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When World Cup play resumes Friday, seven of the best teams in Europe and South America will be vying for the trophy. And then there’s Morocco, the lone surprise in the last eight and the first African team to make it this far since Ghana in 2010. I’m Mike Goodman, and today we’ll look at the best teams in the world.
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Power Rankings: Argentina down, France up
Yesterday in this space, we talked about exactly what made Brazil — specifically, their defense — so good. Today, let’s bring in James Benge to explain why he’s skeptical of Argentina in his latest installment of Power Rankings where he has Messi’s team at No. 5 out of eight.
As one tournament favorite drops down the ranks, another is surging forward as France, powered by Kylian Mbappe take the second spot. And it’s because of his continued dominance that France have risen up the rankings.
Messi dropping and Mbappe rising. It’s like the torch is being passed right before our very eyes this tournament. Though it would take Messi getting by Brazil in a potential semifinal to see the two superstars meet in person on the pitch.
You can get the entire World Cup Power Rankings list here, and you definitely should.
The Ronaldo era winds down
One team that’s shooting up the ranking is Portugal, who sit at third. The reason? It’s because manager Fernando Santos benched superstar Cristiano Ronaldo. The harsh reality is that Portugal have a tremendous amount of attacking talent and it wasn’t the end of the world having Ronaldo on the bench.
Unshackled from Ronaldo, Portugal laid six goals on a decent Switzerland side and zoomed into the quarterfinals where they’ll be taking on upstart Morocco. Seemingly out of nowhere, Portugal are young, fun, and have a glide path to the semifinals of the World Cup. From there, anything could happen.
Let’s get to some more links:
Best bet
With no action today, let’s look at some futures, all odds courtesy of Caesars Sportsbook.
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