Ballsy’s World Cup Group Previews and Open Thread – Group L

First off all, 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 start 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 L!

***

Team Comparison

***

Group Schedule

***

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

***

Actual Sport Preview

England

Forever the bridesmaid, never the bride except for 1966 and God knows that 1966 will be referenced a million times during their games. Will be one of the favourites to win the whole thing, which is the kids of death for them. They do not handle pressure well.

Their fans are delightful if you enjoy pasty white men getting obliterated drunk while making asses of themselves and starting fights. The team should breeze through the group stage after the tough first game against Croatia. Please note the word “should” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Croatia

Luka Modric and Mike Gundy have something in common besides having never won a World Cup. Yup, Father Time waits for no man. This will be his last World Cup and he wants to end on a high note. The team has been the best it has ever been with him as Captain, but the question remains whether the rest of the team can pick up the slack for the Old Man.

If you get a chance, you should head down to Yeah Right’s hometown of San Pedro for one of their games. There is a LARGE Croatian population down in Pedro and I’m sure fireworks will be ignited when Croatia wins a game. Among other things…

Ghana

Ghana qualified easily by winning almost every one of their games in the African Qualifiers. The Black Stars are back in the World Cup for the fifth time and have improved greatly under coach Otto Addo, who is the only person to have ever played for and coached the Black Stars.

Their most famous World Cup game was the one where Uruguay beat them when Luis Suarez played goalie and Ghana missed the ensuing penalty kick. That would have gotten them into the semi-final.

Panamá

Panamá took full advantage of CONCACAF getting additional spots in the tourney and having the three host nations get in without having to qualify. That’s not to say they suck. They’re actually ranked higher than Ghana and are a tough team. They have done really well in recent Gold Cups.

Their coach is Thomas Christiansen, who previously coached at Leeds. This is their second World Cup ever after Russia in 2018. They are underdogs, but they are scrappy. I could see them pulling off an upset or two if other teams treat them lightly.

***

Predicted Group Finish

• England
• Croatia
• Ghana
• Panamá

***

Things to look forward to in the Group Stage

• The O/U in the number of flights leading to arrests in the England-Croatia game to be played at the JerryDome in Dallas is 37
• The Spanish broadcasters calling Panamá the Canaleros and no one understanding what it means and why it’s slightly dirty.
• Someone, anyone, making the “Ghana juega con ganas” pun on Spanish TV. I will also take “¡Ghana gana!”

***

Final Thoughts

It would be SO MUCH FUN for England to crash out at the group stage but, alas, we touch ourselves too much and can’t have nice things. Of all the groups, I think this one has the potential for the most surprises. Ghana and Panamá are no pushovers. I could see Croatia and England either tying or losing a game to either side and qualification to the knock out stage getting complicated.