The England one in 2010 was also quite terrible.
The England one in 2010 was also quite terrible.
You're right, I think that was probably worse actually. Not helped by all four teams playing in white.
It's worse as an isolated group, but the other one still gets lots of negative points for that knockout game afterwards.
Ok I'm in Moscow now getting ready for the next flight to St Petersburg. Plenty of Mexicans, Germans, Peruvians, and Swedes about. The country is supposed to be buzzing after the first result so let's see.
Our Mo starts
I've got a tenner on them so he better boss it.
I'm liking Russia's energy.
Over 10 minutes and he hasn’t scored! What’s going on?
Co comms man has just cited a game from two and a half years ago in which Elneny 'looked assured' as evidence of his quality.
Good start to this game. Hope it doesn’t fizzle out.
I liked them stating earlier than if Russia win they're basically through "because of their goal difference". No, they're basically (certainly) through because Saudi Arabia wouldn't win 2 games in a row if the group phase was 200 games long.
Salah looks sharper than I thought he would. Was expecting Ronaldo in France 98 final.
Although he’s looking more and more corpse like now
Pearce now pondering whether the referee would get a goal bonus for helping Egypt score. That's called bribery, Jonathan.
There was only about 10 passes between the ref's touch and the shot too.
That was a pretty good finish.
Looked like a foul by Dzyuba to me.
I think it's possibly even a foul on Dzyuba. Terrific stuff.
Ye it felt like they fouled each other really.
I saw it as the Egyptian player pulling the shirt of the Russian. No chance it was a foul the other way.
Goodbye Egypt.
Surprised how good Russia have looked. I thought they'd be shit in this tournament.
That was lovely by Dzyuba.
I don't think Russia have looked very good in either match, their opponents just managed to be genuinely awful. I think they'll be comfortably beaten in their first knockout match.
Offft. Not the greatest opposition granted, but they’ve looked decent.
Wat. Russia top scorers?
Lol at Salad though.
Fuck yeah.
Dzyuba is great. Proper target man.
So essentially they now only need a draw in the last game for top spot.
Russia are better than expected, and it feels like they're using their home advantage to the maximum, showing a lot of energy etc.
Doping.
That's a cracking penalty.
African penalties
Russia need another one sharp to finish off these cunts. But too long left for my liking.
That's 10 penalties in 17 games so far if I'm counting correctly.
Golovin
Just hit it you nonce.
Did this leave Egypt near enough out or out?
So yes, they're out.
I'm a twit
Egypt need Saudi Arabia to win 1-0 tomorrow, then for Russia to beat Uruguay and Egypt to beat Saudi quite heavily. So they're fucked.
Of course it is. No question in my mind these useless fuckbags have suddenly turned it on and look physically great.
Yeah. Like they have a fucking centre back who is 38 years old, you've got Zhirkov there who is 34, and so on. And suddenly these fuckers are all Duracell Rabbits running around.
They ran a collective 115km yesterday. After some googling I found that the average distance run in PL in 2017 was topped by Liverpool at 116km. So Russia would have been tied with Manchester City there on 115km. Seems about right yeah?
(yes, I know this is an individual game, but still this isn't normal)
Well Egypt looked drained after about 50 minutes, and by the end were dead on their feet. That's fair enough if they were playing top, top world class athletes, but this was an ageing Russian squad...who looked like they could have carried on for another 90 minutes.