I admit I was quite skeptical about the location of this World Cup and when it was held, for the first time during winter in the northern hemisphere.
Plus, I overheard some gossip that Qatar isn't really interested in most of the stadiums they built for this World Cup for their purpose today and that they will redesign them to be used for something else after the World Cup was over. I have no idea if that's true or not, but if it's true, that shows once again that politics in football stinks as badly as everywhere this word is used. And I don't think it's something wrong with the word...
But at the pitch level, we had something to see.
Many surprises during group stages. A few teams that disappointed. A few teams did better than I expected. I mean besides Morroco, which sent Spain and Portugal home, after winning their group with Croatia second. Japan won the group with Spain and Germany, after beating both of them. They also barely lost to Croatia - the now former vice-world champion - after additional time and penalties. Australia won against Tunisia and Denmark (disappointing, after their performance at the European Championship) and secured second place behind France.
Starting from the knockout phases, there were only 3, maybe 4 surprises, in my opinion. The two Morroco produced, qualifying against Spain, and especially against Portugal after they have been warned that they are capable to make the surprise. In reality, we all know when we say a country's name it's not as relevant anymore, because most top players play in top championships in Europe, no matter if they are from Asia, Africa, or America (North or South). In Morroco's case, most of their players and their trainer are even born and trained in European countries.
Then, there's the surprise that Croatia produced sending Brazil home. That's only a half-surprise. Brazil hasn't been in a final since 2002, which they won. Since then, they always stopped in the quarter-finals, despite having a top team and aspirations to the title every time. Croatia was the vice-world champion (let's forget for a moment how they got it), and now they finished 3rd. They consistently reached the top ranks with Modric's generation, while Brazil consistently disappointed. I still lost on this one, because I voted for Brazil to win.
We might consider the final a surprise. Personally, I voted for Argentina in the HiveBuzz contest, but if France hadn't slept on the pitch for 70-80m, things may have been different.
As often at the World Cup, the games would have been better off without referees at all (just a figure of speech), rather than with the comedians we have seen occasionally. At least none of them got a beating: the one from Qatar from the small final seemed on the edge a few times, lol. The one in the final wasn't any kind of authority either.
Now, about the HiveBuzz contest. The ranking says I finished 88th, with 34 good prognostics (badges) out of 64.
But they are validating the votes right now, so let's see if there are any changes.
Plus, this ranking shows users with the same number of badges in alphabetical order, and that's not how the final ordering will be.
I still hope I'll be in the first 90, but we'll see.
After my wrong votes on Spain, Portugal, and Brazil, I think I had dropped close to if not outside top 200. I had a great recovery after that, without missing a single badge. But I played it safe, generally going with the favorites, to hopefully get back in the top 100, which I did, after the final. Before the final, I was something like 125th.
The first ones have 41 badges, so I think I did pretty well. I also missed two potential badges at the group stages because I forgot to submit my votes and I voted 7 minutes after the games started. Early enough, but still, invalid votes by the contest rules. Not even sure if I would have gotten those badges, I don't remember if I guessed the outcome of the games or if they were two of the surprises.
Overall, both this Word Cup and the HiveBuzz contest were pretty entertaining. Looking forward to the next similar event!