Sweet Nothings

Group E Switzerland, Ecuador, France, Honduras The intricacies of FIFAs world ranking system are only marginally less opaque than those of their host-country selection/trough-feeding process. And so Switzerland are apparently the sixth best team in the world, despite their utter failure to do anything of note at a major championships. Maybe it’s all a deliberate ploy to give some lower-ranked teams a better chance of success – certainly Ecuador and Honduras will be far happier than had they drawn any of the other seeds, all of whom are actually any good. They do have the mercurial French to worry about, however. Their fantastic display of stereotype-confirming petulance in South Africa took some of the heat off England’s pathetic showing, and it’s true that they looked down and out after the first leg of their playoff against Ukraine. However, they did have the misfortune to be drawn in Spain’s qualifying group, practically condemning them to the playoffs from the off, and si...

Although World Cup fever has been somewhat tainted by the shock discovery that the bidding for the Qatar 2022 edition may not have been entirely above board, the show must go on and so here is my exclusive, highly-informed preview: Group A Brazil, Croatia, Mexico, Cameroon It ’ s hard to think of this group as anything other than a gentle warm-up for the hosts. The Croats have some useful attacking talents in Luka Modric and Mario Mandzukic, but they’ve never come close to replicating their third place finish of 1998. Us Englanders being hopelessly blinkered, we often view fellow European nations in relation to ourselves, and although they’ve been known to beat us on occasion (thanks for that, Mr MacLaren), Croatia basically sit as one of those B-level European teams who we tend to get drawn with in qualifying fairly regularly, yet rarely do they look like a significant threat to our hopes. Unlucky, lads. Mexico are like clockwork - generally quali...