Monday Cannon Fodder: World Cup Day 9

Good morning, TSF. We’ve reached the final day of 5 am World Cup matches. In fact, by the time you read this, the early morning games will be done for. Congrats, you made it. One of the “nice” things about having a foster puppy around is that sometimes, I was up for the matches whether I wanted to be or not. Put differently, I was thankful there were early morning matches because the pup likes to get up, do his business, eat his breakfast, play a little, and go back to sleep, leaving me with little to do.

Today, we have South Korea vs. Ghana, Brazil vs. Switzerland, and Portugal vs. Uruguay on the slate.

Costa Rica 1 - Japan 0: a really disappointing performance from the Japanese after their stunning victory over Germany in their opening match. It seemed as if their manager held them back, keeping their attacking threats to be used as subs. Credit to Costa Rica, they defended well and scored on a half-chance. This group is wide open going into the final round of matches.

Morocco 2 - Belgium 0: Belgium can still get out of the group, but what a disappointing performance thus far from at the last World Cup for their golden generation. That seems to be the trend with golden generations, they often don’t live up to the hype. Kudos to Morocco, they’re a solid team.

Croatia 4 - Canada 1: a result that feels harsh on the Canadians because they played some attractive, open, fun-to-watch football, but they came up against a Croatian team that seems to have woken up after a soporific performance in their opening match. Croatia have so much technical quality in their midfield and attack.

Spain 1 - Germany 1: the Germans keep their World Cup hopes alive with an 83rd minute goal to earn the draw. They’ve been quite disappointing on the heels of their disappointing performance in 2018. Looking back over the last decade plus, they’ve had some really good defenders, centerbacks in particular. They don’t have that right now.

It’s a real bummer that Takehiro Tomiyasu seems to have picked up another injury. It kept him out of their match yesterday. No word on the severity, although he was reported as a doubt as opposed to definitely out.