FIFA World Cup 2018 - GROUP G [Belgium, Panama, Tunisia, England - 18/23/24/28 June] **spoilers**

There are no easy game now, only easier games 'on paper', though I'd rather avoid playing Brazil for as long as possible - which is how it's turned out!

If we go off FIFA World Ranking... <cough> ...

Top Half
[7] France
[5] Argentina
[14] Uruguay
[4] Portugal
[2] Brazil
[15] Mexico
[3] Belgium
[61] Japan

Bottom Half
[10] Spain
[70] Russia
[20] Croatia
[12] Denmark
[24] Sweden
[6] Switzerland
[16] Colombia
[12] England

Top half is pretty stacked!
 
Ultimately,we hardly hammered Tunisia and Panama- the footballing equivalent of a game of darts with Stevie Wonder - still got one past us.

Reasonable opposition’s B team then beat our B team...

To be frank,I can’t realistically see our A team faring any better against good A team opposition.
I hope I’m wrong, I really do, but I ain’t holding my breath for a long run in the knock out phase of the tournament.
 
Rikk82 said:
There are no easy game now, only easier games 'on paper', though I'd rather avoid playing Brazil for as long as possible - which is how it's turned out!

If we go off FIFA World Ranking... <cough> ...

Top Half
[7] France
[5] Argentina
[14] Uruguay
[4] Portugal
[2] Brazil
[15] Mexico
[3] Belgium
[61] Japan

Bottom Half
[10] Spain
[70] Russia
[20] Croatia
[12] Denmark
[24] Sweden
[6] Switzerland
[16] Colombia
[12] England

Top half is pretty stacked!
Click to expand...

On paper sure the top half looks stronger, but, not going by this tournament. In the bottom half Denmark and Russia are the weakest teams but I don't think any team will be easy to beat. Colombia are on a high after coming out of a very tough group after losing their opening game. Sweden are extremely tough to break down and can score. Switzerland have shown that they can play as good as any team. Spain are always dangerous and Croatia are playing brilliant.

you could make a strong argument that the top half have the two weakest teams left in the tournament, Argentina and Japan.
 
Rikk82 said:
The England vs Colombia game is going to be shown on ITV. .... we're doomed!
Click to expand...

Last game I watched on ITV one team's players for some reason were practically ASCII art quality and seemed to be 5 fps (guessing somehow related to the kit colours and the encoder) and the other team was a bit grainy but randomly it would zoom in on a player and you'd get high def quality around their face but everything else was pixelated.

Their coverage hasn't been very good in my experience so far.
 
Irish_Tom said:
I assume it's a global feed, so one would imagine that the source for both ITV and BBC are the same, but I swear the image quality on BBC HD is better than ITV HD.
Click to expand...

I can't rule out issues on my end and I'm using different setups for ITV and BBC so there might be some differences due to post-processing features, etc. but the pitch colour and detail seem very different to me between the two.
 
Irish_Tom said:
I assume it's a global feed, so one would imagine that the source for both ITV and BBC are the same, but I swear the image quality on BBC HD is better than ITV HD.
Click to expand...
The feed may be the same but supposedly ITV still use much older encoding tech that struggles with motion in particular, so sports show it up more.
 
I don't think anyone (in their right mind) who has watched England in international football for a long while (I first watched them in "66...that was a good year), will be taking Columbia as an "easy" match.

We are more than capable of messing it up against a so called lesser team.

Personally taking nothing for granted.
 
Rikk82 said:
There are no easy game now, only easier games 'on paper', though I'd rather avoid playing Brazil for as long as possible - which is how it's turned out!

If we go off FIFA World Ranking... <cough> ...

Top Half
[7] France
[5] Argentina
[14] Uruguay
[4] Portugal
[2] Brazil
[15] Mexico
[3] Belgium
[61] Japan

Bottom Half
[10] Spain
[70] Russia
[20] Croatia
[12] Denmark
[24] Sweden
[6] Switzerland
[16] Colombia
[12] England

Top half is pretty stacked!
Click to expand...
Surely Spain is artificially low ,ie their quality is a lot better than what it shows in the ranking

I wonder how high Russia would be if they actually had to qualify - high 20's ? Maybe low teen's - they certainly appear to be playing that way (admittedly on home soil, which may well be a factor)

Another way to look at it - from the matches Ive watched, there doesn't appear to be that much between the performance levels of Portugal in 4th and Denmark in 12th maybe even Uruguay (haven't seen too much of them)

Individual players have lit up the World Cup - but not really sure a whole team has as yet (Mbappe yesterday was brilliant, and even France attacking wise was very good, but their defensive unit can be got at quite easily even with the phenomenal Kante in there, and it was Argentina who lacked cohesion for large parts of the match that let themselves down.....as well as Rojo's conceded pen ).

England have a good chance on Tuesday,,,,,but they will make it a lot more difficult than it needs to be (and that's not knocking Colombia either who seem to be a decent side)
 
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