Link to the bracket
The group stage is over and the World Cup officially says goodbye to 16 nations that didn't make it to the next round. Thankfully, in the BISERGS world, we all have at least one team to keep our dreams alive. Some of our dreams are more realistic than others, but as of today, everyone playing may still have the 2018 World Cup champion on their side.
The group stage is over and the World Cup officially says goodbye to 16 nations that didn't make it to the next round. Thankfully, in the BISERGS world, we all have at least one team to keep our dreams alive. Some of our dreams are more realistic than others, but as of today, everyone playing may still have the 2018 World Cup champion on their side.
The thrilling action of the World Cup let up significantly today, but the dramatic and often unexpected action on the field over the first three rounds has made the BISERGS as exciting as ever. The current standings have Rachel on top with 34.25 and three teams qualified to the next round. Gray is one point behind but managed to get four teams qualified. Kelley is keeping the pressure on with 32.5 points and Levi had the highest single round score of the summer with 15.25 in round three is just a half a point behind her. Evan, Annika, Dawn, Rick, Lisa and Katee round out the top 10. From the top 10, only Rick and Katee have two teams still in action, the rest have three. Josh, Allie, DJ and Krista all have three teams even though they find themselves further down the table.
The matchups for the rest of the BISERGS have a lot more at stake as the winners move on and the losers are out. Matchups are now the key and you can see a link to the bracket here. I have tried to publish to a new page on the website but have not been able to make it work yet. Hopefully I'll figure it out soon, so you can see your teams' paths to the Cup and which BISERGSers you'll have to knock of to get there. If not, I'll continue to post this link to every story for the rest of the summer.
A close look at the brackets shows some huge matches coming right away. The very first game has current top 10 BISERGSers Rachel and Evan's Uruguay taking on Gray and Kelley's Portugal. The winners will feel confident of riding on to BISERGS glory while the losers will find themselves falling off the pace suddenly. The knockout phase also brings family strife. Brothers play sisters, mothers try to eliminate their children's teams and grandchildren take aim at their grandparents last surviving teams. There is also the risk of the dreaded guaranteed self-elimination. In the round of 16 Josh is the only unlucky one with both sides of the Brazil/Mexico matchup. When that game is over, he'll be down a team no matter what. Don't mock Josh, because as your teams advance, they may be on a collision course, too. Personally, if I'm fortunate enough to win both of my Round of 16 matches, I'll face the same problem as Josh.
The bracket also shows that the loser of today's Belgium vs England game may have an easier path to the final. Evidently the teams were aware of this as they put in less than maximum effort today. Watching the match reminded me of this terrible bit of World Cup history (Warning, there is some bad language if you are listening with kids). Today's match wasn't that bad, because it did feature a beautiful goal for Belgium, but I don't think the coach was too happy about it since the goal means victorious Belgium is now on course for a quarterfinal matchup with Brazil. In the other games that mattered, Senegal had a penalty taken away by a not so color blind VAR official (I think VAR is being implemented in a racist way, but I'll save that for another day) and Colombia beat them 1 - 0. That result meant that Japan advances even though they lost to Poland. Japan and Senegal were tied in points, goal difference and goals, so the final tie breaker was yellow cards. Incidentally, there have been studies that show black players are more likely to be given yellow cards by white referees, so maybe that wasn't the fairest tiebreaker for Senegal. Senegal's elimination means that no African teams made it to the next round but that did open the way for Japan to be the lone Asian team to still be playing.
Tomorrow is a rest day for the World Cup and for us in the BISERGS, but on Saturday the pattern of two games every day will start up again.
The matchups for the rest of the BISERGS have a lot more at stake as the winners move on and the losers are out. Matchups are now the key and you can see a link to the bracket here. I have tried to publish to a new page on the website but have not been able to make it work yet. Hopefully I'll figure it out soon, so you can see your teams' paths to the Cup and which BISERGSers you'll have to knock of to get there. If not, I'll continue to post this link to every story for the rest of the summer.
A close look at the brackets shows some huge matches coming right away. The very first game has current top 10 BISERGSers Rachel and Evan's Uruguay taking on Gray and Kelley's Portugal. The winners will feel confident of riding on to BISERGS glory while the losers will find themselves falling off the pace suddenly. The knockout phase also brings family strife. Brothers play sisters, mothers try to eliminate their children's teams and grandchildren take aim at their grandparents last surviving teams. There is also the risk of the dreaded guaranteed self-elimination. In the round of 16 Josh is the only unlucky one with both sides of the Brazil/Mexico matchup. When that game is over, he'll be down a team no matter what. Don't mock Josh, because as your teams advance, they may be on a collision course, too. Personally, if I'm fortunate enough to win both of my Round of 16 matches, I'll face the same problem as Josh.
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| The penalty that VAR took away from Senegal. Maybe it was a perfect tackle but for VAR to overturn a call, it is supposed to be conclusive and it definitely wasn't that. |
Tomorrow is a rest day for the World Cup and for us in the BISERGS, but on Saturday the pattern of two games every day will start up again.
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