Re:
Brullnux said:
Casemiro is so important for brazil/real. I've never really rated him but seeing fernandinho in his position today makes me realise how essential he is. Fernandinho was horrific today, he let hazard, De Bruyne and Lukaku get past him so easily.
France v Belgium is going to be interesting, both teams have leaky defences and play on the counter, but France seem to have a stronger midfield and I imagine Mbappe (or even dembele) will seriously hurt the Belgian defence with their pace
Despite what the scoreline of the Argentina game might suggest, France's defence isn't leaky. By a lot of metrics, it's actually the best in the tournament. Argentina could only really create three chances and they did a good job of converting each and every one of those but conceding three chances to a team with the firepower of Argentina isn't bad. The other games, the defence has been dominant. Varane and Umtiti are by far the best centre-back pair left in the tournament and they have finally started to gel. Hernandez has been outstanding at left-back and Pavard started out pretty shaky but has really grown in confidence as the tournament progressed. Even Lloris looks good at the moment.
The interesting part is that France defence has been great at shutting down the number one weapon of the other team (for example Suarez today didn't get a shot off or even a touch inside the french box) but Belgium is much more multi-dimensional than the teams France has played to date. We'll see if they can adjust.
On the other hand, Belgium has left tons of gaps and has given up a bunch of goals without the excuse that their opponents are converting their chances at an unsustainable rate. They really are that bad. Meunier is their only good option as a fullback and he won't play. After seeing Douglas Costa tear open the left side of their defence, I have no idea who's going to stop Mbappé.
The real difference though is in midfield. France has looked far more organized in their pressing and has a big edge in term of physicality in the middle of the pitch (this is actually the one defining feature of that French team). Kanté, Pogba and Matuidi can run any team into the ground (Giroud and Griezmann have very high work rates too). While Belgium deserves a ton of credit for getting their creators to buy into their defensive scheme they just don't compare in term of ability to cover ground. Expect them to start to really tire around the hour mark. If Belgium can't get an early goal, they are going to be in a lot of trouble.
On the other side, Croatia is a much better unit than Russia but they often seem to play like less than the sum of their parts in the knockout stage. They have a lot of old legs and the extra time against Denmark will have done them no favour. Still, they are a class above Russia and should advance as I don't see them play with the same passive gameplan as Spain.
Sweden is fresher (no extra time) and a very bad matchup for England. They defend set pieces incredibly well (as long as it's not a direct freekick from Kroos) which will force England to make the difference in open play where they have looked toothless so far. Sweden will probably manage a scrappy goal and should be enough to see them through.
Sweden/Croatia should a tight game that could go either way but I'd rather see Croatia in the final as I like Modric's and Mandzukic's games a lot. By that point, I don't think they'll be able to muster enough energy to trouble the team from the top of the bracket but world cup finals never play out as you expect.