(Originally posted November 18th, 2022)

Introduction

If you’ve arrived here, I’m sure you know that for the past year (at varying degrees of effort) I have been planning on attending the World Cup. I thought I would try documenting my trip and experiences, as well as provide some soccer background and insight. A fun use of a website I’ve owned for a few years. (Also keep in mind, that any bolded nations, I will feature in an upcoming post tomorrow with some unnecessary background and entirely personal flavor on the team)

Kit Selections

Let’s be honest. I have a bit of problem, but darn it, collecting things is just fun. It could be traced back to Hot Wheels, Legos, and Pokemon cards as a kid. Now it’s jerseys, board game expansions, cuff links, and ties. It really shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that I have a spreadsheet of the jerseys. Look at this fun (to dorks) chart of the color of the jerseys I have.

There’s a large number of white kits because most teams have a white alternative, but also that for pickup soccer it helps to have more spare whites, so I certainly have focused on those the past couple of years. The jerseys in the featured picture at the top are all of my Americans of their club teams (none of the USA jerseys). More importantly, here’s the breakout by sport/league.

Of the international segment, the teams with the largest USA 11 (4 of these are of the Women’s team, so doing my small part to aid in fixing the gender pay gap), England 4, and France 3. Luckily I have tickets already to all three of these teams, and will likely follow either the USA or England into the knockout stages.

In my collection, 13 of the 32 teams going to the World Cup are represented. So I should have the ability to always be wearing the jersey of one of the teams playing. I’m still working on which I should bring! Which leads me to…

Tournament Predictions

Quick background on the tournament for those who don’t know. There are 8 groups of 4 teams each. They play Round Robin (or against each other once each). A team gains 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, and 0 for a loss. After the 3 games the top 2 teams advance into the knockout rounds. Where a single elimination tournament reduces the 16 teams in a normal bracket to a winner. My tickets follow USA, through the group stage, and hopefully into the knockout tournament. If not, then I follow the winner of Group B.

Of the top 12 teams predicted to win, I have kits for 9 of them (missing Argentina, Spain, and Uruguay, albeit the latter was ordered and has not arrived yet). The key is… picking the right ones for the later stages.

Personally I’m most interested in a team that has never won to return home with the world’s most coveted sports prize. That points to Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, and Denmark as the top teams that have never won before (in that order). However, they are all European teams, and European teams have won the previous four World Cups (France, Germany, Spain, and Italy), so it feels more likely that the winner will hail from CONMEBOL (Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol, or South America). Vegas certainly thinks so. As the teams with the best odds are Brazil and Argentina.

So here we go… my predictions, and just to do a weird spin on it. I’m going to answer each section with the country’s flag, since I’m a vexillophile, or with a club crest if it’s an individual player award (nevermind, due to copyright issues it will have to be a picture of their stadium, works for me, I appreciate the architecture of a good stadium too). (also I couldn’t decide on a winner, so just did the semi-finalists)