The game’s afoot

by smbrannan

“In football, everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.”

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

Decisive action has been taken. The person responsible for the errors in the Group Stage scoring calculations has been “dealt with”1. Rigorous new procedures have been established2 to make sure that we don’t make the same mistake again3.

Sadly, we lost a couple of participants who didn’t submit picks for the remaining games. I want to thank Pete F and Asim A for coming this far, and truly hope that they come back for the Beautiful Pool (2026 USMexCan World Cup Edition). Really, please come back and spread the word.

With the preliminaries out of the way, we now head into the rough and tumble. The Round of 16 is already underway, and you may already be regretting your choices, but for the record, here are all of your picks for the remaining games:

Elimination Round Picks

By far, ESP is the most popular choice to go all the way, with GER a distant second. Some of you still cling to the notion that a rematch of the GER v ENG 1966 World Cup is in the works. We shall see.

Puh-lee-zzz, check to make sure that your picks have been recorded correctly; especially those of you who sent in pictures rather than the spreadsheet. Speak now or forever hold your peace.

Barring any unexpected/unforseen/unplanned developments, the next update will be at the end of the Round of 16. See you then.

  1. Just between us, he wasn’t very good at his job and nobody liked him. Good riddance, I say. ↩︎
  2. But you should still double and triple check everything. We are only human, after all. ↩︎
  3. Any further scoring mistakes will be very different. ↩︎