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

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, tonight we finish our group previews. Yes, I know. Do not worry. I will have good shit ready for you until the World Cup actually starts.

Tonight’s group is Group K!

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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

Portugal

The flying (fightin’?) Ronaldos are Cristiano Ronaldo’s last chance at trying to catch up to Messi and claim the World Cup he got. It ain’t gonna happen.

This team has very good players that play in very good leagues but I don’t see the dominance or ability to take over a game that’s necessary to win championships. It will be a tear-filled WC-career finale when they get eliminated in the knockout rounds.

Democratic Republic of Congo

Those of you that don’t go by Cecil Rhodes may not realize that the DR Congo used to be Zaire which used to be Belgian Congo, which played its first international game against Northern Rhodesia. I remember Zaire playing in the World Cup of 1974 in Germany. They didn’t score a single goal and let in 14 in 3 games, including 9 by Yugoslavia.

However, this is 50 plus years later and things have changed. For one, instead of only 16 teams in the tournament, there are now 48. Still, they only qualified after beating Jamaica in an intercontinental playoff. They should score their first ever World Cup goal this year. One would hope.

Uzbekistán

Uzbekistán are in their first ever World Cup. They qualified directly out of the Asian confederation along with the likes of Japan and South Korea. So, they’re not here by chance.

However, they will be fighting DR Congo for third/last place as neither team should be able to beat Colombia and Portugal. It will all come down to their matchup on the last day to see who finishes third.

Colombia

Colombia do not have superstars but they play really well together. Perhaps the most famous Colombian player is Luis Diaz, who plays for Bayern München and scores many important goals for them.

There is also non-bitey Luis Suarez, who also plays in Europe and scores important goals. Colombia will be fun to watch as they focus on attacking football using their speed. I think they will beat Portugal and win the group. After that, they could go far depending on the matchups.

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Predicted Group Finish

• Colombia
• Portugal
• DR Congo
• Uzbekistán

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Things to look forward to in the Group Stage

• People not knowing which is the good Congo and which is the bad Congo
• Watching the Colombia games on Telemundo with all the hot Miami Colombia models onstage
• Seeing Ronaldo at his last World Cup

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Final Thoughts

I would love for WCS to use his geography skills and teach us about the history of the Congos. It is fascinating stuff. In the same vein, the history of the stans (Uzbekistán, Turkmenistán, etc.), the former Soviet Socialist Republics, is super interesting.

While I’ve never been a Ronaldo fan, you do have to respect his drive and his achievements. He is Portugal’s greatest ever player and will be missed when he finally officially retires.