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

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 B!

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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

Canadá

Believe it or not, Canadá may have the best team in CONCACAF. They are certainly better than the Americans and are more consistent than the Mexicans. They are led by Alphonso Davies, who starts for Bayern München, not to be confused with Jonathan David, who starts for Juventus in Italy.

Canadá is poised to have their best performance ever at the World Cup, specially considering they will play all their group games at home. They may win the group depending on how they do against Switzerland. Beyond that, we do not know how that will impact the Leafs’ chances.

Bosnia & Herzegovina

Bosnia & Herzegovina are the reason why Italy is not in this tournament. Well, Italy not being very good at penalty kicks is why they are not in this tournament, but B&H will take it.

They are capable of playing good defense, but it is not clear how they would fare when it is necessary to score. Ironically, they eliminated Italy playing catenaccio. I don’t know how far that will take them here. Also, Sarajevo is beautiful.

Qatar

Qatar have managed to get themselves invited to CONCACAF Gold Cup and CONMEBOL Copa América tournaments in an effort to improve the local team. Results have been mixed.

For a while, the team improved and was able to compete with better teams. However, it seems that they have taken a step back lately. They need to bring their best game if they hope to get out of the group.

Switzerland

Switzerland has followed the French model of introducing immigrant players into the national team in an effort to improve. Improve they have, but it is definitely weird seeing players “of colour” wearing a Switzerland uniform.

In any case, they are certainly the best team in this group. They should win the group and maybe a knockout round game depending on who the opponent is.

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Predicted Group Finish

• Switzerland
• Canadá
• B&H
• Qatar

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Things to look forward to in the Group Stage

• Canadians going crazy for their team and then apologizing.
• Eating fondue while watching the Switzerland games.
• No one knowing why the name of the country is Bosnia & Herzegovina.

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Final Thoughts

This is THE opportunity for Canadá to shine. It is all set up for them to do well. I, for one, hope our northern neighbors are rewarded with a good performance. I will certainly be rooting for them.

B&H could get one of the third place spots that move on to the knockout rounds since I expect everyone to beat Qatar. It would be quite a Cinderella story if they advanced.