The semi-finals
Team | Team |
|---|---|
France | Spain |
England | Argentina |
England, Spain, France, and Argentina. The four front runners. In the semi-finals. Who would have seen that coming.
If the last round of the tournament was tight, this one will be tighter and much harder to predict.
We open this round in Dallas on July 14th, when France and Spain come head to head. A rematch of the Euros semi-finals match, the future of soccer is alive and well in this match. Lamine Yamal and Kylian Mbappe line up for what is hopefully a future GOAT debate. Dembele certainly can not be overlooked in that conversation, and Desire Doue has the potential to be involved too.
Do you see the problem with this matchup?
On paper, France is so deep, so talented, so undeniable that it will forever be hard to pick against them. The problem? They can not beat Spain. For some reason, France has decided that they can put any team in the world away with relative easy, but Spain is a different story. A loss in the semi-finals of the Euros, a loss in the semi-finals of the Nations League, these two teams keep meeting in the semi-finals of various tournaments, and it keeps going Spain's way.
History has little effect on the actual matchup itself, but does it not feel like, a little bit, it does here?
In the actual matchup, France should be worried too. They conceded .7 goals per match in qualifying, with only three clean sheets. Spain put the most shots on goal with 9.7 per match. Yamal did not even score in qualifying, instead offering up three assists and laying up teammates to score.
I want to give this victory to the most stacked roster in the history of soccer but I am just struggling to do so. If this matchup were nearly any other team in the tournament, I would award France the win, we would move on, and everyone would be happy. But it is Spain and I do not trust France to beat Spain.
In the end, I have to pick a winner, and if I want to sleep at night, I need to do it now. I am trusting my gut here; France can not beat Spain. They are defensively an occasionally a liability and Spain is so efficient with possession of the ball. Spain wins a 4-3 shootout, and Mbappe's terrible, bad, no good year continues.
Is it bad to say the next matchup feels significanlty easier to pick compared to what I went through in the last one?
July 15 in Atlanta, England matches up with defending champions Argentina. The team with the most to prove, versus the team that just proved they can do it. The highest rated team in CONMEBOL during qualifying versus the highest rated team in UEFA during qualifying. Europe versus South America.
Both of these teams want to do the exact same thing; get possession of the ball and set up in the attacking third. England did this so well in qualifying that they did not conced a single goal. As a matter of fact, since losing to Spain in the finals of the Euros two years ago, England has only conceded five goals total. In that same stretch, Argentina has only conceded nine.
On paper, when it comes to stats and results, these teams are nearly identical. However, looking at the roster, looking at recent results and experience, England gains ground as a better team. However, Argentina has Messi, and when the lights were big and the pressure was on, that was often enough. The 2022 World Cup final is more than enough proof of that. When France took control of the game, Messi put his team and his country on his back and led the charge to bring the World Cup home.
However, this English team is not that French team. It is a different beast entirely, one that is efficient at every level to stop you, especially if you a 38 (will be 39 at the time of this game) year old player pushing through your seventh game in a month and a half, expected to play nearly ninety minutes in each game.
All of that being said, I foresee this game going to penalties.I do not think it is a 0-0 tie, but a 1-1 or 2-2 tie would be reasonable given extra time. From there, who do you take? The Argentinian's who have been here before and have the peace and quiet that comes with that, or the English, with the deep roster and all the pressure in the world.
In the end, I took England.
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