France won the World Cup in Moscow, and then in the blink of an eye, Manchester United were beating Leicester 2-1 in the opening game of the new Premier League season. There were a lot of things that we learned from the world’s biggest football festival in Moscow.
England are really good from set-pieces, Germany aren’t infallible and perhaps most importantly, there’s no point in trying to predict anything because football is a chaotic business. In May, 888 Sport surveyed one thousand people in the UK and got their predictions for the tournament, in this article we take a look at how those predictions panned out.
Germany will retain the World Cup
The fans in the survey weren’t alone in thinking that Die Mannschaft would win the World Cup for the second-time in a row. When Leroy Sane was omitted from the squad, pundits and fans remarked how good the Germans must be if they could leave a player like Leroy Sane out of their squad.
Well, the predictions were wrong. Despite a last-minute Toni Kroos winner against Sweden in the second group game, Germany crashed out after a disastrous 2-0 loss to South Korea in their final game.
England would be the biggest disappointment of the tournament
Okay, you can let them off on this one. England have made a habit of disappointing their fans for decades since 1966. In fact the Three Lions hadn’t won a knock-out match at a major tournament since a 1-0 victory against Ecuador in Germany 2006.
However, England proved all the pundits wrong, reaching the semi-finals and even managing to win a penalty shoot-out for the first time since Euro ’96.
Russia would be the dirtiest team at the tournament
The host nation were derided by all and sundry well before the first game, in fact their opening match against Saudi Arabia was being dubbed as the worst World Cup game ever before it kicked-off.
The Russians went on to win 5-0 and qualified from their group to face 2010 champions Spain in the Round of 16. To further shock the world, they dumped the Spanish out on the penalties before facing Croatia in the quarter-finals.
Surveyed punters had Russia down as the team to commit the most fouls in the tournament, but it was actually the team that vanquished them Croatia. The eventual runners-up committed 114 fouls compared to Russia’s 95, however they did play the most minutes of any team in Russia.
Summary
The World Cup in Russia was chaotic and unpredictable, with plenty of shocks occurring. The one thing it tells us about football is that it’s almost pointless to try and predict anything.
And then of course, who predicted that Leicester City would win the Premier League two years ago? No-one could have envisaged Andrea Bocelli serenading Claudio Ranieri and the Premier League trophy at the King Power Stadium!