(European) World Cup Semifinals Preview
Four out of the last five World Cup champions have been European nations including the past three. And the four remaining teams in this World Cup are European. So with 100% of the World Cup Semifinals being from UEFA, it’s a pretty safe bet that we’ll have another European World Cup champion.
We saw yet again at this years tournament that European nations dominated the World Cup. Harry Kane from England leads all scorers at this years World Cup with 6 goals, 3 of which were penalties. Romelu Lukaku from Belgium is 2nd in the tournament with 4 goals and does have an assist. Antoine Griezmann from France is 6th with 3 goals.
France vs. Belgium
France are looking for just there 2nd World Cup title in history. Belgium is 3-0-0 in their last 3 games vs. France including a 4-3 victory in 2015. However; France is 3-0-0 vs. Belgium in later games at the World Cup with the last meeting coming in 1986.
Belgium leads all teams at this years World Cup with 14 goals and they’ll look to rely on Lukaku to score more vs. France. France is the 2nd youngest team at the World Cup and will look to their young studs Striker Kylian Mbappe, Lucas Hernandez, and Benjamin Pavard. All 3 are under 22 years of age by the way and they’ve been meshing flawlessly with Antoine Griezmann.
Croatia vs. England
Google gives England a 41% chance to win this game outright and they’ve been playing lights out soccer this whole tournament. Strangely enough, Croatia have relieved assistant coach Ognjen Vukojevic after a video surfaced of him dedicating their win over Russia to the Ukraine. Croatia’s goalkeeer Danijel Subasic is an injury concern after appearing to hurt his hamstring in the quarter-match. And he wasn’t the only injury.
Defender Sime Vrsaljko also suffered a knee injury during extra-time of their win. With 2 key players potentially either out or extremely limited, England will look to pounce. And there is no secret that England will look upon Harry Kane to yet again shine to try and get England to the World Cup final.
Finally for England, it’s been a while since they’ve been in the World Cup semis…
Things that didn’t exist the last time England reached the semi-finals:
iPhone
Amazon
Android
iPod
Yahoo
YouTube
Snapchat
Wikipedia
Text msgs
BuzzFeed
BlackBerry
Spotify
Tesla
Skype
Uber
Airbnb
Bitcoin
Fitbit
Emojis
eBay
iPad#WorldCup— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) July 7, 2018
My Picks
France OVER Belgium 3-2
England OVER Croatia 2-0
–Brian Berard (@RockyBerard)