Germany hangs on to the World Cup with a last-gasp Kroos spell. The curse of the reigning world champions, the one according to which whoever wins the Cup is almost immediately eliminated in the next edition, has not yet materialized for Joachim Low's national team, but we were very close: Sweden, already Italy's executioner in the play-offs to access Russia 2018, he risked making another excellent victim by taking the lead. At the end of the first half of Germany-Sweden, Germany was mathematically out of the World Cup. But the matches also have the second half and above all they last 95 minutes: in the second half the equalizer in Reus only partially changes the cards on the table, in the sense that the Germans remain a foot and a half out of Russia 2018. In the final, despite the he numerical inferiority due to the expulsion of Boateng, the 2014 world champion national team pulls out its claws and all in all deserves the victory, obtained thanks to the prowess of the Real Madrid midfielder on the very last occasion.
And so, after Argentina (which in turn, however, is still fully in the running), the World Cup was about to make another illustrious victim. Better is going to other big names, some of which have already qualified for the round of 2022, in a more or less convincing way, such as France, Belgium, Croatia and in fact also Spain and Portugal. Separate discussion for Tite's Brazil, very close to the round of 16 after the victory over Costa Rica but at the center of quite a few problems. First of all the injuries: for Danilo the World Cup could already be over, and now Juventus player Douglas Costa is also knocked out. Furthermore, there are rumors of a furious fight between Neymar and captain Thiago Silva over an episode of fair play granted by the latter during the last match, which 'O Ney would not have liked given that Brazil were desperately looking for victory. The situation of Argentina itself is no less tense, which despite having returned to the race thanks to the defeat of Iceland, still has to manage the team's mutiny against coach Sampaoli: last night the players met in a "carbonara" assembly and, having acknowledged that the exemption is not possible for economic reasons (the contract is up to XNUMX, there would be XNUMX million in compensation to be paid) they asked the federation to put the coach in a corner, and let them decide, from now on then, team, training, training and all the rest.
