Nobody quite knew what to expect from this summer’s World Cup action as the bolstered numbers and extra nations tournament got underway and was split hosted between the United States of America, Canada and Mexico, but it is already achieving the aim of the sponsors as the coverage is as intense as ever with issues on the pitch now slowly beginning to offset those controversies off the pitch.
The football action and entertainment on show is the main driver behind that change in focus and it has been a pretty intriguing open round of the first Group games, with a number of more accepted minnow sides significantly embarrassing the efforts and performance levels of far more staid and experienced World Cup teams. Not every game has ended up in a thoroughly unexpected final result, some major nations have at least managed to motivate themselves to battle to a hard fought point, and even when they have secured victory by the end of regulation time and the thoroughly unneeded water breaks, they have had to acknowledge that they were given a totally unexpected scare along the way.
As you would expect though at a tournament on the world wide stage, normally you can rely on the pure cream of the crop to rise to the top just as an ethereum casino grows members by offering larger win pots, and at this years edition of the biggest football competition on the planet, even age is proving to not quite be the kind of barrier that it has proven itself in former years.
In the opening 24 games, 75 goals have been scored and with a representative ratio of 3.125 per game, that makes it the highest scoring World Cup so far going way back to 1958. Nine of the games have finished in a draw.
Although Croatia’s 40 year old midfielder Luka Modric, and Portugal’s 41 year old Cristiano Ronaldo are yet to find their feet, Argentine former World Cup winner and 28 year old Lionel Messi has already helped himself to a hattrick (and then he was substituted so he could have a rest). His third effort saw him draw level with Miroslav Klose’s record for serial winners Germany which he set at 16 goals during the 2014 World Cup.
For those of a younger persuasion, seven players are already tied level on two goals, with Kai Havertz, Kylian Mbappe, Erling Haaland and Harry Kane counted amongst them, so this years Golden Boot competition is alive and kicking already. We will have to see what happens during the hotly anticipated second Group games now to determine which other players get themselves into the potential mix, and then those players who now slowly start to grow and creep themselves to an advantage.
Especially with regards to this years extended format, there are plenty of games still to be played and more then ever in fact, so across the course of the next month and a bit there is plenty of available opportunities for players to really make some headlines for themselves, and it is highly likely that a number of long term held World Cup records could fall.
