Now that all American sports with any urgency are finished, Saturday brings another reason to go to the bar and watch a meaningful game: The beginning of the Confederations Cup.
I know a lot of people just watch this tournament and don't really understand why it exists or how the teams got there. Well, have no fear — I am also one of those people.
This is basically the warm-up to the World cup that happens the following year. It takes place in the host country, which in this case is Russia (yeah, it's still happening, I guess), and all the "confederation" winners take part. The confederations are just the continent-wide organizations and their tournaments, so the confederation of UEFA has the Euros and the CAF has the Africa Cup of Nations, etc.
The winner of the CONCACAF (Mexico), CONMEBOL (Chile), CAF (Cameroon), OFC (New Zealand), AFC (Australia) and UEFA ( Portugal) all qualify. The world champions (Germany ) and host country (Russia) also take part, making two groups of four in a smaller version of the World Cup.
Let's briefly look at the teams involved:
World Cup winners Germany: Joachin Löw decided to bring the B team to this competition, mostly to flex on everyone with his an embarrassment of riches. Kerem Demirbay, for example, who will wear the 10 shirt, has one international cap....but I would bet all the money I don't have on them winning.
Euro winners Portugal: I am just as surprised as you are that Ronaldo's head is shaped so weird. That hair cut does not suit him at all and he needs to fix it immediately. Otherwise they brought a very strong squad with the likes of Ronaldo and three fairly decent Silva's. Bold prediction: Ronaldo will score a goal.
Hosts Russia: It's odd talking about their national team in the context of sport as Russia is constantly in the news these days. Their league has a few players that don't belong (money mercenaries) and I think their former national team manager got hired in the Premier League but otherwise, not much to write home about.
Copa America winners Chile: After beating Argentina in back to back finals and temporarily forcing Messi into international retirement, I think it's fair to say they're a good team. They bring a full squad to Russia and are always fun to watch. I look forward to watching future teammates Alexis and Vidal play against Germany and more of their future teammates.
Gold Cup winners Mexico: Mexico are always underrated but very talented and I expect to see them compete in all of their games, but eventually lose. They are undefeated in WC qualification but just dropped a point to the USA at home and that's really clouding my judgement. I always use the recency bias because it is the only way to know how a team will perform moving forward.
Asia/Oceania winners Australia and New Zealand: I know they won different tournaments to qualify and Australia winning the Asian Cup is more impressive than the Oceania Cup but their flags are the same and they are basically the same country, right? Australia have some decent players but nothing so special — another team that will try to keep their games as close and competitive as possible.
African Cup of Nations winners Cameroon: A great win over Egypt secured their qualification and I look for them to be somewhat of a dark horse in this tournament. If I'm being completely honest, I couldn't name more than 3 players on their team but when I saw them in the African Cup of Nations, they really impressed me and beating such a stacked Egypt team is no easy feat.