Still think there is a decent gap between Brazil/France/Germany to Spain, then a considerable gap to the next group of teams. Spain just doesn't have a ton of goals in the squad.

Just put Messi in central midfield at this point

When will Facebook give us a filter to show our support for our favorite team?

Any yanks out there want to bet this? I like Spain but will have to look at odds

Also Roberto Martinez is historically bad.

That Argentina squad is a minefield for fantasy football if you want to pick whoever is playing in front of Messi

i assume it'll be Higuain, and once again he'll turn ~100 chances into like 2 goals

From what I can tell, VAR hasn't been nearly the disaster in Bundesliga as it has been in MLS. I wonder what version we will get at the WC?

fwiw through trial & error they have already seemed to tweak the use of VAR in MLS from searching for _mistakes to quickly identifying CLEAR AND OBVIOUS mistakes

not that the latter will make aggrieved fans feel much different given the stakes of this tournament, but it's really the best way to go about it

I'll be taking a weeks vacation to coincide with the 1st week of the tourney and aidsing WC threads. Excite

My kid's seven man team was horrible until the coach did the heterodox thing of moving the best player to center back (whatever it's called at that level - it was sort of a 1-2-1-2 with him as the second 1). Almost no more goals conceded the rest of the season, on the short field he initiated all the play, made occasional counterattacking runs, made long passes to the forwards in space, occasional goals from midfield, basically just bossed the whole thing from the back. Obviously his father was on board or the thing would never have worked.

Argentina could do the same with Messi. I think he can probably understand the idea. Someone just needs to talk to his father.

I never knew fanerio was your son.

i was hoping for PITBULL, SHAKIRA and GUETTA

i think brazil wins this and spain might lack that bit of extra class you need, but i don't get how this fairly mediocre german side is rated so high. there are three spain strikers better than the best german one

Is this 2014?

You ever seen ze Germans play a tournament before?

yeah i wonder what that dude's take on Klose and Podolski was in tournaments past

Yeah, we might lack some endurance, so in a global tournament that would go on for a very long time, say six years straight or so, we'd likely fall apart in the end. But don't underestimate what we're capable of doing within one month. Especially to the east of Germany.

Historically German maneuvers to the East end in tears.

May the Germans in Russia jokes commence!

Well, the Germans did pretty well in South America after it was all said and done

No chance of winning in Russia, but I expect them to pop up again in Paraguay 12 years later

Rusher won't be getting any lend-lease help from USA#1 this time around. I like Germany's chances.

France 1940
Brazil 2014
??? 2018

i don't really buy the national stereotype as a way to predict much. they had a good team last time so they won. they have a mediocre team this time so they're probably not going to do much

i mentioned the strikers because ao talked about goals but the german midfield looks underwhelming too. kroos is good (though slow), but özil, khedira and gündogan wouldn't make the Spain squad