Local World Cup interest

Group A saw Luis Suárez’ and Chris­t­ian Stu­ani’s Uruguay as favourites in what did not prove a dif­fi­cult group for them. They won all three games, with hosts Rus­sia sur­pris­ing many by beat­ing a dis­ap­point­ing Egypt, who then even lost to Saudi Ara­bia to fin­ish bot­tom of the group. Suárez did not get off to the best of starts in­di­vid­u­ally, miss­ing sev­eral chances in the first group game against Egypt, but his re­la­tion­ship with Ca­vani im­proved and he scored in both of the other group games.

Spain won Group B in dra­matic fash­ion ahead of Por­tu­gal, Mo­rocco and Iran. Al­though their squad in­cludes four Barça play­ers, one sur­prise in Julen Lopetegui’s ini­tial se­lec­tion was Sergi Roberto miss­ing out. Lopetegui was of course re­moved from his post for ne­go­ti­at­ing with Real Madrid be­hind the Span­ish FA’s back, leav­ing for­mer Madrid and Spain cap­tain Fer­nando Hi­erro in charge of af­fairs. This is a spe­cial tour­na­ment for Piqué and Ini­esta in par­tic­u­lar, be­cause it is their last in­ter­na­tional tour­na­ment and World Cup. After draw­ing 3-3 with Por­tu­gal in the open­ing game, Spain strug­gled past Iran be­fore a late equaliser, dis­al­lowed and then re­in­stated by VAR, saw them on to a date with Rus­sia in the round of 16. Yas­sine Bounou’s Mo­rocco were fan­cied be­fore the tour­na­ment, but lost to both Iran and Por­tu­gal.

Group C had one of the tour­na­ment favourites in the shape of a youth­ful France under coach and World Cup win­ner Di­dier De­schamps. Aus­tralia, Den­mark and Peru were the other teams in the group. Samuel Umtiti was ex­cel­lent for Barça this sea­son, in­jury aside, and the tour­na­ment could prove a great op­por­tu­nity for Ous­mane Dem­bele to show what he can do and de­velop fur­ther as a player. De­spite Umtiti lit­er­ally hand­ing Aus­tralia a way back into the first game by han­dling in the area and al­low­ing the Soc­ceroos to equalise, France won the game 2-1 and topped the group with 7 points.

Group D had one Li­onel Messi rep­re­sent­ing Ar­gentina. He will be des­per­ate to do well after Ar­gentina lost the last World Cup final against Ger­many fol­low­ing con­sec­u­tive losses to Chile in Copa Amer­ica fi­nals. The prob­lem for Jorge Sam­paoli’s side is their pos­si­ble over-re­liance on Messi’s unique skills. De­spite miss­ing a penalty in the first game against Ice­land, which ended in a 1-1 draw, and being thrashed by Ivan Rakitic’s ex­cel­lent Croa­tia 3-0, Messi played a key role in his coun­try’s 2-1 de­feat of Nige­ria to see them squeeze through to meet France in the next round. Po­ten­tial dark horses Croa­tia, with one of the strongest mid­fields in the tour­na­ment, com­pris­ing, among oth­ers, Rakitic, Mod­ric and Ko­vacic, won the group to face Den­mark in the round of 16.

Group E had two Barcelona play­ers in Brazil’s squad - Philippe Coutinho and Paulinho - and Es­panyol’s Óscar Duarte for Costa Rica. After win­ning the South Amer­i­can qual­i­fy­ing in dom­i­nant fash­ion, Brazil were in­volved in an un­ex­pected re­sult from the first round of games, draw­ing 1-1 with Switzer­land, al­though Coutinho’s curl­ing open­ing goal from a dis­tance may prove to be one of the best of the tour­na­ment. Tite’s side then won their next two games, with both Coutinho and Paulinho scor­ing, to set up a tie with Mex­ico. Duarte’s Costa Rica fin­ished bot­tom of the group with one point.

Group F had an in­ter­est­ing mix of teams, with cham­pi­ons Ger­many start­ing as favourites. Marc-Andre ter Ste­gen was in­cluded in the squad, but did not start due to Joachim Löw’s be­lief in the vet­eran Manuel Neuer. The hold­ers were the shock of the group stage as they were knocked out fol­low­ing de­feats to Mex­ico and South Korea. Al­though Mex­ico won their first two games, it was Swe­den who won the group by beat­ing them 3-0 in the final match .

That is all that has been de­cided at the time of writ­ing, with Thomas Ver­mae­len the Barça rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Group G look­ing likely to start for Bel­gium in a game nei­ther they nor Eng­land will want to win, given that top­ping the group will put them in the more dif­fi­cult side of the draw. The Bel­gians com­fort­ably beat Panama and Tunisia in their first game and look set for a good tour­na­ment, while Eng­land also looked in good shape, trounc­ing Panama to the tune of 6-1.

Group H was the only one to have play­ers from all three top-flight Cata­lan clubs, with Barça’s Yerry Mina, Es­panyol’s Car­los Sánchez and Girona’s Mo­jica all in the Colom­bia squad. De­spite being slight favourites, Colom­bia lost their first game 2-1 to Japan after hav­ing Sánchez sent off in the third minute. How­ever, they bounced back to beat a dis­ap­point­ing Poland 3-0 and could even top the group with a win against Sene­gal.

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