God defence is such a nightmare to choose. Even if the defender isn't at fault for a goal he still gets docked points.

oooh the wildcard! that might save me from my horrible choices lol. it’s now or never.

yeah, flores might not start against france now that guerrero returns— either he or farfan will sit out, and i think farfan is the better shooter. flores might play, but it’s not a sure bet. and they’re playing france! very long odds.

yeah im the globalista. someone has to be these days of rising nationalisms ha ha.

—

poland lost this first half

oh, poor poland!— daaaamn

that 2nd goal was HARSH. legal, apparently. i’d say barely so.

gonna make a little prediction. maybe it’s obvious but has to do w/ the leagues.

cronaldo will not start the next couple of games. portugal should save him for the important matches. he’ll start in bench and be brought on if needed.

yes/no/maybe? otherwise i’ll buy him now ha ha ha ha

in a hurry and with few minutes to go set up new team


costa(spa)(c) guedes (por) lukaku (bel)
silva (por) sanchez (uru) meza (arg) busquets (spa) debruyne (bel)
maguire (eng) gimenez (uru) nacho (spa) varane (fra)
courtois (bel)
—
a nigerian keeper + defender in the perma-bench

if there’s time i might check names and tweak more this desperate improvisation

nope, no more time

—

ps sorry germans i think jogi loew has lost his marbles

My post Wildcard team:

Ronaldo (Po); Costa (Sp); Suarez (Ur)
Golovin (Ru); Gallinsky (Ru); Isco (Sp); Nandez (Ur); Gallardo (Me)
Kimmich (Ge); Alba (Sp); Godin (Ur); Danilo (Br); Meunier (Be)
Idohu (Ni); Halldorsson (Ic)

Also maximum captained. Most of my heavy hitters play on the same day so it takes away the dillemma of which one to choose.

i regret not managing the budget to get cronaldo because that beast is gonna beat all the golden boot records

so...

Portugal may have celebrated like they beat Spain, but they did only get a draw. Hardly a position of strength that might justify them leaving out their best player.The 1 and 2 spots in that group will likely come down to goal difference now. So Portugal will (like Spain) be going all-out attack in both their remaining games. Plus Ronaldo himself will want the Golden Boot. If he doesn't start the next two games, and frankly any that Portugal are involved in, I'll be amazed.

this is what i get for trying to put together a whole team in less than 45 minutes

Doping :D

I've not used my wildcard yet so everything is the same for me, except that I took B. Silva out for Busquets. I've also kept Griezmann in but they've got Peru next so I'm a bit nervy about that decision. You'd also think Suarez will get a couple of goals against the Saudis. Then again, the way my luck is he'll score an own goal and get sent off.

Now that I think about it, had I participated in the fantasy league the perfect name for my team would have been F.C. Ivanka. For obeeious reasons, you follow.

For this round I transferred both of my goalies, because my original picks weren't actually playing. So now I've got Halldorson of Iceland and Akinfeev of Russia as the sub.
And I maxed in on my captain, De Bruyne. Let's hope he doesn't get the red card :P

demonyo is massacring us today

I only hope the Maximum Captain does what I think it does: 'automatically makes the highest scoring player from your final playing 11 as the captain'. That's what it says in the How To Play section. So Tunic, I'm not sure it actually matters if you captain DeBruyne or not.

Hold my beer

Winner the absolute worst game of the tournament is the Uruguay-Saudi game. Swear they've doubled the length of matches just for this game. Ah well, gets me some points for the league.

uruguay is king of the 1-0

i picked a defender and a midfielders and they got me some clean sheets and the assist.

will be interesting to see what happens vs. russia. i’d check the water supply wherever it is they’re staying.

portugal disappointing for me also. after the goal they basically sucked and let morocco get up in their faces.

bernardo silva got me aaaaaaaaaaaall of one point being subbed out at 58 minnutes lololol, but wonderboy guedes got me also the 2 miserable points. not the attacking powerhouse i had been expecting.

Something DEFINITELY going on with that Russian team.

Boy am I glad I changed Silva for Busquets!:D He's gonna do shit in his game now haha

fuck! dani carvajal back from injury and no nacho

o well

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I love Spain but for God sake, just shoot every now and again.

Costa looks like a Red Card waiting to happen.

I can imagine Mourinho recording this game and putting it in his porn section.

Spain really could throw this away

costaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

Has to be the flukiest goal ever but it's good for Spain and it's good for me. So it's all good.

In it's own way, this is a fucking great game!

oh shit there go my busquets points wait no wait?

—

this is taking forever w/ the VAR

—

still a wakeup call for españa

fuck man. offside!

didn’t have time to reply to this early but yeah, i was impressed with iran’s danger upfront actually. could have gone either way actually especially if you consider costa’s goal was some weird pinball thing. i mean he was where he needed to be, and created the situation, but still, more luck than skill.

oh yeah and costa was my captain. i wanted even more luck than this!

Man Iran really played balls-out. This could have easily been a 2-0 match in favor of Iran.


Fuck Spain. Fuck Spain forever.

Spain were lucky in the end. Maybe if Iran had been a bit less negative in the 1st half they'd have nicked it. Ifs and buts. Either way, Spain aren't really clicking.

funny you should say that cuz the first game gave me a totally different impression and i thought “i like these guys for champions!”

speaking of clicking/not clicking, really curious to see how germany fares in the next game. i gave them up for the fantasy game but irl i’d like to see them bounce back. there are some great players there. granted they are not all in world-champion shape anymore but still—quality individuals. young ones like kimmich or timo are very promising.

last tangent to add from this is that depending on prices and available technology i might start watching the prem next year. i know i’ve failed at that before, even when my service included them, but this world cup i feel like there are too many players i should know and have been missing, and now with germany’s apparent decline history is eluding me a bit. e.g., salah, saneh, lukaku, kane, debruyne at his peak, and many others, some of which are bundesliga fugitives (dortmund without aubameyang has not been the same).

yeah...

It's a pity that Jahanbakhsh didn't play in the starting line-up for Iran yesterday. After all he was this year's top scorer in Dutch competition. So I do wonder if they could have scored a goal more easily with him in the team.
But we'll never know, unless they schedule a replay :-D

Iran was very impressive yesterday, especially after they un-parked the bus and started attacking.

But I'm glad though. Costa scored which means points for me.

It's because their initial plan was not to score goals but to destroy the game. After conceding the goal from Spain and opening up the game it made more sense to send him in.

came in to the last few minutes of denmark/australia and looks lively—the telemundo commentators are saying it’s been a great game so far.

don’t know yet who’s scored, i wanted to put in poulsen in my fantasy team but ended up going with the portuguese kid.

anyway i’ll see what highlights are offered in halftime

—

oh poulsen got carded lol

I think Spain are OK but clearly not firing on all cylinders. Busquets has been off it a bit (something I never thought I'd ever say) and he's key for them.. But I certainly haven't written Spain off


I think they have the basis for a new team that could be great but on their own terms. They need to replace Loew with someone who can start to give them their own identity. As bad as Germany were against Mexico, Kimmich has been one of the stand out players for me so far. The kind of defender I can imagine a manager like Pep making record breaking offers to Bayern for. (which by definition makes him a mis-categorosed winger, but still).
.

I hope you do get to see it. I'm beyond any kind of national bias and I've sampled a fair few other leagues, but the Prem is something really unique. But I know it costs money.

Good game, both teams really up for it