The World Cup quarterfinals are here. What's likely to be a Cavani-less Uruguay, the Charrúa will have to stifle a potent France attack. Meanwhile, Belgium will look to get off to a better start versus Brazil than what they did against Japan.
Brazilian soccer players are like American basketball players — no matter where in the world there’s a professional soccer team, there’s likely to be a Brazilian playing for it. Brazil players salaries range from the lowest leagues to the highest-paid players in the world.
The best of the thousands of professional Brazilian soccer players make up the Seleção, and the 23 players chosen to represent Brazil’s World Cup team. All are well compensated by their professional clubs, but not all Brazil players salaries are created equally on the 2018 squad.
It’s coming home. At least that’s what just about every English person is saying right now. Laugh at them if you want, but based off how this England side is playing right now, it might actually be coming home.
Many fans would associate England with being one of the most underwhelming sides on the international stage. In terms of World Cup performance, England made the quarterfinals in 2006, followed that up with a Round of 16 finish in 2010 and then in 2014, they failed to make it out of the group stage.
When Denmark and Croatia fell into a penalty shootout after a 1-1 deadlock, Denmark’s Nicolai Jorgensen failed to deliver. With that failure, the 27-year-old doomed himself to the role of a lifetime: the third villain in the next John Wick flick.
Jorgenson also received an alarming amount of online abuse — the Danish Football Association (DFA) even reported death threats!
On Tuesday, the Danish FA tweeted this:
England finished off the Round of 16 Tuesday with a win over Colombia on penalties. It led me to think that we may be living in a parallel universe if England won a knockout game via a shootout, but no one is complaining — expect for Radamel Falcao and Jose Pekerman.
This has been one of the hardest lineups to make, simply because there were plenty of outstanding performances.
Without further ado, here's the best XI from the Round of 16. As always, a simple 4-4-2 formation is the go for us.
Brazil takes on Belgium in the second quarterfinal of the 2018 World Cup at Kazan Arena on Friday, July 6 at 2:00 p.m. ET. The match is a broadcaster’s dream with the likes of Neymar and Philippe Coutinho taking on Romelu Lukaku and Eden Hazard. It’ll be a high-octane affair with the winner moving on to Saint Petersburg to play either France or Uruguay in the semifinals.
We’re still trying to figure out if England is any good or if Sweden is as good as its results suggest. Our World Cup 2018 quarterfinal England vs Sweden prediction for their match on Saturday in Samara takes into account what both teams have and have not accomplished so far, as a team that’s beaten up on some really bad teams will go head-to-head with a team that made it through the Group of Death.