When we just finished witnessing spectacular surprises and stunning results in the group stages, the knockouts have also begun with a bang! Two days into the last 16 matches and the Cup has lived up to its expectation providing one hell of a cracker.
Following the exit of Germany, Argentina and Portugal early in the tournament–neutral fans had merely began to choose their new team to cheer in the ongoing Cup, however, with options narrowed down to few big names, Spain became the latest victims to bow out as the hosts stunned the world with their tie-breaker win against La Furia Roja that saw four big teams out of the Cup even before the R16 concluded.
Falling in the second bracket, many considered it would be an easy way for Spain to make their way to the final.
When the knockout stage fixtures were drawn, the Spanish team looked as top contenders along with England or Colombia to ease through the bracket which merely had real contenders for the Cup.
While we had Argentina (2), France (1), Uruguay (2), Brazil (5), Mexico, Belgium in one side which won 10 titles between them with 16 final appearances, the other bracket had Spain (1), England (1) grouped along with what were considered as minnows –Russia, Sweden, Croatia and others which had two titles and made three final appearances.
What we all forgot is that the second bracket wasn’t really an easy slot as it had one of the best performers of the Russia 2018 World Cup.
However, we all failed to realise that the bracket which we all considered to be ‘imbalanced and weak’ had one of the best performances in the ongoing Cup. Sweden topped the group which featured Germany while Croatia emerged unbeaten from the Group D, also handing Argentina their worst defeat of the Cup history. Switzerland and Denmark remained unbeaten in their Group despite finishing second –such has been the form and record of the teams.
Spain were held to a 3-3 draw in their opening Group B encounter against Portugal, but they failed to create the spark and magic despite their narrow 1-0 win and 2-2 draw against the Middle East nations.
Spain’s form hasn’t been at its best and they played a rather dull game than expected ‘tiki-taka’. Russia were definitely a better side, and despite being static in their play they drove the Spaniards to their only hope –the tie-breaker –to knock them out of the Cup. Spain paid the price for undimensional play. Yet another unexpected upset.
While the first bracket – R16 encounters were crackers, the second were more than expected and explosive. Both –Spain v Russia and Croatia v Denmark matches went down to the wire before Russia and Croatia had to sneak in to last 8.
With more strong fixtures and few top 8 places up for grabs, we can definitely expect more upsets and superlative results.
