Of course they are friendlies, and key players were rested, and there were a lot of subs, but this applied to both favourites and underdogs. So good to see some encouraging recent results for the non-European or South American teams e.g.:
France 1 Ivory Coast 2 (played in France);
Spain 1 Iraq 1 (played in Spain, go Arnie!)
Netherlands 0 Algeria 1 (played in Holland)
Hopefully this augurs well for a World Cup of upsets, which would be sweet, specially if it's us doing the upsetting
Have been looking at inter-confederation results from Qatar 2022. Doesn't bode well for Ausralia, given that we've got 1 CONMEBOL, 1 CONCACAF and 1 UEFA team in Group D. Surprisingly AFC's best pertfomances were against UEFA
Full results from Qatar 2022 inter-confederation match ups:
UEFA v CONMEBOL: W1 D1 L4 GF 9 GA 15 GD -6
UEFA v CAF W6 D4 L3 GF 14 GA 8 GD +6
UEFA v AFC W4 D1 L5 GF 18 GA 13 GD +5
UEFA v CONCACAF W5 D3 L0 GF 20 GA 5 GD +15
CONMEBOL v CAF W1 D0 L2 GF 3 GA 3 GD 0
CONMEBOL v AFC W3 D1 L1 GF 9 GA 4 GD +5
CONMEBOL v CONCACAF W1 D0 L0 GF 2 GA 0 GD +2
CAF v AFC W2 D0 L1 GF 6 GA 4 GD +2
CAF v CONCACAF W1 D0 L0 GF 2 GA 1 GD +1
AFC v CONCACAF W0 D0 L3 GF 1 GA 4 GD -3
So on a hypothetical round robin table we'd have:
1. CONMEBOL W3 D0 L1 GD +13
2. CAF W3 D0 L1 GD -3
3. UEFA W2 D0 L2 GD +20
4. CONCACAF W1 D0 L3 GD -15 (ahead of AFC on head to head)
5. AFC W1 D0 L3 GD -15
Would love to see big improvement in AFC and CAF results, though you'd expect a good showing from the home confederation, CONCACAF.