World Cup: Day 15
Ok, more simultaneous kick-offs, more two screen nonsense, more football than anyone knows what to do with. Let’s go!
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Group E
Ecuador 2-1 Germany
Curaçao 0-2 Ivory Coast
How do we evaluate games where one side doesn’t need to win?
Germany were certain to win the group regardless today. Nonetheless, Julian Nagelsmann picked a strong team. I assume that means the message was “let’s win this”. But it’s hard to know how players approach things in that situation. Will they let standards slip if they know it doesn’t matter? No one can know, including the players themselves.
Germany got ahead very early then conceded pretty soon afterwards. Do the players then start to think “is it worth the effort to contest this?” Nagelsmann clearly didn’t. He brought on Deniz Undav again in a “chasing the game” strategy. He was approaching this in the exact same way as the first two matches. But there was nothing on the line. So how much does this performance matter when we’re evaluating Germany’s level at the World Cup? I have no idea.
Ecuador get ahead from a set piece. It looks horrific for Manuel Neuer, but I’m not a goalkeeping expert. For Ecuador, this was enough to see them into the Round of 32, though we have no idea who they’ll be playing. They’ve been fine so far in the World Cup, and they could reasonably cause problems by being stubborn against a bigger side, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Ivory Coast, meanwhile, did exactly what they were supposed to do.
The main narrative around this team has been about Yan Diomandé showing off his talents on the world stage and cementing himself as a guy everyone’s talking about. The kid has been electric in terms of his dribbling threat, but combines that with excellent decision making and a really impressive defensive work rate. Per the Futi app, he’s the number one player at the World Cup for both expected assists and progressive carries, while also being in the top ten for high defensive actions. He’s a triple threat. Senegal will be playing either France or Norway in the next round. The first job for either manager would be to find a way to lock up Diomandé.
Group F
Tunisia 1-3 Netherlands
Japan 1-1 Sweden
That will be enough for both Japan and Sweden.
Japan had already qualified for the next round, but a win would see them top the group. Sweden needed a win to avoid the third place kerfuffle, though a draw would put them in a much stronger position there.
The first half had big “yep, we’ll take a draw” energy before it briefly came to life. Ritsu Doan played an absolutely brilliant through ball for Daizen Maeda that made me realise we’ve seen an awful lot of those in this tournament. The defensive organisation at international level might be poor enough that you can just split an entire side open with one pass.
Anthony Elanga scored a screamer to equalise, which doesn’t actually speak well of Sweden’s attack. Alexander Isak and Viktor Gyökeres were only worth a combined 0.2 xG here. Gyökeres in particular only had one touch in the box and one shot all game. Graham Potter has got to figure out a way to get these guys doing their stuff if Sweden want to go anywhere but home.
