I can confirm your sarcasm meter is well celebrated.
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Two months before the start of the WC, FIFA is moving the Qatar/Ecuador game up a day so that it kicks off the tournament.
Old schedule
11/21 Senegal / Netherlands 4am CST
11/21 England / Iran 7am CST
11/21 Qatar / Ecuador 10am CST
11/21 USA / Wales 1pm CST
New schedule
11/20 Qatar / Ecuador 10am CST
11/21 England / Iran 7am CST
11/21 Senegal / Netherlands 10am CST
11/21 USA / Wales 1pm CST
They only had 12 years to plan it. Amazing they just now figured this out.
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Hopefully anyone planning on attending the Qatar/Ecuador game is arriving in Doha prior to 11/20…
One of those high profile games like this one -
Glad I booked a flexible airfare! 
World Cup starts 100 days from today!
Or maybe 99. I am not sure the day they are counting from. I guess it will start when it starts.
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Gross
Long lines and lack of water mar Qatar World Cup stadium trial | Reuters?
At least Blatter got paid well for selecting this venue
Can’t see this type of mild protest having any impact on Qatar’s policies!
France is out Kante, could be without Pogba.
Brazil’s to lose IMO.
USA will have to work hard to get to 16. Need to be better than Wales. MEX probably won’t make it, looking poor recently; depends on how good POL is.
CAN in a two-Euro Group, with Belgium (World #2) and Croatia (World #12 and 2018 runner-up). Extremely hard to get through, no matter how good they look right now. I’ll root, but I won’t wager.
I would not bet on any CONCACAF team to make it to the second round.
Oddschecker has for overall winner, in order - Brazil, France, Argentina, England, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium and Denmark.
I like Spain as a slightly dark horse. England is going through a rough patch (not just their football team!). France seem to go hot and cold in successive cups. Messi’s history of underperforming may doom Argentina. Brazil must be very hungry after underperforming multiple cups in a row. I’d love to see Netherlands finally win or any of the others that haven’t won before.
England is certainly incredibly talented and deserve to be one of the odds on favorites as a result, but that team has been struggling lately so I’d bet against them despite the talent.
Yeah, I usually cheer for the Netherlands for that reason. And, although England has won before, it was even more years ago than when my Leafs last won a Stanley Cup.
Would anyone be interesting in a WC prediction contest?
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At my first actuary company there was an excellent competition guessing the differential for each game - you pick one country to beat the other by say 2 goals. If you were off by one (they won by 1 goal or 3 goals), you would be penalized 1 squared (1 point), if off by 2 goals, penalized by 2 squared (4 points) etc.
You would put in your picks before the beginning of each round (I can’t remember if the round-robin had three or just one put-in-your-picks cutoff).
Each subsequent round of the knock-out rounds the penalties were doubled.
Yup
Qatar, such a nice place…
Pogba out for France.