⚽⚽⚽Official 2026 World Cup Thread⚽⚽⚽

Hawkfan_08*

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Jul 2, 2025
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I’ve watched a crap ton of the World Cup but of course, thus is one I had to miss. Oh well. At least it was for golf.

Total hijack but I had the dumbest round of golf ever recorded. It's like I just forgot how to play.

-1 through 4, missed some shots but still stuck the ball well so I went to +3 for a 39 at the turn but not mad (I'm a 12 HC). I go on to shoot a 50 on the back nine hitting all but one fairway out of the box. 3 penalties, three 3 putts, three holes with two chips around the hole.
 
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Wobmam Rulez!

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Aug 4, 2025
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Total hijack but I had the dumbest round of golf ever recorded. It's like I just forgot how to play.

-1 through 4, missed some shots but still stuck the ball well so I went to +3 for a 39 at the turn but not mad (I'm a 12 HC). I go on to shoot a 50 on the back nine hitting all but one fairway out of the box. 3 penalties, three 3 putts, three holes with two chips around the hole.
The Jordan Spieth experience.
 

Hawkfan_08*

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Alright. We have hit the final stages of this thing. From 48 down to the best 16 teams in the world. US have made it to the bare minimum for this tournament to be a success.

From the group stages:

Biggest individual winner: Cape Verde. Three draws as the smallest nation in the WC. That includes a massive draw against Spain.

Bigger individual loser: Uruguay.
They didn't even get to ride home together and their coach was sacked before he got home.

Biggest continental conference winners: Africa.
9 of 10 teams qualified. So many that I wrote off before the tournament began. In addition to Cape Verde that list would include DRC and Algeria.

Biggest continental conference losers:
Asia

When one of your two teams that qualified for the knockouts is Australia, that really only counts as 1 (Japan). South Korea not advancing was pretty surprising.

Overall, who advanced to the knockouts:
Africa 9 out of 10
South America 5 out of 6 (why do they get 6? They only have like 10 qualifying teams)
Europe 13 out of 16
North America 3 out of 6
Asia 2 out of 9
Oceania 0 out of 1

From the first knockout round of 32:

Biggest individual winner: Cape Verde again

Even in a loss, they gained so many eyeballs. They have guys that are going to get contracts at bigger clubs. They played fantastic today and took Argentina to the wire.

For another real answer... France. They look unbeatable right now.

Biggest individual loser: Germany.
They seem to be stuck... they went from winning it all in 2014 to struggling mightily since. They just don't seem to have that killer instinct any more. Paraguay just sat in and Germany couldn't handle it.

Biggest continental winner: North America.
All three teams that qualified move on to the round of 16. Yes, all 3 are host nations but we have all done the job. South America also gets a nod for qualifying 5 of 6.

Biggest continental loser: Africa.
After going 90% from the knockouts, Africa needed a shootout win for Egypt over Australia (which ended Asia's run in the tournament all together).

Moving to the last 16

My top contender: France
My second contender: Morocco

My darkhorse: USA (yay!) or Mexico (barf)

My team people aren't talking enough about: Colombia
 

Hawkfan_08*

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Canada will end with a solid performance but Morocco finished when it mattered.
Outshot Morocco 9-5. Corners 11-1.

Goals, the only thing that matters, 0-3.
 

EdgarAllenPodolak

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Sep 20, 2023
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And so it begins. A Tartan Army hero decides to stick around. World Cup players signing with MLS. Will we see the wave of tournament stars like the MLS inaugural founding players? I read that MLS players have the most starts and minutes of any league outside the Big Five of Europe.

 
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Hawkfan_08*

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France might be my new least favorite team

This playacting is ridiculous.

France does that a lot but Paraguay was much worse. They felt their only hope was to ugly up the game as much as possible. The flopping and diving was horrid. The ref needed to use his cards for that stuff. There is an anti-flopping rule that is supposed to be a yellow. Just give them out.

That game was awful.
 

RockyMtNole

Heisman
Jul 1, 2025
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France does that a lot but Paraguay was much worse. They felt their only hope was to ugly up the game as much as possible. The flopping and diving was horrid. The ref needed to use his cards for that stuff. There is an anti-flopping rule that is supposed to be a yellow. Just give them out.

That game was awful.
Yeah, had Paraguay won they’d be my new least favorite.
I only watched the last 20 min - sounds like I didn’t miss much