from the UK. Even down to asking whether ‘cracking’ is good or bad. Not hating, this is just really tickling me. More so because Terri23 wished for 5 goals against USA and England scored 0.

Yep. Instead we got the most boring match this World Cup so far.

Apparently there's some controversy in the American camp surrounding Gio Reyna. He's probably America's best player, and for whatever reason, he's not playing. The coach came out and said he is somewhat injured, while the player's family are adamant that he's fully fit, and that the player has been asked by the coach to lie about an injury. It doesn't make sense at all. He's one of their best players, but if he doesn't fit the system (see Trent Alexander-Arnold and England as an example) just come out and say that if you're the manager. Why lie about an injury, if this is the case? You're the manager, and your biggest responsibility is to make decisions and justify them.



Going into this World Cup, I didn't see any standout favourites. I'd dismissed France, Germany, Belgium and Portugal from winning. I think England can do it, but there is a bias there, and their manager is truly awful. Spain, Netherlands, Brazil and Argentina were the 4 teams that I thought could actually do it, and I had Argentina as probably the best among them. But they've been terrible so far. I guess you'd know more than I do, so I want to ask what exactly is happening here? What's changed from the last 3-4 years to now? Before the World Cup, you have to go back to the 2019 Copa America for the last time Argentina lost a match. To be fair to Argentina, in that first match against the Saudis, they looked fantastic in that first half, and if Lautaro Martinez hadn't completely forgotten what the offside law was, they would have come out 4-5 to nil winners.

I know the score was 0-0, but I was not bored during the US vs England game.

It might just be because I'm biased, but I enjoyed watching them keep up with England in what had to have been a massive embarrassment for England.

so I want to ask what exactly is happening here?[/quote]

Great question right there. Im not a huge "soccer" fan (fútbol for us hehe), but I thought we had real chances here, but... you know... shit happens

This has to be the weakest Argentina team I've seen in a long time, juegan horrible

This statement would have been true 12 months ago. England in the bullshit Nations League competition were absolutely diabolical. The Iran win was an outlier for a team in their worse stretch of games without a win in history. The result was absolutely on par for their performances in 2022.

I remember England being one of the top teams last World Cup, but that shows what I know.

Anyway, it's real exciting to see the US won and are headed into the knockout round.

England actually surprised everyone by turning up to a competitive international fixture against Wales. While not exactly the best team in the world, Wales are inside the top 20, and the performance from the USA match to the Wales match was a complete 180. England now play Senegal in the round of 16, before inevitably facing France in the quarter finals, which will be a very interesting match, especially if the England that faced Wales rocks up, rather than the team that faced the USA.