Again, a huge THANK YOU to Dok for fixing the Clone function! You can call it laziness. I prefer to call it efficiency. Either way, I can now crank these out and be ahead of the game.

While Hippo may choose to ignore this year’s tournament to be held in the USA, México, and Canadá for purely spiteful reasons (no judgement here, we salute spite!), I maintain that international competitions like the just concluded Olympics and the World Cup are the last opportunities for people to get out of their bubbles and realize there is a beautiful world out there full of people that don’t let politics get in the way of enjoying their lives.

With that said, let’s continue with our group previews, shall we? A heads up: I will not be going in alphabetical order. I will tackle first the groups that have been already defined as there are still some intercontinental qualifications games to be played.

Tonight’s group is Group G!

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Team Comparison

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Group Schedule

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Best picture that I found on the first page of Google Image Search using “Hot [country] babes” as a search term

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Actual Sport Preview

Belgium

Belgium seems to always have a “Golden Generation” that squanders opportunities and never gets the job done. This year’s squad is no exception. The old household names are gone but are being replaced by new names such as Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku.

The team has enough good players to be highly competitive but lacks that extra spark to win championships. They have never won the European championship let alone a World Cup. Look for them to get into the knockout rounds and lose in the quarterfinals.

Egypt

Speaking of names, the only one anyone knows for Egypt is Mo Salah. Like those charity football matches, we might as well call the Egypt National Team “Mo Salah and friends”. They breezed through qualifying, but they have historically struggled at the World Cup. They have no victories in 4 appearances.

It is going to be interesting to see how Egypt approach this World Cup. Do they park the bus and hope for individual brilliance from Salah? Or do they try to attack with possession and rely on their defence to keep opponents at bay on the counter? I think they will mix up the strategy based on the opponent.

Iran

Iran has the best football team in the entire Axis of Evil. They arguably have the best team in the entire Middle East and Asian region. They have historically performed well above expectations in the World Cup stage.

Iran have chosen Tucson as their training base, which tells you more about Tucson than Blax’ posts ever could. There is also talk that Iran could possibly be replaced with another team if the political situation worsens. Stay tuned.

New Zealand

The New Zealand national team has benefited greatly from Australia moving to the Asian confederation. Oceania no longer has to play in an intercontinental playoff for a spot in the World Cup, so here we are with New Zealand in the World Cup.

Their hopes of getting a World Cup point are about as realistic as Iceland’s when they last made the field. It’s going to be tough but they really have nothing to lose. No matter what, they will be the most beautiful girls in the room.

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Predicted Group Finish

• Belgium
• Iran
• Egypt
• New Zealand

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Things to look forward to in the Group Stage

• Iran playing in Los Angeles twice with the parking situation at SoFi being a bigger war crime than anything the Ayatollah could dream up.
• The incredible partying that will happen in Vancouver for the New Zealand games.
• Second place in the group being decided on the last match day with the Egypt-Iran game.

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Final Thoughts

I don’t think any of the teams in this group will go very far in this tournament. I do hope that politics don’t get in the way of the Iran games, but I’m an eternal optimist.