FIFA World Cup 2026 :Canada/Mexico/United States: Discussion Thread

[liasbaa]

Portugal needs to get rid of Ronaldo immediately. He isn't helping the team in any way. He was so ineffective yesterday and he was absolutely one of the factors in that point loss. 

They need a better teamwork than this. Ronaldo shouldn't be the target on the front line anymore. I respect his career a lot but he is just done now. Messi is making a much higher contribution to his national team now.

Ronaldo's performance was disappointing but I couldn't find any logical reason for it. Physically he looked fit enough but he didn't seem to be playing a leading role for his country and team. I bet on Portugal blindly based on Ronaldo's excellent performance.

Of course, it might not be right to blame him too much based on his performance in one match. I think he needs to be given more time to see how his form is in at least a few more matches. He is a legendary player in the world and I respect him. He should decide to retire before he gets into a really bad form.

[Lucius]

It must be admitted that England outplayed Croatia in almost all segments of the game and that GK Livakovic is the only one to be credited with the fact that the final score was not 7-2 or 8-2. Modric was completely unprepared, unfocused and to blame for the first goal, the entire defense under Gvardiol was completely inadequate to the task and it all looked very bad, especially in the second half.

Regardless of how will things develop further with Panama and Ghana, it seems to me that they have nothing to look forward to against any stronger opponent in the rest of the competition. In the friendly matches, they showed that they were no longer up to the teams like Brazil and Belgium, and with great difficulty they defeated an average Slovenia.

[BitcoinHunt3r]

No need to blame anyone as if we understand, be sure that bad luck can come at any time and to anyone  after all, it's not over yet there is still another matches

For today we have 4 matches and the one that caught my attention the most is the match between Mexico vs South Korea, as we know both teams won in the first match it means they are in high confidence. Personally I prefer South Korea, but I know Mexico has the home advantage so I don't think it will be easy I mean there is a possibility that both teams will draw. Talking about betting I'm interested in both teams to score yeah it's based on their performance in the first match and also the H2H history, what do you guys think?

[ibuddy122505]

Portugal needs to get rid of Ronaldo immediately. He isn't helping the team in any way. He was so ineffective yesterday and he was absolutely one of the factors in that point loss. 

They need a better teamwork than this. Ronaldo shouldn't be the target on the front line anymore. I respect his career a lot but he is just done now. Messi is making a much higher contribution to his national team now.

Ronaldo's performance was disappointing but I couldn't find any logical reason for it. Physically he looked fit enough but he didn't seem to be playing a leading role for his country and team. I bet on Portugal blindly based on Ronaldo's excellent performance.

Of course, it might not be right to blame him too much based on his performance in one match. I think he needs to be given more time to see how his form is in at least a few more matches. He is a legendary player in the world and I respect him. He should decide to retire before he gets into a really bad form.

Portugal opened their World Cup campaign with a disappointing draw against DR Congo, and ended up losing my bet as well. It's natural that a lot of the attention has gone toward Ronaldo's performance, and people seem quick to criticize him, but football is a team game at the end of the day. It's unfair to place all the blame on one player when the overall team performance wasn't good enough. Of course, Ronaldo's display always influences how Portugal perform, but this is only the beginning of the tournament. It's just beginning so better is to wait and see how the team responds in the next match before making strong conclusions.

[Unsoldier]

It's so funny to see Ronaldo fans trying to justify how Messi scored a hattrick and Ronaldo did not. I mean isn't it already time to accept that while Ronaldo was of course an unbelievable player, and even go as far as say that he is the second best player in HISTORY of football, he is just... not first.

Messi just won the game of football as they say, there is no way of comparing these two and never made sense on stat sheet but now it's looking even worse because Ronaldo is aging like crazy now. Lets be real, Messi is just another level. However, Ronaldo is also not a bad player, he is just a great player that got old and now he can't do what he used to do and keeping him in the game all that time is just hurting the team.

Ronaldo has definitely aged a lot, though for his age, he is still playing pretty well. But for the level required at the World Cup, it is probably no longer enough. However, Cristiano is a symbol of Portugal, and he has done so much for the development of football in his country that leaving him out of the World Cup was simply not an option. The fans just wouldn't understand it.

I won't compare Messi and Ronaldo—they are different players with different approaches to the game. But the fact that Messi is superior to Ronaldo right now is obvious even to the naked eye. I hope Portugal's coaching staff can still find a way to minimize Ronaldo's time on the pitch, though it's not a given that this will improve the team's performance.

[Sim_card]

England showed a lot of brilliance yesterday on the pitch yesterday against Croatia. Croatia had a weak defense which was unable to stop England attackers from penetrating their defense easily. Harry Kane the goal opener for his team was able to double his goal since no defender could stop him. A great start for the English men.

[bitLeap]

Clearly, that was a serious foul. But strangely enough, the referee didn’t even give Messi a yellow card, let alone a red one. It’s no wonder this incident has sparked a lot of discussion on social media. Some have even accused FIFA of protecting Messi. If any other player had committed a foul like that, they would have definitely received a red card. But since it was Messi, the referee just ignored it.

There's always an annoying controversy, especially when it comes to Messi, whose status we know. From any angle, such a violation is extremely dangerous, and at the very least a red card would provide clarity. Messi is still Messi, so no matter how he plays, FIFA will pass it as a matter of course.

[Out of mind]

Portugal needs to get rid of Ronaldo immediately. He isn't helping the team in any way. He was so ineffective yesterday and he was absolutely one of the factors in that point loss. 

They need a better teamwork than this. Ronaldo shouldn't be the target on the front line anymore. I respect his career a lot but he is just done now. Messi is making a much higher contribution to his national team now.

Ronaldo's performance was disappointing but I couldn't find any logical reason for it. Physically he looked fit enough but he didn't seem to be playing a leading role for his country and team. I bet on Portugal blindly based on Ronaldo's excellent performance.

Of course, it might not be right to blame him too much based on his performance in one match. I think he needs to be given more time to see how his form is in at least a few more matches. He is a legendary player in the world and I respect him. He should decide to retire before he gets into a really bad form.

Portugal opened their World Cup campaign with a disappointing draw against DR Congo, and ended up losing my bet as well. It's natural that a lot of the attention has gone toward Ronaldo's performance, and people seem quick to criticize him, but football is a team game at the end of the day. It's unfair to place all the blame on one player when the overall team performance wasn't good enough. Of course, Ronaldo's display always influences how Portugal perform, but this is only the beginning of the tournament. It's just beginning so better is to wait and see how the team responds in the next match before making strong conclusions.

When a strong team draws with a normal team, the team must face criticism. The start of the World Cup campaign should have been good for Portugal, although most gamblers bet on Portugal and they lost, which is why they are being criticized. However, I see that most people are blaming Ronaldo, but it is really unfair to blame one player because one player can never make a team win. We saw the game and all the other players there did not help Ronaldo much with the ball to win the team. However, if the players of a team play with compromise and each player plays with their hard work, then it is definitely possible to take the team to the winning stage. Since this tournament has started, of course every player will want to improve themselves in the next matches and we hope that they will definitely do something good in the next matches.

[asriloni]

[...]
Ronaldo looked so clueless, and he's always trying to score by himself in this game. That is a moment when he's so stubborn to kick the ball by himself. If he lets the bal going to the Bruno behind him, i believe Portugal would be winning this.
[...]

Yeah, it's like there are 3 teams in that match. Portugal, Congo, and Team Ronaldo. I think the big pressure on him feels like it is giving extra pressure to Portugal as a whole team.

We all know he has an individual target to reach 1,000 goals in his career. And Messi also scored a hat trick a day before. The accumulated pressure is just getting bigger day by day. His individual target seems bigger than Portugal's target to play well and win the World Cup.

Don't get me wrong, I am a Ronaldo fan. He's the player that makes me imagine how a human would end up if they train hard, stay disciplined, and focus on their health and performance. Messi is just not human. He is naturally gifted. So, you could be the next Ronaldo if you train hard and stay disciplined like Ronaldo. But you will never be Messi, even if you do exactly what Messi does. Ronaldo needs to chill and accept this to loosen the pressure and focus on the team. But I am sure even if Ronaldo did that, the media would always do everything they can to flip everything just to drive traffic. And it will also impact him and the team.

Back again to Portugal as a team. Portugal is decorated with world-class midfielders, and the midfield seems isolated, with no progress. 75% ball possession and only 3 shots on goal. Meanwhile, Congo had 2 shots on goal with only 25% ball possession.

The worst stat is the Expected Goals (XG), Portugal only had 0.65, meanwhile Congo had 0.87. For reference, England had 3.20, they played offensively, created many big chances that ended up with shots on target. It just shows Portugal has low-quality attacks and shots.

Next week, Portugal will play against Uzbekistan. If nothing changes, it will just end up the same and become a big headline, even bigger than the World Cup itself. I am sure next match Ronaldo will not play 90 minutes

You seem right. Too much burden owned by Ronaldo. It made him overthinking, which was also affecting his performance a lot. If he didn't have ambition, and let it flow. I guess he could play and score goals without burden.

No doubt he has been blamed so much to his stubborness. This proves that how he could not even beat his own ego. He's the one who got the lowest rating compared to the other superstars.

So what you said was actually true. The more achievement recorded by his competitors, the more burden he had to score more.

Hopefully, he's aware of his ego is just killing his performance. Once he realizes it, he can back to his good performance.

[sergiorus]

Portugal needs to get rid of Ronaldo immediately. He isn't helping the team in any way. He was so ineffective yesterday and he was absolutely one of the factors in that point loss. 

They need a better teamwork than this. Ronaldo shouldn't be the target on the front line anymore. I respect his career a lot but he is just done now. Messi is making a much higher contribution to his national team now.

Ronaldo's performance was disappointing but I couldn't find any logical reason for it. Physically he looked fit enough but he didn't seem to be playing a leading role for his country and team. I bet on Portugal blindly based on Ronaldo's excellent performance.

Of course, it might not be right to blame him too much based on his performance in one match. I think he needs to be given more time to see how his form is in at least a few more matches. He is a legendary player in the world and I respect him. He should decide to retire before he gets into a really bad form.

The Portuguese players don't worship CR7 the way Argentinians worship Messi.
What I've seen yesterday was a team of celebrities who don't really care for who Ronaldo is. Meanwhile in Argentina the whole team still plays on Messi on every occasion.

I think Cristiano is still world class but the situation is complicated. He, just like Messi, is used to the whole team playing for him. The current Portugal won't do that even though he's still the best among them.

[WatChe]

Portugal opened their World Cup campaign with a disappointing draw against DR Congo, and ended up losing my bet as well. It's natural that a lot of the attention has gone toward Ronaldo's performance, and people seem quick to criticize him, but football is a team game at the end of the day. It's unfair to place all the blame on one player when the overall team performance wasn't good enough. Of course, Ronaldo's display always influences how Portugal perform, but this is only the beginning of the tournament. It's just beginning so better is to wait and see how the team responds in the next match before making strong conclusions.

Congo is a team that is playing FIFA world cup after 50 years and they were able to make a draw against a team that is 7th in FIFA ranking and most importantly aiming to win this world cup. Now Portugal next game is against Colombia and its a must win game for them to make sure they qualify for the next round. If we look at CR7 stats in FIFA world cup then he has scored just 8 goals in his 23 world cup matches across 6 world cups. Portugal as team need to play good football, if they want to win this world cup not just rely in CR7.

[Catenaccio]

Congo is a team that is playing FIFA world cup after 50 years and they were able to make a draw against a team that is 7th in FIFA ranking and most importantly aiming to win this world cup. Now Portugal next game is against Colombia and its a must win game for them to make sure they qualify for the next round. If we look at CR7 stats in FIFA world cup then he has scored just 8 goals in his 23 world cup matches across 6 world cups. Portugal as team need to play good football, if they want to win this world cup not just rely in CR7.

Congo is like many national teams from the Africa continent with players who are physical strong but lack of tactical ideas and discipline for operating well. I mean Congo are like African nations about twenty years ago because they are not a strong team from that continent and only managed to be in this expansive World Cup with more slots for national teams from Africa. While the other national teams from the Africa which are familiar with World Cup and have actually participated in World Cup very regularly have all improved their quality a lot.

We already saw the old Cristiano Ronaldo could not win against Congo players in the match but Congo will need to do more, work harder and need luck to go far in World Cup 2026.

[Not your key not your BTC]

Portugal needs to get rid of Ronaldo immediately. He isn't helping the team in any way. He was so ineffective yesterday and he was absolutely one of the factors in that point loss. 

They need a better teamwork than this. Ronaldo shouldn't be the target on the front line anymore. I respect his career a lot but he is just done now. Messi is making a much higher contribution to his national team now.

Roberto Martínez should not start Ronaldo. Ronaldo can no longer play as he did in his prime, and making him the focal point of the game will not help the team at all. Without meaning to downplay Ronaldo’s contributions to Portugal over the years. However, Portugal really should play as a team without relying on Ronaldo as their main pillar.

I’m confident that if Martínez benches Ronaldo in the next match, Portugal can win the game. Ronaldo should only be brought in during the final minutes if Portugal is already leading by more than three goals, as a gesture of respect for him in his final World Cup appearance.

[ITExpert]

Such results can be continued as luck but when good teams cannot add points to their side, there may be no logical consolation.

This is exactly what is always said that the nature  of this game is very unpredictable you don't know anything properly and you cannot predict accurate predictions. Because this is often happened that a weak team from which no expectations are set they did really a great job and surprised everyone. This is true that luck matters a lot in this type of matters but I think the weak teams sometimes shows their great dedication with a thought of do and die because actually they were not holding anything certain to loose in taking the chance. And this case is also the same and almost many viewers losses their bets due to their heavy confident.  And i think this is not happened for the first time in fact there is number of such examples

[Pjcr7]

Vozinha continues to be on the news, just in, Guinness World record has bestowed an on honour on him for his heroics in his world cup debut match against Spain were his the talk of the media ever since his outstanding performance against one of the best team currently in the world today. His 40 years and 12 days when he pulled off that performance and it's earned him a place in the Guinness book. His now the oldest goalkeeper to keep a clean sheet on FIFA world cup debut. His the second oldest player to make a debut in the FIFA world cup but his the first to keep a clean sheet on his debut at this age. He made an astonishing 7 saves to keep Spain out from scoring and made sure no goal went past him and in return the match ended 0 - 0.

[barbara44]

Congo is a team that is playing FIFA world cup after 50 years and they were able to make a draw against a team that is 7th in FIFA ranking and most importantly aiming to win this world cup. Now Portugal next game is against Colombia and its a must win game for them to make sure they qualify for the next round. If we look at CR7 stats in FIFA world cup then he has scored just 8 goals in his 23 world cup matches across 6 world cups. Portugal as team need to play good football, if they want to win this world cup not just rely in CR7.

Teams like Cape Verde and DR Congo have a dream start to their World Cup with both stunning hot favourites in their first games. There are no questions about their performance because both Portugal and Spain are top-ranked teams with great players, and their performance is good, but both fail to steal 3 points.
 
Cape Verde is having historic performance while DR Congo also has a great start because they mostly were expecting good performance from Ronaldo and Portugal, but they completely failed to perform as they have squads and history. Ronaldo's performance in World Cup matches has never been good; just because of this, his team has also never had good results. Now how could they play in the coming games? It's going to be interesting.

[Woodie]

Clearly, that was a serious foul. But strangely enough, the referee didn’t even give Messi a yellow card, let alone a red one. It’s no wonder this incident has sparked a lot of discussion on social media. Some have even accused FIFA of protecting Messi. If any other player had committed a foul like that, they would have definitely received a red card. But since it was Messi, the referee just ignored it.

Straight red card ♦️ no VAR needed no benefit of the doubt!!

This alone shows how much Messi has had the protection from the system and explains a lot why he was able to bag all those Ballon d'Ors over the years , and now they have continued after the last worldcup rumours of Argentina being scripted to win popped up with all those penalties etcetera..

Is a review after game possible as this needs to be corrected for fairness of the game 🎯

[JeffBrad12]

Is there someone else betting on Czech vs South Africa? This match seems a bit tougher to be predicted, but i rate Czech is better than South Africa. Their performance against South Korean were no that bad. They could still give a pressure to the South Korea, though they were not owning the possession.
They clearly have greater chance to win against South Africa, which is the weakest nation in this group. So i think money line Czech seems pretty decent to be missed. What do you think?

[HustleZ]

Ronaldo's performance was disappointing but I couldn't find any logical reason for it. Physically he looked fit enough but he didn't seem to be playing a leading role for his country and team. I bet on Portugal blindly based on Ronaldo's excellent performance.

Physicality isn’t everything, and honestly it doesn’t even matters much but what really matters is technicality. Ronaldo is physically fit but does not have the technicality factor. Ronaldo has always overshadowed the technicality factor by his physique but when that started to decrease with age he lost his ability to dominate the field. Messi has always been technical which never gets decreased and stays the same no matter the age. That’s the reason they both have built so much gap in between them and messi have surpassed him by miles.

[Ahli38]

It must be admitted that England outplayed Croatia in almost all segments of the game and that GK Livakovic is the only one to be credited with the fact that the final score was not 7-2 or 8-2. Modric was completely unprepared, unfocused and to blame for the first goal, the entire defense under Gvardiol was completely inadequate to the task and it all looked very bad, especially in the second half.

Regardless of how will things develop further with Panama and Ghana, it seems to me that they have nothing to look forward to against any stronger opponent in the rest of the competition. In the friendly matches, they showed that they were no longer up to the teams like Brazil and Belgium, and with great difficulty they defeated an average Slovenia.

The match between the England vs Croatia national teams was still evenly matched statistically in the first half. And we can see that Croatia was still able to keep up with England’s style of play, where they managed to equalize the score after conceding two goals. But in the second half Croatia’s performance seemed to decline after their defense faced numerous threats. Their defense was torn apart by England in the second half following a quick goal set up by Jude Bellingham in the 47th minute. Croatia seemed to focus more on defense in the second half. And they were only able to create a few chances that didn’t pose much of a threat to England. I personally think that Croatia had expended a lot of energy in the first half trying hard to turn the game around. And that left them without the energy to bounce back in the second half. Croatia needs to address this issue to avoid suffering a similar defeat in their next match.