BAMPOTTO, Drylaw’s answer to Paul the predicting octopus, runs his eye over this summer’s World Cup hopefuls – and reckons France have the qualities needed to go all the way …
FRANCE are my tip to win the World Cup. They have a solid spine to the team through Lloris, Umtiti, Pogba and Griezmann, and the players surrounding them are all top quality. There’s the best part of an entire squad not made France’s final 23 that would be in with a realistic chance of winning the tournament.
There’s a stability and togetherness in the squad these days that they’ve sorely missed in previous tournaments. They don’t lose many goals, have potential difference makers all over the pitch, and have plenty of big game experience – for me, they are the team to beat.
I think the top scorer will bag the vast majority of their goals in the group matches as things tend to get much cagier after that. As such, you have to look at who has the easiest group, and for me that would be Belgium and England in Group G.
Harry Kane should bag a good few goals against Tunisia and, defensively shambolic Panama. If he manages to pick up a couple after the group games then I think he’s a good bet for top goalscorer.
It would be foolish to overlook the goalscoring prowess of the likes of Messi and Ronaldo, but I have a feeling that they may well receive the “Pele 66” treatment and be booted off the park by some of their opponents.
Looking at their groups, there could be a few tight matches there, although Ronaldo will be delighted at the potential chaos in the Spain camp just now. The other huge name who will top a few lists is Neymar. Brazil are playing very defensively these days, with three holding midfielders, and I think this might hamper them a little. I expect them to be winning games by the odd goal rather than at a canter, and Neymar may not get the number of chances that someone like Kane does.
Speaking of England, I think they’ll make it to the quarter finals. They should qualify from the group comfortably, and whether or not they finish above Belgium shouldn’t make too much difference going forward. They are likely to face Colombia or Poland in the next stage, and should beat either of them.
Then come the big boys, and that’s where England’s inexperience could cost them dearly. Very few of the squad have experience in huge club matches (only two of Liverpool’s Champions League final team are in the England squad) and none of them have played in any really meaningful international matches.
I think the quarters are as far as they’ll go. I’ll even go as far as to predict that they’ll lose out on penalties … again.
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