The end results

And in the end France won.

What about the Bolão? The win by France catapulted pcasal3 to the 1st place. Professor Slump jumped up to the 2nd place and LucasA and Xandinho share the 3rd place. Cabeça de Macaco finished pretty decently this time, on place 144. The complete standings are here.

As always, results will be final once they have been double-checked by our Excelmaster.*

See you all again in four years.

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* Results are now final.

All's well that ends well

The game for the 3rd place today was played in St Petersburg, which means that Achilles the deaf cat, who lives in that city, had to make a prediction. He hesitantly predicted a win by Belgium and closed his World Cup prediction season with a success after three failures in a row. All's well that ends well.

Of course, tomorrow is the big final and we will know who the champion is... of the World Cup and -more importantly- of the Bolão da Copa. Currently, at the top of our standings, LucasA is still 1st, pcasal3 is 2nd, and Papa Patrick is 3rd. Here are the complete standings.

The other semifinal

Verdammt nochmal! I shouldn't have used the old columns by Loose Tooth from the 2006 World Cup to plan my travels through Germany in 2018. When I started out the day in Bad Soden am Taunus this morning, little did I know that twelve hours later I would still be in the middle of Bavaria on a train wagon that had plenty of beer to drown my sorrows, but no working internet connection to see the Croatia-England game. When I finally arrived in Munich, the game was over and I was told that Croatia had won against England in overtime.

The clearest image I could get of the game with my internet connection (I think it may be the first goal by Croatia)

There are no changes in the top three: LucasA is still 1st, pcasal3 is 2nd, and Papa Patrick is 3rd. I challenge you to spot changes anywhere in the complete standings over here.

France is the first finalist

Achilles the deaf cat predicted that Belgium would win..., so naturally France advanced into the final.

We all will miss this guy

The win by France broke the tie in the third place and shuffled things around at places 2 and 3: LucasA is still 1st but pcasal3 moved up to the 2nd place and Papa Patrick is now 3rd. The complete standings are here.

England and Croatia advance

Two European teams were eliminated today (of course, some people will surely argue that this is because there are only European teams left in the tournament). In the first game today, Sweden (the survivor of the infamous Sweden-Swizerland elimination game) was easily dispatched by England. The second game pitted the host team Russia against Croatia. Russia and Croatia played well. The game was highly entertaining and when it looked like Croatia had already won, Russia came right back into the game (with a goal scored by a native South American, I must add). In the end, Croatia prevailed in the penalty shootout.

Mario Fernandes ties the game and forces the penalties.

There are no changes at the top of the standings. LucasA is 1st, Papa Patrick is 2nd, and pcasal3 and Will and Carlos (TCW) are tied in the 3rd place. The complete standings are here.

France and Belgium advance

France and Belgium advanced today, eliminating the only two South American teams left in the tournament: Uruguay and Brazil. In the France-Uruguay match, a nice gesture by Griezmann was that he did not celebrate his goal against Uruguay because, according to himself, he feels "half-Uruguayan". The Belgians did not have similar gestures with Brazil.

Griezmann arriving at the game today in full Uruguayan attire

In our competition, LucasA is 1st, Papa Patrick is 2nd, and pcasal3 and Will and Carlos (TCW) are tied in the 3rd place. The complete standings are here.

Sweden and England

In the first of today's games Sweden played against Switzerland. None of these teams ought to be in the World Cup at this stage, so it was efficient to have a game to eliminate at least one of them. Today it was Switzerland's turn. The game was played in St. Petersburg and, therefore, it was one of those games on which Achilles customarily makes predictions. Today he was mistaken again and Cabeça de Macaco was briefly amused by this turn of events... but only until he found out that in the second game England defeated Colombia in the penalties. Terrible news for our beloved monkey mascot, who had predicted that Colombia would win the World Cup!

A notable event in the Colombia-England game was the penalty awarded to Kane after what looked more like an offensive foul commited by himself. In any case, Kane is now the top scorer in the World Cup with 6 goals.

In today's standings, LucasA is 1st, Papa Patrick 2nd, and Will and Carlos (TCW) 3rd. A Man Like Trump is just one point behind, on the 4th place. The complete standings are here.

Brazil and Belgium

After yesterday's two boring games, today we reverted to more exciting games. In the Brazil-Mexico game, Neymar's decision to remove the food from his head seems to have made him a better player and he participated in both of his team's goals.

Neymar is the person with the lowest threshold for pain in the world.

In the other game, Belgium managed to turn around the match and ended up winning 3-2 against a very inspired Japanese team.

The top-3 in our standings are the same as yesterday: LucasA, Papa Patrick, and Helena Perrone. Also, take a look at the complete standings.

Penalties

In the first of today's two tedious games, Spain tried to bore the Russian team into defeat by endlessly passing the ball back and forth without ever getting near the goal. The Russians valiantly resisted by doing absolutely nothing until the penalty shootout finally put a stop the whole thing. The next game, Croatia-Denmark was more or less the same, although the many catches of penalty shots by the goalkeepers provided some excitement.

In today's standings, LucasA is 1st, Papa Patrick is 2nd, and Helena Perrone is 3rd. For the rest, check the complete standings.