Anything I realized Nigeria isn't participation in the world cup, it sadden my soul especially as it's our rival that kicked us out of the tournament. It's not surprised that Ghana could knock Nigeria out of the qualifiers because then the Nigeria professional football players were playing badly they could not even score a goal at the Ghanaian home but when they came over to Nigeria thyyhasd a game played and followed it.
They just had to scored then defense which they did very well. We just have to wait until the AFCON 2023 qualifiers resume to watch our boys play and thankfully our players are now playing good football even though it's too early to judge them but I believe they are desperate to win some silver wears.
It is a pity that Nigeria didn't qualify. I blame the mode for qualification of the African teams. All African teams have to go through the final knock-out duels where Nigeria had a close encounter with Ghana but subsequently lost due the away goal rule. I am sure that Nigeria would have beaten almost all other of the final 10 teams (except maybe Senegal) and qualify for the World Cup. I doubt that teams like Cameroon or Tunisia will show a good performance like Nigeria would have shown at the World Cup, but maybe they can surprise us. |
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Sure with the forking coming up, there will be some change. However ETH will always have a value/ just right now the price is down, but it only means good time to buy in and get more.
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Do you think ETH Will be around for a long time? or do you think it will go down to zero ?
In the crypto world there are only months, sometime even weeks or days between "XX is the future and new world currency" and "XX is dead and will go to 0". I remeber a couple of months ago, many people were convinced the (ETH-BTC) flippening is only a matter of time and now ETH is supposed to go to zero?  The fork and update causes insecurity in the market, investors don't like that. If you are convinced the update goes through without larger trouble, then now could be a good time to buy, because in that case the price will go up after. However, it could get also worse only time will tell. |
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A league intended to replace friendlies ended up with the results of friendlies games. Unpredictable, random, weird...
France will end up 4th or 3rd in best cases. England too.
Meanwhile Turkey, Greece and Lettonie are the only ones to almost guarantee the 1st place before 2 rounds from the end of the group stage.
Turkey and also Greece seem to be in the wrong league anyway. They are not a first class teams, but their opponents were only small countries with almost amateur teams (no offence to the small countries please  ) Latvia won all 4 games, but they are in the bottom league. Positive surprises (for me) were also Norway (who are dominiating their league with difficult opponents such as Sweden and Serbia) and Bosnia (who go good results against Finland and Romania. I believe we never saw Bosnia at a larger tournament, I hope they can qualify for the next Euro Cup) |
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After the results of the Nations League I actually expected that this would have consequences for the odds at the bookmakers, but nothing of that is true. Everything still seems a bit the same. England are also still among the favorites to win the World Cup, despite a 0-4 thrashing against Hungary at home. Bookmakers see it more as a kind of snapshot. It is tough for the players, playing a strong tournament in the middle of the competition. EPL players will experience this in particular.
I guess bookmakers count in the possibility that England and France are still in their experimentation and preparation period and did not offer their best team for the Nations League. Also betting on the popular, "stronger" teams (like France and England) in more popular in general, so why should they raise their odds for them? If you think that the Nations LEague does have a serious impact for the World Cup I would look at the odds of the other favorite teams like Brazil or Argentina, if their odds weren't lowered could might find a good bet. |
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New Zealand again had to bury their dream of appearing in Qatar's world cup this year after they lost to Costa Rica in the play-off by a narrow 1-0 scoreline where Costa Rica's goal came in the early minutes of the match through former Arsenal player Joel Campbell's goal in the minute. -3 where the goal lasted until time was over, as well as making New Zealand have to miss this year's world cup again since the last time they qualified for the South Africa world cup in 2010 where they only reached the group stage and did not qualify for the round of 16 great, for Costa Rica themselves they returned to appear in the 4th annual event after being absent from the 2018 Russian world cup
This was a narrow game, mainly because Costa Rica focused too much on defending after their early 1-0 lead. Such KO-qualification games are always difficult, and we have seen big teams (like Italy) struggling against much weaker teams. I am happy with Costa Rica going to the World Cup, as New Zealand is a fairly weak team and I don't see them able to compete against Spain or Germany. Costa Rica also won't have it easy, but they could be good for a surprise for sure. |
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Overall, I agree with your choices. Perhaps in Group C, Poland can compete for the second place in the group with Mexico. Other than that, I'm not seeing many more surprises. But normally in these competitions, there is always a surprise team. Which will be? It really seems like clear choices who will qualify in the different groups, but I think we will see way more than 1 surprise team in the first round. Of course it is not a completely fair comparison, but if you look at the Nations League in Europe, many group standings are upside down with teams like France, England and Germany behind Denamrk or Hungary. The level of competition is just generally very high, so that luck will become and important factor. Who the surprise teams will be? No idea, maybe Ecuador, Serbia or Japan? |
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I think it's all inseparable from the strategy of the English coach, they are one of the strong teams that did not show good performance on the UEFA Natinal League stage. in the matches that have been played they rotate players very often so it is very clear that they just want to prepare this team for the Qatar world cup in the next few months, not play fully serious in this UEFA National League competition, I see there are several teams that have quality strong but they have the same fate as England, for example like France.
Player rotation is good, but the weak performance is also a sign that they haven't formed a functioning team yet, something that is essential if they want to perform well at the world cup. I agree we should not draw too many conclusions yet, but for me the main conclusion is, that those teams are not "ready" yet. Let's hope their coaches can improve and are able to form a high quality team for the world cup. |
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as long as Dortmund sell their potential players, then it is unlikely they will shift the dominance of bayern...
the latest news which I heard, Madrid ready to bid Bellingham, madrid even offer a very big money. Dortmund will surely be tempted by the money, just as they did haaland.
The thing is that it is not so easy for Dortmund to hold onto their world class players. Dortmund is not a top club for winning title on the European level (of course also not on the national level thanks to Bayerns dominance  ). If then a top club comes and pays good money for their top players they might be more or less forced to sell before the players get unhappy or might leave at the end of their contracts for free. |
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Market is Very bear now and I think it's time to buy. The big investors are not going anywhere. Crypto is not going anywhere. We have been in this situation before and everytime we come out of it, BTC hits new all time highs. Be patient and buy in now. No one knows when this bear market will end, but this is the type of market that makes millionaires!
Your opinion is very positive, which by itself is a contra indicator if too many people think like you. The crypto market is still relatively small and even most "big investors" have most likely only invested a small part of their portfolio and it wouldn't be the end of the world for them if crypto goes to 0. We are in a bear market and I think prices wil go down for a bit longer. For a new bull cycle in maybe 1-3 years we will need some new innovation that attracts a large number of new investors. 2017 we had ICOs, 2021 DeFi, NFTs and play-to-earn. Not all of these concepts are properly fully integrated, but maybe something new can come along as well? |
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I don't think this competition is a true indicator of the strength of national teams, and coaches should be too worried.
It is obvious that most of the main players of England, France, Italy ... came physically and mentally exhausted to this competition and were not at the right level for these matches.
Southgate still has plenty of time to prepare his team well for what is really the only thing that matters and that is the World Cup in Qatar.
I don't think anyone takes this competition too seriously.
I agree with you that this competition is not the main focus for the top teams, however it gives some indication in what state the national teams are. I don't think the exhaustion argument is valid much here. The World Cup would normally have happened now without long break before. Also in November the top players won't have a long break before the actual competition. France and England especially should see the performance of the last games as a warning sign, they need to come up with a good plan now. |
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7 goals in one game . Germany:Italy 5:2 . that's a bit crazy. but what is england doing ? have they gone completely mad ? they lose 4-0 to hungary at the Molineux stadium in Wolverhampton . it's really a crazy evening of football .but the neutral football fans at home had fun today  Really mad to see what has done my Italy this evening. It is awful to take 5 goals from Germany. About England, I guess that this depends from the fact that they are not so interested in Nations League because they will play World Cup. I wouldn't be a fan of Italy (like me) or England at the moment  Omg, I am quite shocked by the results. Both my bets against Germany and for England lost, and not by a narrow margin. Congrats for the people that predicted such clear results and the right direction. The only positive surprise in this group is the performance of Hungary so far. They could now even win the group. Meanwhile England follows France in the level of embarrassment |
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Tonight we'll see Germany vs Italy with odds of 1.8/3.7/4.8
The pairing is a classic and hopefully will be entertaining. Germany is still waiting for their first victory, but I doubt it will happen against Italy tonight. I would take the ~1.8 bet for Germany doesn't win. In the same group are playing England vs Hungary, here i think England will finally get their first victory but the odds for that are fairly low (1.3)
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France never ceases to amaze in these competitions. They have not won a single match, drawn twice and lost twice. I don't know how they are going to perform in the World Cup this year, but they definitely need to change something. I understand that no one cares about Nations league, but still the favourites play much better in all groups. I don't believe that France have turned into a rubbish team.
I don't believe that France has turned into a rubbish team. However it looks like they have a problem of motivation, tactics or do not function as well as a team as before. The tournament might not be important, but with bad results like we have seen so far it can become a precursor to a disastrous world cup tournament in a couple of months. |
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There are more interesting matches today than yesterday. Especially Italy-England and Netherlands-Poland.
Italy vs England might be boring. I hope not. I think today's matches will be more goal-scoring than yesterday, because when we look at the statistics and the last matches, it shows that it should be so. I'm very curious about the scores.
England vs Italy has odds of 2.0/3.3/4.1 I am a bit surprised by that. England is strong and they do play at home, but Italy won't be an easy opponent. It is tempting to bet on an Italy win or on England doesn't win in this game. Hungary vs Germany has 6.5/4.5/1.5. Also tempting to bet on no-germany-win. Germany is the favorite here, but they haven't shown a convincing game yet. Hungary on the other side is looking pretty good these days |
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Glad to hear that FIFA dismissed the complaint from Chile. But the fact that Byron Castillo represented Ecuador despite his Colombian citizenship is a serious misjudgment from the part of the Federación Ecuatoriana de Fútbol. FIFA is very strict as far as the eligibility criteria for players is considered. But at this point, I don't think that it is fair to disqualify a team from the World Cup, even if one of the players is ineligible to represent the national team. Why punish the entire team, for one player not revealing his foreign passport?
It is a delicate matter and needs to be addressed by the Fifa with a appropriate punishment for player and national team. The team should be professional and thorough enough to verify passports and citizenship of their players before letting them play in important games. Of course the player should also be punished in some form, but I agree that it would be inappropriate to question the world cup qualification entirely |
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This is one of the interesting issues that are going on about Bayern Munich and Lewandowski, because the two seem to have no chemistry or compatibility anymore. Where players want to leave but the club does not allow it, problems like this sometimes become a blunder for both of them for next season. Even though in the end the player is still retained, his contribution can be greatly decreased and this factor can be a loss for the team, not only decreased performance but loss of selling value if it is maintained until the contract expires.
But this would also damage Lewandowskis reputation. He is not the youngest anymore and any worsening in his performance would also diminish his chances to change to another top club. For the sake of both - team and player - they hopefully find a professional solution for their problems soon and stop their discussion through the boulevard media. |
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Odds are pretty clear, though one should be careful with bets after all these surprising results Austria vs France 4.8/3.8/1.7 Denmark vs Croatia 1.8/3.7/4.4 To accurately predict these games at times, one needs to analyse these games based on their most recent statistics and not what we have always know about these teams. Austria is leading france currently by a goal surprisingly the team is playing well under Ralf Rangnick. i guess club and country football are not the same. This game may just end this way if Austria can defend well. Of course you are right, but I presume that bookmakers already made lots of those computations an arrived at those odds. Austria has shown to be an inconvenient opponent in the last games. In the end we saw a draw as final result. Actually more surprising when looking at the odds before the games was the win of Croatia. This group now has an interesting constellation, it seems any team could win it now. |
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I never would have guessed that France and Croatia would be in last place in the group. So far, Denmark are in first place and have no competition. I think they will beat Croatia, who are in last place, tonight as well. France and Austria, on the other hand, could swap places, I think the French should still finally show some skill.
Odds are pretty clear, though one should be careful with bets after all these surprising results Austria vs France 4.8/3.8/1.7 Denmark vs Croatia 1.8/3.7/4.4 Looking add the odds, I think France will win today. With Denmark I'm less convinced, Croatia could be good for a surprise tonight |
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Belgium had a very unexpected performance for me against Poland today. I thought that Belgium would win this game by a close score difference like one goal. After they got 2-1 ahead, I thought that it would end like that. But things got really interesting after some time. Belgium started to have the full control of the game and this reflected on the score on a large scale too. The final score was a whopping 6-1. I was very surprised to see it at the end but they definitely deserved that win.
I also couldn't believe it. I thought Belgium was in for another loss. This is how the tournament could look like if a team actually cares and starts to play properly I guess Belgium really wanted to spare themselves from a total humiliation after their first loss and the 0-1 was a big wakeup call. It will be interesting to see them in their last game against Wales, they should be able to win easily. |
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We had this discussion so many times. My suggestion is to have at least 6 slots for the CONMEBOL confederation instead of the current 4.5. Teams such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Cameroon will be participating in this edition of the world cup, while strong teams such as Colombia and Chile are unable to secure their qualifications. Now please tell me one thing. Are teams such as Colombia inferior to AFC teams such as Saudi Arabia? Even the lowest ranked CONMEBOL team (Bolivia) plays much better than Saudi Arabia.
But it's also a matter of diversity. The World Cup would be much less appealing if there were 90% European and South American teams only. But I agree that this would be an interesring format if we had a worldwide qualification somehow to guarantee that are only the best teams qualify for the tournament. Maybe the FIFA could have a one time special event (outside of the regular world cup), like the European Nations League (but it should be more appealing that the teams actually care ) |
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