We’re fans of Germany and England in my family. One of my relatives played in one of the Bundesliga “development academies” and now plays college D1 here. However, as I mentioned, I’ll be rooting for Iceland as a huge underdog too.
Germany, Mexico, and South Korea, so you can imagine how I feel about Group F. 
Iceland for the novelty, England just because. I don’t have enough expertise to pick a south-of-the-equator team not named Argentina or Brazil, but I’m sure one will strike my fancy…
We always route for the Latin American teams.
I’ve always liked Germany but but a lot of that was because of Schweinsteiger. I’ll have to see if I can find a new German player to fangirl over.
If he’s healthy and I assume he is now, then Neuer is the best goalie in the world. And watch out for the 22-year old Timo Werner. Not sure he’ll even start, because Germany is so conservative with their roster and lineups, but he can light it up.
The big hubbub is/was that Leroy Sane was left off the German WC roster. He’s one of the best players in the world, just won the Premier League with Man City, but it sounds like there’s a personality issue with the Loew, the German coach. IIRC, allegedly goes back to a surgery scheduled during the Confederations Cup.
S24 and his younger cousins are happily gathering stickers for their Panini books. Great memories from last time they did this together . . . Then, they all read the kids’ version of Tim Howard’s book and thought they wanted to be goalies for one season until reality sunk in–the keeper temperament is rare, not to mention the height!
@rosered55
Nervous why?
Just to be clear, Come on England!
Gooooaaaallllll! Uruguay in the 89th minute!
Fans are using vuvuzelas in the Iran/Morocco match. They need to ban those things. It’s obnoxious listening to it on tv. I can’t imagine what it would be like sitting next to that. %-(
https://www.thesun.co.uk/world-cup-2018/6542942/world-cup-2018-morocco-iran-vuvuzelas/
I thought vuvuzelas were banned after the 2010 World Cup in South Africa? They sound like a huge beehive next to your ear.
Egypt held back Mo Salah, their best player, and didn’t play him. He was injured 3 weeks ago in the Premier League final playing for Liverpool. Egypt kinda “conceded” the game to Uruguay in an effort to get Salah healthy and get him into game shape for the next match in 4 days against Russia.
Some great photos:
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/06/photos-soccer-fields-around-the-world/562862/
Spain v Portugal today was an exciting match.
@doschicos I’d say Spain v Portugal was the match of tournament, and may have had the goal of the tournament.
Had the privilege to watch that game during lunch. For once, the break room TV is not tuned to you know what. That goal was wow. Great soccer!
We’ll be watching Peru vs Denmark. My 89 yr old Peruvian mom is so excited.
https://slate.com/culture/2018/06/peru-2018-world-cup-why-you-should-root-for-la-blanquirroja.html
We’ll also be watching Iceland vs Argentina since we’ve been to Iceland and fell in love with the country
@Time2Shine Definitely so far but I am hoping for some more great soccer in the weeks ahead.
At least for a little while, Iran can say it is ahead of both Portugal and Spain! 
Spain lost that game. GK Gea makes a huge mistake. Spain was passing Portugal to death and the goals by Costa and Nacho for Spain were overlooked but outstanding. That’s soccer. The better team today didn’t win. Great match.
I’ll take Gareth Bale’s bicycle kick winner for Real Madrid in the Premier League Final as my goal of the month.
Do the people in your respective cities put the team flags on their cars for the World Cup? It’s a rare car in Toronto for the next month that doesn’t have the window flags.
I prefer women’s soccer. We saw a great friendly between Canada and Germany last weekend. A friend of one of my Ds has played for Canada for several years.
I’m a soccer fan but this World Cup is missing my two favorite sides, the US and Italy, and that (plus work…) has led to a lack of interest/involvement thus far.
I’m pulling for England, Argentina and Belgium. I’ll get into it eventually. Italy not being in this thing, given their pedigree, really detracts from the event IMO. They dominated Sweden in the second playoff tie but, sour grapes, they couldn’t get it done. (Why they were in the same qualifying group as Spain is unfathomable – UEFA should do a better job of spreading out the power teams so they don’t miss the tournament, imo…). Imagine Duke, North Carolina, or Kentucky not making the NCAA tournament in men’s basketball – that’s the equivalent of Italy not being in the WC.
The Dutch aren’t in it either, and while they miss it with alarming regularity (more often than they should, certainly…) and it isn’t as shocking as Italy’s absence, they play an attractive style with a typically extremely talented side, and their absence also detracts from the event.
I am not at all a soccer fan, but I have to say how absolutely adorable Scott Van Pelt’s idea of having kids submit their drawings of the World Cup to his show is. They displayed some of them on Today this morning, OMG, how cute! If anything got me to watch soccer, it would be that.
I lead a very soccer-centric life (coach multiple rec teams, play at least 1 a week, play multiple admin roles for my local club). I’m DVRing every game and will watch almost all of them.
In absence of the US, I’m rooting for a bunch of random countries based on my soccer buddies. So go Peru, England, Iceland, Australia