Would you like to get way wayyyy ahead of ourselves? I know I would. Add the discovery of the World Cup bracket and my trying to figure out what to do with my life after the last match of the evening, and you get a fun game of what-if scenarios. But before you get into the bracket, you have to know who is going to get out of the group stage. Thankfully, I’m here to tell you.
Group A: Don’t let Uruguay’s strong showing against weak French and South African teams fool you. Mexico should deal with them quite nicely, but not nicely enough to get France into the second round. 1st seed: Mexico, 2nd seed: Uruguay.
Group B: Argentina’s obviously walking away with the one seed at this point. I’m tempted to pick Nigeria as a shock pick to win big against Korea and take advantage of Argentina running over a weak Greece team. In fact, yes I’ll do that and pretend I didn’t watch their poor showing against Greece. 1st seed: Argentina, 2nd seed: Nigeria.
Group C: <redacted> (I refuse to write what I believe, because I’ll never forgive myself for jinxing it if it doesn’t happen.)
Group D: (just realized this is going to be harder than I thought). Do you take a German team that was underwhelming against Serbia? Do you take a Serbian side that was underwhelming against Ghana? Or do you take a Ghanian team that was underwhelming against Australia? Coin flip–I don’t think any of these teams are actually particularly good. Serbia should pick up a win against a Socceroo defense that’s leakier than the Hillary Clinton campaign. Ghana and Germany draw. 1st seed: Serbia, 2nd seed: Ghana
Group E: Nederland is a lock for the top seed here, but it gets a bit more complicated after that, as both Japan and the Danes had decent showings against the Dutch. Denmark needs to play to win, as they lose the goal differential battle with Japan. And play to win they will. 1st seed: Netherlands, 2nd seed: Denmark
Group F: Does anyone really care? The weakest group of this year’s cup will unceremoniously advance Paraguay and Italy, but only because Italy didn’t have to play the varsity team. 1st seed: Paraguay, 2nd seed: Italy if you can even really call them “seeds.”
Group G: No analysis needed–this one was basically decided by the routs of the last 72 hours. 1st seed: Brazil, 2nd seed: Portugal
Group H: Chile will try to join the Netherlands, Brazil, and Argentina as the only teams to pick up all 9 points in the group stages as they face Spain, having regained their form against the Hondurans. The winner of that match is the likely top seed. The loser will probably go home, as the Swiss will likely pick up 3 points against an out-of-their-league and shellshocked-and-showing-it Honduras. The soccer gods smile on the earthquake-ravaged Chileans and they become a feel-good made-for-TV story as they tie the Spanish and move on. Oh wait, life doesn’t work like that? Sucks. Spain win, Swiss win, Chile go home. 1st seed: Spain, 2nd seed: Switzerland.
I feel a lot less confident about that than I did before I started thinking about it. But don’t let that stop you from treating it as absolute gospel.