South Africa, pot 1, got Uruguay, France and Mexico. Turns out that Uruguay which was shit in the qualification and went to the playoffs won the group and quite easily.
People overthink too much over these tournament sets, rules, fixtures, brackets. Like there is a possibility of finding a model which is completely fair and just. Qualifiers are usually not a good indicative of a nation's quality for better or worse.
One thing UEFA and FIFA need to do at future tournaments is to stop automatically putting host nations in pot 1. Especially when you have multiple hosts. It completely skews the tournament and leaves you with multiple uneven groups
@khashdinero Calma. But agreed. Sadly getting beat by the likes of Croatia and eating 7 goals at home made people forget who we are, but it is natural. We just need to keep calm and focused on the goal, no drama. Se perdemos que se foda...
@AarinH2 What I noticed from the last two knockout matches from Japan in 2018 and 2022: they were better with the ball on the foot, kept the posession, but that let them too exposed for the counterattacks and tracking back to the defense, obviously Ancelotti won't be too different
@AarinH2 To contain Vini Japan needs to focus on Paquetá AND Bruno instead of Vini himself, obviously that is a tough job, Japan to win that match must let go of the posession a bit, any ball that gets lost at the midfield means one of the midfielders linking with the attack.