World Cup Qualifiers

So far today we have had qualifiers that are final in Europe and Africa, in Europe, Portugal, I think, got lucky and faced Northern Macedonia instead of Italy who was the logical contender, but because football is what it is, Northern Macedonia disqualified them with a last-minute goal. So I think that played in Portugal's favor, despite Northern Macedonia having a very good team they actually are not at Italy's level. Portugal won the game 2-0 and will be in Qatar. In the other European qualifier, Poland beat Sweden 2-0 and will also be in the World Cup. That leaves us short of one European country for the World Cup, Wales has to play the winner of the Scotland-Ukraine match, one of these three will be in Qatar.

We also had the Asian Qualifiers' final day, This was an unimportant day in these qualifiers, as we already know how it plays out, Iran, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Japan are qualified and Australia plays against the CONMEBOL fifth-place team, which will be either Peru, Colombia or Chile.

Then we had the African qualifiers, in the first games Ghana drew with Nigeria 1-1 but qualified due to the away goal after a 0-0 draw in Ghana. Senegal beat Egypt on penalties after reverting Egypt's home win of 1-0, here I must say I felt frustrated by the use of laser lights by fans. This just degrades the home win, Senegal played much better and in fact, should not have gone to extra time or worse penalties, but I really think something has to be done about these lasers. You know fans are for cheering their teams on not for trying to cheat. I am not just pointing at Senegal, it seems this is getting to be a common practice and should be stopped.

Morocco won 4-1 against the Democratic Republic of the Congo qualifying for the World Cup, quite a flattering score for Morocco, actually it was a very even game but goals are what count. Tunisia managed a 0-0 draw against Mali to qualify for Qatar. And finally, Cameroon beat Algeria 1-0 forcing the game to go to 30 minutes of extra time. After the 30 minutes Cameroon won 2-1, I must say I think the referee made a lot of mistakes in this game, the most unusual to me is he gave 4 minutes overtime, and then when Cameroon scored the winning goal he gave not even a second more after Cameroon spent over a minute celebrating. Well, that is my opinion, perhaps I am wrong.

Later we have the CONMEBOL qualifiers, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, and Uruguay are already in, all that is left is to get the fifth-place team that will be in the playoff against Australia, which as I said before will be either Peru, Colombia or Chile.