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Catar 1x1 Ecuador

I read about rumours of corruption. That's what I thought when I posted my fear of a new 2002 World Cup.

Five minutes into the game and Qatar money already pays off
That goal would have never been disallowed if those retards had scored it..

2-0 now...

They absolutely cannot handle Valencia at all, lol. Any ball forward, their defenders can’t get close to him.

About the offside, it’s unclear without a proper video showing the offside lines with the goalkeeper. Although the fact that they won’t show that is probably a sign that it was not offside.

Yeah, that was kinda suspect.

Virtually flawless performance by England, everyone looked great, and the formation suits all of their players perfectly. Continue like this and they can beat anyone.

Iran were shocking but England almost never thrash teams in tournaments, no matter how bad they are. So I'm pretty confident we can go far...

I wouldn't rank the game that high, like in 2018 England got the worst defence as first opponent so it was clear they would play like that.
Those Iran defenders looked like amateurs, pretty sure that almost every WC team (except Qatar) would have put at least three goals behind them without problems.
Edit: Horrible mistake by Mendy, reminds me of Romero vs Müller in 2010. Senegal would have deserved a point here, especially Gueye and Koulibaly were fantastic today..
Edit 2: No horrible mistake, horrible mistakes.

Mané sorely missed...

Disappointing first half from Wales, second half was much better. Hopefully Moore will start in their next game, his presence really helped turn the game. Didn't understand the experiment with Bale as false nine anyway, he played many of his best games as SS behind Robson Kanu who gave him the space he needed.
Anyway, shoutout to US NT as well, in the first 45 minutes they probably played the best football that I ever saw from them. Hopefully Gio is fit enough to play against England, it would certainly raise their chances.

Gareth Bale could be 50 years old and he'd still find a way to score some important goal for Wales. He's basically just a part time player at this point, this is only the 2nd full 90 minutes he's played in the entirety of 2022, and he barely touched the ball the whole game but still manages to save the day. What a legend.

I honestly can't think of anyone that's been more important for their national team in the whole 21st century. Without him they probably wouldn't even be anywhere close to qualifying for tournaments. At one point they were 112th in the FIFA rankings. And yet look where he's taken them to.

Yeh he's great, if Bale gets them through to the L16 or beyond then he's arguably their greatest ever player.

Second place could come down to whoever beats Iran the most, my bet is on Wales but probably because I'm part Welsh...

Actually I wouldn’t count Iran out yet, IMO they’re not such a bad team, after all they had some great results before the tournament, drawing with Senegal and beating Uruguay. England just played the best I’ve seen from them in years, maybe since the win over Germany in the Euros. I think Iran will have a much easier time against the pretty one-dimensional attack of Wales and the US. And Taremi is probably better than any of those team’s attackers.

I can see Wales getting in second place behind England. Iran might repeat themselves by defeating USA like it happened in 1998.