Who is going to lift the World Cup next Saturday?
Your guess is as good as mine.
This tournament, we’ve seen the favourites like Germany and Spain get dumped out unceremoniously.
While, they have been sent to the scrapheap with all their weaknesses exposed, it’s still easy to see why these teams were the pre-tournament picks to go all the way.
In Germany, you had the World Cup holders.
They boasted all the experience of winning the competition in Brazil four years ago and last year, a squad of up-and-comers went to Russia and won the Confederations Cup with some style.
Spain, on the other hand, have been dominating European club football for the last decade.
La Furia Roja’s style of play is also unmistakable.
And having an identity and philosophy is important.
It gives players something to believe in and a system to express themselves, while giving their teammates an idea of what they must do in support of that.
However, they were not consistent enough to make their plans work and out they went.
Of who we have left, Brazil, France, Belgium, Uruguay, England and Croatia catch the eye, but hosts Russia and Sweden are still in the mix.
All of these teams have their problems and judging them before this weekend’s quarterfinals will probably just be dom on my part, since we’ve seen that anything can happen.
With Brazil taking on Belgium in a battle between second and third in the world is probably the most unpredictable of the lot, while France and Uruguay in the same half to the draw make the team in the final very tough to call.
In the bottom half, England will feel confident of going to the final.
But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s just enjoy the matches.