World Cup Fantasy Weekly Update 5
Hello everyone and welcome to the second to last gameweek of the World Cup: the semifinals! Didn't get the chance to watch too much of these games (unfortunately I (and Mack) were participating in the 193 mile Ragnar Relay this weekend), but I'm calling it rigged that FIFA's top 4 teams made the semi finals. wtf.
Quarterfinals
- France 2-0 Morocco
And in this game, France showed why they're the #1 ranked team, as they put up a staggering 3.69 xG to Morocco's 0.14. I think I saw a stat that said that 7 players on the France team out xG'd the Moroccan team. And Kylian Mbappe 5x'd it with just his missed penalty alone. Anyway, I don't see how anyone can stop dictator Mbappe from ~~marching on Russia~~taking the plane to New York New Jersey stadium, but if anyone can do it, they did lose to Spain the last couple of times they played.
- Spain 2-1 Belgium
And in this game, I watched the first 20 minutes or so and then spent ~10 miles of road running wondering what the score was. And when I saw that Merino had played 4' and scored a goal I was not surprised in the slightest. It's just too bad he's returning from injury and can't be scoring 22 goals per game. Or maybe he hasn't even been injured and it's unfair to play him for more than a ~6 minute cameo at the very end of games. I guess the world may never know.
- Norway 1-2 England
Poor Norway. And by poor I mean they were very unlucky that Alexander Sorloth was born in their country, because holy shit pass the ball to Haaland. You literally have one job: be tall and give the ball to the equally tall but better at scoring guy. Anyway, a pretty even game in the end, except one team had Jude Bellingham and the other had a cross that ended up in the top corner (also, Pickford..?). Tough for the Norwegians as their honestly pretty incredible run ended to a poor save that bounced straight to Jude and for whatever reason, the response to that was to take off Haaland. Congrats to the English though!
- Argentina 3-1 Switzerland
Yikes, this one hurt to watch. You can't even say this game was rigged in Argentina's favor considering Switzerland was the one who rigged it. I just cannot imagine what was going through Embolo's mind when his team just scored the equalizing goal, had all the momentum, and decided to go ahead and put in his submission for the fallon d'floor while on a yellow card and in the center of the field. Anyway, Argentina probably would've won it anyway considering FIFA has them in their top 4, but the red card certainly helped. As did the average Julian Alvarez goal scored by Julian Alvarez, who plays for… Atleti, still? Did I get it right?
Semifinals
And then there were four:
- France vs Spain
- England vs Argentina
Will it be dictator Mbappe or Lamine's younger brother at the final? Will it be Mickey Mouse Harry Kane or top right Messi?
World Cup Fantasy
| Position | Manager | Points | R1 | R2 | R3 | R4 | R5 | R6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (-) | Chris | 547 | 107 | 97 | 67 | 109 | 82 | 85 |
| 2 (-) | Luke | 542 | 106 | 70 | 104 | 124 | 48 | 90 |
| 3 (-) | Darryan | 519 | 85 | 101 | 81 | 86 | 73 | 93 |
| 4 (+1) | Matthew | 477 | 85 | 76 | 72 | 78 | 90 | 76 |
| 5 (-1) | Jesse | 474 | 67 | 101 | 71 | 83 | 83 | 69 |
| 6 (-) | Zach | 455 | 90 | 102 | 50 | 84 | 67 | 62 |
| 7 (+1) | Coop | 411 | 78 | 66 | 67 | 67 | 63 | 70 |
| 8 (-1) | John | 394 | 81 | 64 | 68 | 68 | 68 | 45 |
| 9 (+1) | Kevin | 350 | 66 | 75 | 43 | 62 | 68 | 36 |
| 10 (-1) | Mack | 343 | 91 | 67 | 52 | 62 | 49 | 22 |
| 11 (-) | Scott | 295 | 44 | 46 | 34 | 74 | 56 | 41 |
And heading into our final 2 gameweeks, not a lot can happen for a lot of teams, but the 1st place finish is still on the line as Chris maintains just a 5 point advantage over Luke! Darryan sits a surely unsurmountable 23 points off 2nd, just 42 points ahead of me. I move up to 4th over Jesse by an assist's worth of points, and our gap grows over Zach to 19. Coop moves ahead of John into 7th just below, sporting a solid 17 point margin, while Kevin sees movement up the table over Mack. Interestingly enough, Darryan notched the highest score of the week, which included a 0 pointer from Medina on the field. Efficient.