Integrity Score 2222
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European and South American Teams are resting on past laurels.
Football has become a muscular game. Fluidity of game play has gone. Sadly.
Looks like Spain/France and Spain are near certainties for Semi Finals. Netherlands the 4th Probably
Same in the case of Argentina and Saudi Arabia as well
Saudi players were swift and strong.
They never felt tired.
A correction. England and France will play eachother in Quarterfinals.
So Portugal and Germany winner will play England/France in Semis
enjoyed the read👍
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In world cup football, as in life, you don’t often get what you deserve.
Some scores from the past will always be settled generations later. All it could take would be as little as eight minutes to alter the complexion of a game, seal your fate and hand you an abject humiliation or an exhilarating victory.
Japan defeating the ruthless Germans who play more like automated- machines than men in flesh and blood in their World Cup opener had all these and more.
It was in the same Doha, where Iraq scored a stoppage-time goal to deny Japan a chance to show up in the 1994 edition of the World Cup.
Some revenges are epochal for some people. It could be more than an accident of history that current Japanese coach Hajime Moriyasu was a member of the shattered Japanese squad 29 years ago. Both the goal scorers Takuma Asano and Ritsu Doan, play their club football in Germany.
What a way to dream of a place in the last 16 for the fourth time, and of making the quarterfinals for the first time for the Japanese.
Logic often falls flat on a football pitch and all that matters in the end would be a victory. And match statistics hardly have a banana leaf to hidefor the vanquished.
So, what if Germany enjoyed 74% possession, had 25 shots compared with 11 for Japan?
Well, that the sporting history is hardly made in isolation can never be a consolation.
Four-time World champions Germany had not lost a World Cup match when ahead at half-time since losing to Austria in 1978.
That is a long run of 21 games in four decades plus.
But those eight minutes and two Japanese goals changed everything when the clock was crawling towards midnight in Japan.