Germany to Win the World Cup...?? : World Cup Russia 2018

Germany to Win the World Cup...?? : World Cup Russia 2018

In my last Blog, I forecast that the following 8 teams would be successful in making it through to the final 32 of the World Cup qualifying process: -

Italy / Croatia / Denmark / Ivory Coast / Peru / Northern Ireland / Australia / Senegal / Tunisia

Well, I got 5 out of the 8 right, so not too bad. Almost no one was expecting Italy to be defeated by Sweden and miss out on their first World Cup Finals since 1958, but they did..! Switzerland managed to bully their way past Northern Ireland, and Ivory Coast conspired to loose out in their qualifying group to Morocco.

So there you have it, the final 32 teams for next year’s World Cup Finals.

The Final Draw for the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia is happening in Moscow on Friday 1 December, and will start at 18:00 local time. It is live on TV here in New Zealand at 4am on Saturday, and I will set my alarm to get up and see it.

The draw itself is generally a very convoluted and complex thing, and I have found a YouTube video to explain it: https://youtu.be/jDkn83FwioA

Obviously being a geek, I have conducted my own unofficial draw to see if I can guess which matches we will be seeing in the opening group games, and come up with the following:

M4 Costa Rica v Saudi Arabia

M17 Russia v Sweden

M25 France v Iceland

M39 Panama v Belgium

As I am a bit of a nerd, I have also done a complete mock-up of the whole of the Tournament based upon who I think will progress through the group stages to identify who we might see in the succeeding games:

M51 Brazil v Sweden

M56 Poland v Switzerland

M62 Belgium v Portugal

M64 Germany v Belgium

So I am forecasting that it will be a Germany v Belgium final, with Germany going on to lift the World Cup in 2018…!! 

I wish I could predict England for the World Cup......, but that would be madness...