England V Belgium World Cup 2018

England V Belgium

Beers: Group E of Beer World Cup:

World Cup of Beer Group G

The first real heavyweight clash of my beer world cup. London Pride, a past finalist of my inaugural beer world cup in 2014, up against Bieren Van Begeerte and their interesting brews in the dinky little bottles. Will be a good clash today, hope I dont have a hangover tomorrow morning!

Ok this was a battle royale between two great beer drinking nations. For Belgium we had some beers from the Jessenhofke brewery while for England there was the old reliable, London Pride.

Arvum, a Belgian Ale of 6%, went first. It was quite nice, a typical blond bier, looked fine, and was very tasty and the flavours stuck around for a while on the tongue. As much as I love London Pride, the Belgian Ale got this, one nil to Belgium.

London Pride is a solid pale ale, with lots of flavour, and was fairly easy to drink, a good session beer. So for this reason I would give it a point/goal against Jessenhofke’s RGLR, a blond ale, which was fine but at 3.5% didn’t have the kick against the big boy here. 1-1.

So there was one more pair up to decide who would go through as leaders of the group. ‘t Bottelke, with its strange name, again up against LP. ‘t Bottelke again, a Belgian ale, 6% so not too much alcohol, but with a lot of taste and oh boy so smooth. Really enjoyed this beer, it was so silky on the tongue, and i would have loved to have had another one. London Pride couldn’t match the smooth flavours and feel of this little Belgian beaut. Belgian win 2-1.

PreGame:

Belgium V Tunisia: Was too easy for the Belgians, as I had predicted there would be a hammering, and that Belgium would be too strong for a severely limited Tunisian team.

Belgium started with much more intensity, and I guess after looking at the England game, they knew that if they get at Tunisia from the get go they might crumble early. And so they did, very early in fact, after about 6 minutes, with Hazard getting and scoring a penalty. We didn’t have to wait long for the next one, ten minutes in fact, for Lukaku to score a nice goal that was well set up.

Rather than crumble Tunisia did somehow manage to pull one quick goal back, Bronn scored from a glancing header, unmarked, back of the net. Great response, and exactly what his team needed. Game on.

Or so we thought, but Tunisia continued to gift Belgium simple chances, and with De Bruyne and Witsel pulling the strings in midfield it wasn’t long before Lukaku got his second goal of the afternoon. Put on a plate for him from De Bruyne, 3-1, just before half time.

Straight into the second half normal service resumed as in the 51st minute hazard got his seond and Belgium’s fourth. Another great ball from De Bruyne, and nice control by hazard to hit it easily past the hapless Tunisian goalkeeper.

As a contest it was over, and still we had so many minutes of the game to go. Subs came and went, and Batshuayi who was only on the pitch a short while, managed to have about 5 simple goal scoring chances, hitting one of the post when it was easier to score, rounding the glk in another and tamely hitting it when he should have blasted it into the empty net, but he did get the one nice goal, a well taken effort to make it 5-1.

Tunisia got one back, but they were never at the races today. Belgium looked good, particularly De Bruyne quietly going about his business behind the forwards, making most of the build up play and assisting in a few of the goals for today. Also for me, Vertonghen in central defence has had a good world cup so far, marshaling his back four very well, a good rock at the back.

England V Panama: Panama started good, they had a great chance to hit the target when Bárcenas was through but he ballooned it way over. After that it was pretty much one way traffic for England.

Stones got a free header from a corner, as the Panamanian defenders were more into WWF than concentrating on how to actual defend a set piece. Then shortly after, Lingard was brought down for a penalty which Kane easily dispatched off. Lingard, again, scored a cracking curler in the tip right corner for the third goal. This was getting too easy for England.

The fourth goal was a perfectly executed training ground routine and Stones got to the end of it when Sterling refused to score with his free header, very considerate of him and all. There was time for another penalty before the half was called up. The Panamanian defenders were warned all game about their manhandling in the box, but they choose to ignore it and so gave away a simple peno well called by the ref. Kane again, same as.

In the second half, the tempo came down a bit which was understandably as the job was well done already by England. Kane did get his hat trick and England’s sixth, when he scored from his heel, what a pox.

R Torres nearly got his country’s first world cup but badly missed at the far post. Good enough for the cunt, what a shit captain, in everyone’s face throughout most of the game and couldn’t control either himself or his team. But that goal came in the end to Baloy, on a sub, and with a well struck goal put himself into his country’s footballing history books.

Today’s game decides who gets to top the group, and what side of the draw they will be placed. Now that Germany is gone, you could argue that coming second would not be such a bad thing for either team.

A more detailed review on England here and on Belgium here

Saw the second half of this game:

Started off pretty slow. Januzaj though shaked it up, scoring with a cracker of a goal, a lovely long range effort that flew in.

England started playing a bit better after the goal went in, woke them up a bit, but I dont think they had the personal on the pitch to do much damage to Belgium, as their defence was holding up quite well.

Rashford though, got through, from a great ball by Vardy, and really should have scored, putting it wide. That was the chance to equalise.

Delph was on, showing his lack of skills, nearly hitting the corner flag from a shot on target, while at the opposite end, Mertens had a good strike saved well.

Basically this game was between the England second team V the Belgium second team, and shows us that the Belgians have good strength in depth, not so England, but if they played their first team then I’d imagine a completely different result.

England now go up against Colombia, a very winnable game now that James Rodriguez is injured, while Belgium should have no problem disposing of Japan.

Music to get you in the mood

The Clash – Rock the Casbah (England) V 2 Unlimited – No Limit (Belgium)