Ballsy’s Saturday Night World Cup Group Previews and Open Thread – Group D

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? Quick update: the intercontinental qualifications games have been played and we now know ALL of the teams that will be participating in the tournament this summer.

Tonight’s group is Group D!

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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

USA

Mauricio Pochettino, a famous coach from Europe, is tasked with taking this ragtag bunch to at least the quarterfinals. Given that it is a diluted field, that may be possible, but please be assured: This team is NOT good.

They just lost to Belgium 5-2. They will play hard, but they just don’t have the skill level to compete with the best teams in the world. That’s been the story for decades. Even with home field advantage. I don’t see this year being any different.

Paraguay

Paraguay managed to get into the tournament thanks to Brazil sucking balls and CONMEBOL getting a lot of spots. They’re, like the US, not necessarily bad but they’re not great either. Ironically, their colours are also red, white, and blue.

They will also play really hard and challenge for every ball. The US-Paraguay match will probably be a dreadfully dull 0-0 affair where no shots on goal will be recorded. They can get out of the group, but they probably won’t go too far afterwards.

Australia

Australia has really improved since they left the Oceania confederation and went to Asia. True, qualification is a lot harder, but the competition has made them better. And look, they STILL qualified!

The Aussies have as good a chance as any to advance out of this group. The key for them is being able to score more goals as I think goal difference will be used to break ties to determine who advances. I think their offense is better than the USA’s and Paraguay’s. Let’s see if it plays out that way.

Türkiye

I think every other team in this group is pissed that Türkiye got the last spot through the qualification playoffs. They are automatically the best team in this group. Again, not great, but better than the rest.

The Turkish team is full of players that play in the top leagues in Europe and are therefore used to tough competition. The big question for them is whether they can score. I could see them dominating games and still ending up tied at the end.

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Predicted Group Finish

• Türkiye
• Australia
• Paraguay
• USA

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Things to look forward to in the Group Stage

• Drinking Turkish coffee while watching their matches
• The news reports about Aussies drinking a city dry.
• Shots of now-MILF Larissa showing her boobies while cheering for Paraguay

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Final Thoughts

While this is not exactly the Group Of Death, I do not see a clear favourite to win the group. I really do think tiebreakers will come into play to determine who advances. This could be the first time every game ends in a tie.

Australia should do well as should Türkiye. The US is set up for a spectacular failure that will launch the search for yet another coach that promises to pull off a miracle.