One Step Away

Belgium vs France:  Who will be celebrating today?

The World Cup has gone from 32 nations down to four.  It has been a thrilling tournament full of surprising results and shocking early exits, yet today's semifinal match features two teams that nobody would have surprised to see end up in the semifinal.  In the BISERGS draft, Belgium and France both flew under the radar a little bit.  Belgium was the fifth team to be selected by five participants and France was the seventh team taken off the draft board.  For the BISERGSers that were fortunate enough to land them, they have yielded big rewards.  Belgium's 22.63 points are the most produced by any team and France's 18.5 is third highest (Croatia is second with 20.75).  Of the two semifinals, this is definitely the one that has gotten more of the world's attention.  Pogba, Griezman, Mbappe, Giroud and Lloris are some of the big names for France, but Kante has probably been their most important player this summer with his ability to shutdown opponents attacks and Pavard struck their best goal of the summer.  For Belgium, Eden Hazard, Romelu Lukaku and Kevin De Bruyne strike fear into opponents at any level.  With all of those stars on the field, this has the potential to be the best game we've seen yet.

France has grown in confidence throughout this World Cup, just as their teenage star, Kylian Mbappe has grownup before the world's eyes.  In the group stage, they struggled against Australia, a team they should have annihilated.  Then they were undeserving winners against a very unlucky Peru team and by the time they played Denmark, neither team had anything to play for, so the game ended predictably in a 0 - 0 draw.  Since the knockout round began, however, France have begun shifting into higher and higher gears.  Against Argentina, they showed their amazing team speed in their 4 - 3 victory.  That game ended up being a nail biter, but France should have won by 2 or 3 goals.  In their next game, a tricky encounter against Uruguay, their young stars were extremely composed and well disciplined in a 2 - 0 win that felt much more even than their 1 goal margin against Argentina.  It is no surprise that they can shine in an open free flowing game, like they did against Argentina, but their ability to see out the tactically complex game against Uruguay was a surprise to many an bodes well for France in the next two matches.

Belgium have been Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde all summer.  Against weak teams in their group (Panama and Tunisia) they hardly broke a sweat and won with style.  When they played England, it was a game they probably wanted to lose because of the way the bracket was shaking up, but they couldn't manage because bench warmer Adnan Januzaj couldn't help himself and decided to score one of the best goals of the summer.  Their win over England, put them in the more difficult half of the bracket, but their first game of the knock outs, against Japan, was supposed to be easy.  The lethargic, uninterested side of Belgium showed up for that game and after doing nothing in the first half, some excellent Japan play put them down by two goals with half and hour left.  They fought back and finally broke Japan's hearts with a counterattacking goal on the last kick of the game.  Their reward for beating Japan was a quarterfinal encounter with Brazil.  In that game, Belgium played their most complete game of the summer and came out 2 - 1 winners.  Winning a game like that has Belgium full of confidence and they feel they are the best team in the World Cup this summer. 

For the BISERGS, victory today means double value (6 points for the win) and a team in the finals with a chance at triple points.

Linday, Krista and Sharleen are hoping to get maximum points from France and finish in the top 10, while Matt S and Isaac are hoping the same for Belgium.  Dawn, Rick, Kelley, Gray and Ari all have much greater ambitions and a real shot at winning this summers title of BISERGS.  Lisa and Levi don't have teams in action today, but they will be watching with interest as their BISERGS hopes will depend on how things go today.  It all starts in about 30 minutes, so rearrange your schedules and find a comfortable place in front of the TV.  I'm hoping this will live up to its potential and be one of the best games so far.