Gigs

Ronaldo

In my opinion there are four teams which are clearly above the rest (Brazil, Germany, Spain and France) and coincidentally these four teams are all place in the groups in a way that if they all win their group they will avoid each other until the semifinals. That means that the likelihood of an outsider going all the way to the semis due to very easy opponents (Uruguay 2010 says hello) is relatively low. Still I expect at least on of the four teams to fail earlier. The 2nd tier of this tournament is relatively weak as Italy, Netherlands and Chile all would have been there had they qualified. Now I only have England, Belgium and Argentina in that 2nd group although I guess you could include Portugal, Croatia, Colombia and Uruguay in that group as well. All in all Brazil are my favorites. I think they are more talanted than Germany and Spain while not having France's issue of not being a strong unity

[hide] Preliminary Round June 14th - June 28th, 2018 32 Nations, 8 Groups, the 1st and 2nd Nations from each Group will qualify for the Round of 16 Group A Date & Time Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 June 14th 2018, h. 18:00 (GMT+3) Russia 1 0 Saudi Arabia June 15th 2018, h. 17:00 (GMT+5) Egypt 0 2 Uruguay June 19th 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Russia 1 1 Egypt June 20th 2018, h. 18:00 (GMT+3) Uruguay 3 0 Saudi Arabia June 25th 2018, h. 18:00 (GMT+4) Uruguay 2 0 Russia June 25th 2018, h. 17:00 (GMT+3) Saudi Arabia 1 2 Egypt Group B Date & Time Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 June 15th 2018, h. 18:00 (GMT+3) Morocco 0 0 Iran June 15th 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Portugal 1 3 Spain June 20th 2018, h. 15:00 (GMT+3) Portugal 2 0 Morocco June 20th 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Iran 0 3 Spain June 25th 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Iran 0 1 Portugal June 25th 2018, h. 20:00 (GMT+2) Spain 2 0 Morocco Group C Date & Time Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 June 16th 2018, h. 13:00 (GMT+3) France 3 1 Australia June 16th 2018, h. 19:00 (GMT+3) Peru 1 1 Denmark June 21st 2018, h. 16:00 (GMT+4) Denmark 2 1 Australia June 21st 2018, h. 20:00 (GMT+5) France 2 0 Peru June 26th 2018, h. 17:00 (GMT+3) Denmark 1 3 France June 26th 2018, h. 17:00 (GMT+3) Australia 0 1 Peru Group D Date & Time Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 June 16th 2018, h. 16:00 (GMT+3) Argentina 1 0 Iceland June 16th 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+2) Croatia 1 1 Nigeria June 21st 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Argentina 2 1 Croatia June 22nd 2018, h. 18:00 (GMT+3) Nigeria 2 1 Iceland June 26th 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Nigeria 0 2 Argentina June 26th 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Iceland 0 1 Croatia Group E Date & Time Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 June 17th 2018, h. 16:00 (GMT+4) Costa Rica 0 2 Serbia June 17th 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Brazil 3 0 Switzerland June 22nd 2018, h. 15:00 (GMT+3) Brazil 3 0 Costa Rica June 22nd 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+2) Serbia 1 1 Switzerland June 27th 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Serbia 1 3 Brazil June 27th 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Switzerland 1 0 Costa Rica Group F Date & Time Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 June 17th 2018, h. 18:00 (GMT+3) Germany 2 0 Mexico June 18th 2018, h. 15:00 (GMT+3) Sweden 1 0 South Korea June 23rd 2018, h. 18:00 (GMT+3) South Korea 0 2 Mexico June 23rd 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Germany 3 0 Sweden June 27th 2018, h. 17:00 (GMT+3) South Korea 0 3 Germany June 27th 2018, h. 19:00 (GMT+5) Mexico 2 1 Sweden Group G Date & Time Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 June 18th 2018, h. 18:00 (GMT+3) Belgium 4 1 Panama June 18th 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Tunisia 0 1 England June 23rd 2018, h. 15:00 (GMT+3) Belgium 2 0 Tunisia June 24th 2018, h. 15:00 (GMT+3) England 3 1 Panama June 28th 2018, h. 20:00 (GMT+2) England 1 1 Belgium June 28th 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Panama 0 0 Tunisia Group H Date & Time Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 June 19th 2018, h. 15:00 (GMT+3) Colombia 2 0 Japan June 19th 2018, h. 18:00 (GMT+3) Poland 1 1 Senegal June 24th 2018, h. 20:00 (GMT+5) Japan 1 2 Senegal June 24th 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Poland 1 2 Colombia June 28th 2018, h. 17:00 (GMT+3) Japan 0 1 Poland June 28th 2018, h. 18:00 (GMT+4) Senegal 1 3 Colombia [/hide]

Becker on german Eurosport is so stupid. Talking about which female tennis players have already been in sports illustrated. Does he think that's why he is commentating tennis matches? To give the viewers his opinion on women? What an idiot

Looks like the rain really saved Rafa. Schwartzman had Nadal in the ropes before the pause

Well, if you compare this Froome performance with Landis that means you are already celebrating the 2nd Dutch giro victory in a row?

What the f*ck Froome? This is completely ridiculous.

Somebody please kill me. I thought Froome was finished and cycling was finally free of him again and then this.

Superman Lopez to come back after horrible first two weeks and demolish everyone on the Zoncolan. Heard it here first

This looks more and more like a Yates vs Dumoulin (who looked quite good today) battle. I just hope Yates doesn't dominate on the Zoncolan and easily wins the giro

Holy crap, how good is Yates

Great win for Wellens. And I still think Froome won't start the 2nd week. He will DNS on either stage 7 or stage 10, but after his arguably worst performance on this sort of finish since he became an elite rider, I'm even more convinced that he got injured in the crash in the time trial recon.

Maybe some crosswinds can spice this up. Otherwise it will be boring

After this stage Dumoulin became the favorite for me. I think Froome is injured, otherwise he doesn't lose that much time in a time trial. Maybe he'll fight through the first week, but my guess is, he won't start stage 10.

Yeah, we simply have different opinions on this. I don't think discussing this any further will lead us anywhere.

What makes you think he underestimated slipstream and DRS. There is absolutely no way you can know he was going too fast at that point. And even if he was, the reason they crashed was Verstappen closing the gap too late. Maybe Ricciardo was going too fast but even in that case Verstappen must not change the line so late, or do you think he crashed deliberately thinking he'd crash in the corner anyway?

@heywoodu Look at twitter reactions to the crash. I'd say around 90% think he did a mistake and all experts I've heard saying something about the crash claimed Verstappen did a mistake too. (Not saying there aren't any experts claiming he didn't make a mistake, I just didn't specifically search for that) Yeah Verstappen had to move left at some point, but what you claim, which is that he had to move left at that point already is complete rubbish. And that they had crashed even if Verstappen had left room is complete speculation, absolutely not based on facts. Ricciardo was in Verstappen's slipstream and therefore so much faster in that moment that they would have been side by side in the turn, and Ricciardo wouldn't have run into Verstappen's side as you claim.

Maybe Ricciardo shouldn't have been so aggressive, but that was Verstappen's mistake nonetheless. There was enough place to overtake him on the left so Ricciardo was trying to do exactly that but then Verstappen was trying to close the gap when it was already too late. If Verstappen just keeps going straight, how he is supposed to do in that situation, he and Ricciardo go into the first turn side by side, and nobody crashes into anyone.

Congrats to Italy, I only gave the song the bronze medal, but it was really close at the top and for most of my voting process I actually wanted to give you gold. In other words, I'm very happy with the winner Thanks @vinipereira for the great organization. I'll surely participate again next year.

It's pretty ridiculous how boring LBL is nowadays. Such an easy race plays into the cards of 2 or maybe 3 teams, but everyone seems to be fine with it.

That climb was really cool. When I see stages like that in small races I always wish those kind of climbs could be located in somewhere closer to France, Italy or Spain so one day they could be used in a grand tour. That said, it was still great to watch.

Well, 29km with 1800m of climbing would mean a gradient of 6.2% so not brutally steep but also not exactly flat. If I remember correctly the climb was used last year too but the last few km were cancelled due to wind. On another note, the tour of the alps (formerly known as giro del trentino) takes place this week too with a great starter field with the likes of froome, Lopez and Pinot

fixed that for you

Can anyone tell me where this "real always gets favored by uefa refs" is coming from? And please don't say Bayern last year, because that real only won because of the ref is one of the biggest lies in modern football

Juventus currently leads 0:2 against Real. If I seriously miss two epic comebacks because the broadcasters always show the wrong matches I'd be seriously angry