South Africa shock South Korea sans Son

I hope you like the alliterative headline, I tried an alternative one down below too. I’ve got S-words for days.

Group A: Czechia’s tournament ends vs. Mexico

Czechia vs Mexico was a bit of a weird matchup due to the competing interests for both sides. Czechia needed a win to have any chance of qualifying to the round of 32. Meanwhile, Mexico had already clinched 1st in the group, so they fielded a somewhat rotated side, including giving a start to phenom Gilberto Mora.

The issues concerning Czechia from the first two matches carried into their encounter with Mexico. They’ve not been consistently dynamic from open play. Although they were able to play through Mexico a few times, it didn’t lead to dangerous opportunities. Their two best moments in the first half came from finding a hole in Mexico’s mid-block immediately after recycling possession to set up a deflected cut-back from Pavel Sulc towards Denis Visinsky for a contested shot in the 6th minute. The 26th minute saw Czechia progress through a stretched Mexico press with a give and go involving Adam Hlozek and Visinsky, who got his shot blocked in the box after some neat footwork.

Because of this, they’ve had to rely on set-pieces to create chances. Through two matches, they had the fourth highest proportion of their expected goals come from set-pieces, according to Opta Analyst. That remained the case tonight, with roughly half of their 0.47 xG coming from dead ball deliveries. There was a lack of dynamism out of possession as well. Czechia has not pressed much in this tournament. In the few instances that their man-to-man set up out of possession won the ball in or around Mexico’s half, they could not turn defense into attack with any conviction. This is not a surprise given the lack of high-end talent at their disposal.

For Mexico, they weren’t impressive in their own right but part of it was the lack of chemistry from having a different starting XI. They were able to have some moments of manipulating Czechia’s man-marking against them, including Gilberto Mora nearly slipping Luis Romo into the box for a big chance in the 51st minute (Mora had some bright progressive passing moments tonight). It didn’t happen often yet that ultimately didn’t matter since Czechia began making some crucial defensive mistakes which gifted Mexico their first and second goals to effectively put the match away. The opening goal came from Romo somehow winning a 1v3 around the halfway line to play Mateo Chávez into space, who skipped past Michal Sadílek for a big chance and slotted it home. The second goal featured some more substandard defending from Czechia and Julián Quiñones eventually jamming the loose ball into the open net.

Czechia will depart the World Cup as one of the tournament’s worst sides, even if they were a questionable penalty called against them away vs South Africa from possibly sneaking through to the round of 32 as one of the eight 3rd place teams. There are still questions over how good Mexico are, but they at least won all three group matches (the first time ever accomplished by them). El Tri get to wait and see who’ll be their R32 opponent at Mexico City Stadium on Tuesday. —MM

South Africa score stunning success, Son sits for shite South Korea

When Son Heung-Min was substituted in the 57th minute of South Korea’s game against Mexico, it was a surprising move that I defended. Even though his team was chasing a goal and Son is their best scorer, he’s aging, and not really able to play 90 minutes multiple times a week anymore. Saving him for the finale against South Africa to make sure he’d be fresh to fire his team to 2nd in the group made sense.

Instead, Son was shockingly benched for the group finale, and his team’s attack was worse off for it. He entered at halftime as part of a triple change, but his team never really got going.

South Africa turned in their first impressive performance of the tournament, deservedly defeating the Koreans 1-0, and securing second for themselves. South Korea will now have to wait to see if their 3 points and -1 goal differential are enough to secure progression as one of the 8 best third-placed teams.

Thapelo Maseko’s goal came at the end of a sharp counter-attack, one of several by Bafana Bafana during the match.

Apologies if this seems wildly condescending, but I will not be sad to see the back of Group A. None of these teams have been terribly impressive, and it would be quite shocking to see either South Africa or South Korea advance to the round of 32. I’m reserving judgment on El Tri, who could only play and defeat the opponents in front of them. —KM

Group B: Take me to Golden Gate, I will assimilate

FIFA have released a mammoth 19-song official album for this World Cup, but precisely zero of them may be classified as bangers. As a result, Dubioza Kolektiv’s “I Am from Bosnia - Take Me to America” has become the unofficial World Cup anthem.

Fittingly, then, Almir Hasanbegović’s prophecy is close to being fulfilled now. The Dragons will be taken an hour’s drive past the Golden Gate Bridge to the San Francisco Bay Area stadium, where they will assimilate on the pitch with the United States men’s national team.

Sergej Barbarez’s side needed to come away with all three points against Qatar to make sure of advancing. They started well on the front foot and looked to pepper Mahmud Abunada’s goal. When they took the lead just before the half-hour mark, all six of their attempts had come from outside the box.

It was teenage sensation Kerim Alajbegović who opened the scoring with a powerful effort after cutting all the way across to the right. The Leverkusen-bound winger was the clear standout in this game, as he also completed six of nine take-on attempts and left a fair few defenders in his wake.

A deflected own goal quickly doubled the difference, but Bosnia and Herzegovina didn’t exactly control proceedings well thereafter. They never looked entirely solid out of possession, so when Qatar seemed to remember that they could actually play football just before half-time, the game was in the balance. Al-Annabi’s all-time record appearance maker Hassan Al-Haydos halved the deficit, and Pedro Miguel could even have levelled the scoreline had his shot been just a fraction more to the inside of the post.
Bosnia and Herzegovina tried to circulate possession a lot more after half-time, but couldn’t establish comfortable control even though their opponents struggled to pose any sustained threat. It was only after the 80th minute when Ermin Mahmić scored at the end of a set-piece scramble that the result looked truly beyond doubt.

It wasn’t entirely pretty, but the only thing that will matter to Bosnians around the world is that their team is through to a first-ever World Cup knockout fixture. —NS

Canada’s loss might have been accidentally genius

🎶 Hello game state, my old friend. You explain an xG chart again. 🎶 

Yep, you’re seeing that right. After going ahead 2-0 on Canada, Switzerland proceeded to take no more shots. Les Rouges were getting comfortably outplayed until the 57th minute, at which point they started playing football. The end result is a set of xG values that show someone who didn’t watch the game that Canada “deserved” a better result, and Switzerland were “lucky.” This is why single-game xG doesn’t tell you much, folks.

This was a fairly even matchup, besides the single individual errors that Canada’s center backs and goalkeeper made. Unfortunately, those things are part of a football match. It was a pretty serious letdown for the hosts, but thanks to wild results in Group A, they might end up with an easier round of 32 game than group winners Switzerland. Canada will play South Africa next, while the Swiss await their 3rd place matchup, who I suspect will be a more dangerous side than Bafana Bafana.

I end this set of fairly disjointed thoughts with the radar of Swiss goal-scorer Johan Manzambi, who is probably going to a Premier League team for a shitload of money. —KM

Group C: Brazil announce themselves with pummeling of Scotland

Maybe there's a team somewhere in the World Cup who can shake off big early errors against Brazil, but it's certainly not Scotland.

We're not going to pick on any particular player, as the entire Scotland team seemed wobbly in a 3-0 loss to Brazil. A narrow defeat would have probably been enough for the Scots to carry on into the round of 32, but Scott McKenna's early turnover to hand Vini Jr. a goal was followed by a relentless onslaught. Brazil's 3.95 xG (per Futi) on the day has only been exceeded at this World Cup by Canada's demolition of nine-man Qatar and Germany's rout of Curaçao. Scotland will need something of a miracle to hang on in the 3rd-place rankings as it stands.

The issue wasn't so much that Scotland were pressed to death, as is often the case when you see modern teams ship this many chances. In fact, Scotland were able to put up 1.02 xG of their own, which isn't anything amazing but does speak to a team that wasn't completely helpless for 90 minutes. It's just that when Scotland made errors, they were in the catastrophe class rather than something you might be able to recover from.

Vini Jr. scored again after Andy Robertson's attempt to complete a pass after winning the ball inside the box was just slow enough to allow Matheus Cunha to lunge over and produce a deflection. It wasn't the only mistake on the sequence — Danilo fought through John McGinn's challenge to keep the play alive despite this being something less than a 50/50 ball, and Nathan Patterson simply lost track of Vini Jr. — but the dominoes don't start tumbling if the pass out of the back finds someone in blue.

So the mistakes were big inside the box, but it also went badly further upfield. Anyone playing Brazil knows they have to deal with Bruno Guimarães, either by lowering how often he receives the ball, making sure he gets his touches further from goal, or at least facing away from goal.

Scotland…did not do that.

The xA figure in that image is a glitch (Futi credited him with 1.1 xA on the night), but what should really worry Brazil's knockout foes is that radar. The Newcastle playmaker is finding teammates ahead of him into central areas, and despite the lack of a true right back in the squad, he's also had options overlapping him on the right.

If you can't bottle Brazil's main chance creator up, and you can't track Vini Jr., you're probably in trouble. Throw in the mistakes from the Scots, and if anything they were lucky to only lose by three. Morocco showed it can be done, and to be fair the 2nd-place finisher in Group F that will face the Seleção will be more adept (okay, Japan or the Netherlands…my doubts about Sweden aren't going to disappear if they somehow sneak out of Group F in 2nd).

It's just that this match felt like Brazil had truly arrived at the World Cup for the first time, especially when counter-pressing. This looked like a team that can actually meet the expectations that always follow the yellow jersey. —JA

Haiti entertain, but Morocco are too good

While Haiti exit this World Cup with 0 points, I felt they played a brand of counter-attacking football that was fairly entertaining and ambitious, given their pedigree. Unlike some of the other “bad teams,” they were a real credit to the tournament, and I’m glad I got to watch them.

Unfortunately for the Haitians, they are just a lot less talented than Brazil and Morocco, and the latter really put on a show despite spending long stretches of this match trailing or drawing. A bonehead OG and a banger from Haiti’s Wilson Isidor aside, this was an impressive attacking performance from the Atlas Lions, who were every much as dangerous as the score indicates.

It’s been a brilliant World Cup so far for Morocco’s central attacking midfielder Ismael Saibari, who’s already agreed a move from PSV Eindhoven to Bayern Munich at the completion of the tournament. He might not have been too well known to casual fans before this World Cup, but Bayern supporters are probably a bit more excited about their new man now. —KM

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