Suffering as I am, from a cold or flu, I have been able to fanatically focus on The World Cup as I can't really manage to do much else.
And so I bring you another up to the minute report from the events in Qatar.
After a thrilling roller coaster of a group stage, chock full of crazy upsets, and numerous twists and turns, we braced ourselves for the round of 16.
In which everything went exactly according to plan. Exactly! Favorites won. Big stars excelled. And all the obvious predictions that most people didn't want to make because they were too obvious, came true.
Which goes to show that soccer is a game full of an astonishing amount of luck, until, suddenly, it isn't.
If Portugal and Spain can win tomorrow (or today, your time), which is by no means assured, unless it happens, in which case it was, it will mark one of the most perfect fait accompli in the history of the World Cup. The quarter finals will consist of an almost perfectly expected final eight of most favorited teams in the world. Not a Cinderella team among them. Not that people won't desperately try to make the lowest hanging fruit into one. Don't fall for that.
And all that sounds pretty boring maybe. But soccer is strange; the unpredictable sets up the obvious, and the obvious leads to the unpredictable.
If Portugal and Spain go through, which, who knows really? Then the quarter finals all of the sudden will have no favorites and no underdogs.
Oh, I mean no favorites until there are winners.
Then it will have been obvious all along.
Also, as per the compulsive reverse psychology superstition of this blog:
Argentina, alas, will be edged out by The Netherlands.
No comments:
Post a Comment
If you were wondering, yes, you should comment. Not only does it remind me that I must write in intelligible English because someone is actually reading what I write, but it is also a pleasure for me since I am interested in anything you have to say.
I respond to pretty much every comment. It's like a free personalized blog post!
One last detail: If you are commenting on a post more than two weeks old I have to go in and approve it. It's sort of a spam protection device. Also, rarely, a comment will go to spam on its own. Give either of those a day or two and your comment will show up on the blog.