The round of 16 for the 2022 World Cup completed today and the quarterfinals will begin on Friday 12/9/2022. The big surprise from this round was the win of Morocco over Spain today in a penalty shootout. My neighbor's son, a 16 year old soccer player, and I spoke about a week ago (after the first round of the group stage) and both of us agreed that Spain at that time looked like a team that could win the whole thing. Since that time Spain had a draw with Germany, lost to Japan and now lost to Morocco. After the Japan loss I thought that Spain was actually in a good bracket location that would favor a long run but it was not to be.
So in the quarterfinals there are 5 European teams (France, Portugal, England, Croatia and Netherlands), 2 South American teams (Brazil and Argentina) and one African team (Morocco). I have listed each of these groups in what I think is the order of strongest to weakest teams though as the previous rounds have demonstrated anything can happen in this tournament. My predictions for the next set of games are:
Agentina over Netherlands on Friday
Brazil over Croatia on Friday
France over England on Saturday
Portugal over Morocco on Saturday
If it does turn out this way then we should have some great semi-final matchups with the two South American teams meeting on one side of the bracket and two European powers meeting on the other side of the bracket. I can't wait to see all of these games!!
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