No, I can't say I've ever been lucky enough to watch the Egyptian league. I understand that it's almost as good as the leagues in Venezuela and Algeria. https://theanalyst.com/articles/strongest-football-leagues-in-the-world-opta-power-rankings

Not that they're playing at a lower level than their talent justifies but that their $ value / transfer fee is less than what it would be for the exact same player if they were European. I don't know about that. You rate the Canadian or Paraguayan side as being stronger than us on paper. Even...

I also subscribe to the school of thought that Australian players are inherently undervalued because of the passport they carry, which I would say is a confounding factor in your theory. Plenty of our players would be valued a whole lot higher if nationality were not a factor. I'd also say...

I can see the point you're making mate but personally I don't think you can correlate expected results with first 11 value. For example, Canada had a squad value 3 times higher than ours and yet we're ranked higher in the FIFA rankings. I don't think anyone felt that their team was considerably...

De Definitely not on your own. I used to be a fan but I thought he offered absolutely zero when he came on in the world cup. The side was noticeably more impotent in attack whenever he replaced Volpato. Our depth off the bench was very lacking. I'd be happy if we moved on from him altogether. I...

Let's drill down a little further to look at goals scored/conceded in those 11 matches against top 40 teams which is the best yardstick of our success: Japan 1-0 Canada 1-0 Turkiye 2-0 Japan 1-1 Switzerland 1-1 Paraguay 0-0 Egypt 1-1 USA 1-2 USA 0-2 Colombia 0-3 Mexico 0-1 Total: Scored 8...

An overview of Poppa's 22 matches to date Result at 90 minutes: Win Against top 40 team: Japan, Canada, Turkiye Against team lower than 40: China x 2, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand x 2, Cameroon, Curacao Draw: Against top 40 team: Japan, Switzerland, Paraguay, Egypt Against team...

I like to look at it in reverse too. Would Devlin have had 0 minutes throughout the World Cup if he was Okon Snr's son? Highly doubtful I'd say. Not saying that Okon-Engstler and Devlin are entirely comparable players because they're not, but I'd suggest that Devlin made a much more compelling...

Sounds like you passed that number a while back.

https://dailysports.net/news/the-match-officials-for-australia-vs-egypt-round-of-32-fifa-world-cup-clash-have-been-revealed/

Practice makes perfect 👌

Slight favourites. The odds for this game are the closest of any of the sixteen Round of 32 games. Plus that is in the context that our opponent was favourite in all 3 group games and we still got 4 points and broken even essentially with 1W, 1D, 1L and 2-2 goals for/against.

If we do go down and fail to score for a third successive game against moderately strong but not top level opponents, Popa will deservedly be criticised.

Shame about Uzbekistan. They had a tough group and some bad luck along the way. Hoped to see them achieve a bit more.

Yeah, was thinking this too. Based on the below, Iran had a 93.8% chance of progressing: Ended up like death by a thousand cuts for Iran. Never thought I'd feel sorry for their football team!

If Google is correct there are only 6 players in Egypt squad that play club football outside of the Middle East and Egypt.

Things to be grateful for. Of the 12 teams that finish 2nd in their group, 8 play other 2nd placed sides but 4 of them have to play 1st placed sides. We're in the former category whereas other sides that finished 2nd like Japan and Morocco have drawn Brazil and Netherlands respectively. So we...

We've only ever had two knock out matches at WC and against Italy and Argentina, who both went on to win! Great opportunity for us albeit R32 rather than R16. Definitely dodged a bullet by avoiding Doku, De Bruyne, Trossard, Lukaku, Tielemans, Courtois and co.!

We got Turkiye with an underdone Yilmiz, a USA without Pulisic, Paraguay without Almiron, maybe Egypt without Salah. We knock them off and Messi better be careful around the team bus!

Bit of a shame the next match is 4am in Mel/Syd. Imagine the live sites, bars and pubs around the country if this was another lunchtime game on a weekend. If we do win, our R16 game is at 2am, but if we win that we'll have a quarter final at 11am on a Sunday.