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

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 E!

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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

Germany

Germany is Germany. As Gary Lineker famously said, “Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.” They haven’t actually won the World Cup too recently (their last win was in Brasil in 2014) but they performed well at the most recent Euros, losing to eventual champion Spain in the knockout rounds after extra time.

The team has a lot of quality players that, while they might not be household names, can still beat every team in this group. The big question is who do they match up against in the knockout rounds and how do they perform there.

Curaçao

Curaçao has taken full advantage of the hosts being from CONCACAF and the federation getting additional spots in the tournament. They beat traditionally-better Central American teams to become the second Caribbean nation in this year’s tourney.

It is not just a vacation for Curaçao. They played well during qualifying and are not as bad as their ranking would indicate. The problem they have is that their group is stacked. In another group, they might be able to get a historic first World Cup point. In this one, that will be a very difficult goal to reach

Ivory Coast

Ivory Coast is another country, like Algeria, that has lost players to the French national team. Even with that loss of talent, however, they made it through African qualifying and are poised to be in the mix for a knockout round spot.

The key game for them will be the opening match in Philadelphia against Ecuador. It seems their qualification fate rests on that result as their second game is against Germany. They cannot afford back to back losses.

Ecuador

Ecuador was THE revelation/surprise of CONMEBOL qualifying. They were consistently good and finished second only to Argentina ahead of traditional powers Brasil, Uruguay, and Colombia. They are on track for their best showing ever at a World Cup.

If they win their opening match against Ivory Coast, they should rack up another win against Curaçao before meeting Germany in the last game. Methinks a friendly subtly-arranged tie would then see them both through to the knockout rounds.

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Predicted Group Finish

• Germany
• Ecuador
• Ivory Coast
• Curaçao

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Things to look forward to in the Group Stage

• The Ecuador-Ivory Coast match is everything.
• Drinking beer in the morning while watching Germany.
• Hoping to see Curaçao score at least one goal.

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Final Thoughts

I could see this group getting thrown into chaos if Ivory Coast somehow beats Germany in the second game. I do truly think that could be a trap game for ze Germans. They will probably be coming off a thrashing of Curaçao and might let up mentally.

If that happens, German sphincters will tighten and you can fill in your own scheisse joke from here.