Eli's Picks

Continuing Rabett Run's run through the World Cup Groups, Eli comes to Groups EFGandH.  Remember the point is to pick games worth watching, not the winners.  Given the cost of tickets and travel, this is not necessarily a minor consideration, and even those of us who watch on TV have some investment. Todays Brazil-Croatia game was, as the Rabett recalls, as good an opening game as he has seen in a while.  Not a work of art mind you, but Cruyff never won the World Cup either.

Group E:  Switzerland, Ecuador, France and Hondouras.  Switzerland-France.  Switzerland overperformed in the qualifiers, France the other way about.  The shame is that Franck Ribery is out of the cup, but France has some exciting players and seems to be coming right.  They will not go far, neither will Switzerland, but this should be a good game.  Xherdan Shaqiri is the player to watch for Switzerland, and Karim Benzema has gotten hot for Real Madrid and France.  Not an exciting group, but this should be a good game.

Group F:  Argentina, Bosnia and Hertzogovina, Iran, and Nigeria.  As the last warm up game for the US showed, Nigeria is not ready for prime time, also Iran which makes Argentina vs. BH the only game worth watching in this group.  The former Yugoslavia teams ain't bad, and BH could make some problems for Argentina early on, but really, only Judith Curry would bet against Argentina in this group.  No stadium wave here.

Group G:  aka the group of death, Germany, Portugal, Ghana, USA.   An interesting group of very different teams.  Germany is clearly the class of the group whose only weakness is that they have 20 midfield players and no attacking ones.  Miroslav Klose is older than Eli.  Portugal is the best one player team in the world, and with Cristiano Ronaldo being in and out of ill health they could finish first or fourth in the group.  The fun game, if it happens, would be Germany vs. Portugal with Philipp Lahm biting Ronaldo's ankles (who knows if they would be directly matched).  The other Germany fullbacks are no match for Ronaldo.  Low might double team him with Lahm as a defensive midfield shadow.  If that Ronaldo goes missing due to injury (he has had a very hard year), then the game of the group might by US-Ghana, with the US playing from the break lead by Michael Bradley in the same way they did against Nigeria.

Group H:  Belgium, Algeria, Russia, Republic of Korea.  The game Eli likes here is Belgium vs. Korea.  Belgium has a golden generation that can play and score and is pretty young at this point. The Koreans play a really aggressive pressing game and are fast.

Remember, it is not who won and lost but how you watched the game.  Eli had a couple of pints.