How is Pavlidis scoring so much in AZ?

Is he a tap-in merchant in a league with open defenses?

It’s baffling, every time he’s played with the national team he is a total donkey.

Might be a Gekas phenomenon, an all around average striker who somehow was top scorer of the Bundesliga for a season with Bochum.

USA and Mexico being in Pot 1 over Uruguay gives the potential for a super hard group (if Uruguay ends up with Brazil or Argentina) and an open one (Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, Canada for example).

Peru is not Pot 2 material either by the way, right now they are weaker than the 3 CONMEBOL teams in Pot 3.

The tournament draw will definitely be interesting!

Bosnia lost at home to Slovakia and Luxembourg, and finished 5th (below Iceland too) in the Group.

They wouldn’t make it even in the League C path.

It’s the best draw Ukraine could have.

We would need to beat Georgia away to make the Euro. Not a walk in the park but if we can’t do it probably we don’t belong to the Euro.

Ukraine has to be smiling with this draw, so does Wales who have 2 home matches.

UEFA doesn’t care about corruption in national federations as long as the politicians stay away from them.

They don’t care enough to intervene and clean the mess of each individual country (assuming they aren’t part of the corruption themselves in the first place). In multiple countries you will see people asking for UEFA to intervene against corrupt FAs, it almost never happens, because they don’t think it’s their problem.

The silent message they send is “you re on your own, and no visible government involvement because we re not setting this precedent”.

Kotarski is really good for PAOK later, it’s odd that he isn’t picked over the GK of Pafos, no?

The Netherlands is officially the new Portugal, the CL clubs performing and the EL and ECL ones underperforming, the tables have turned!

PAOK’s late win is crucial for our top 15 fight, especially if it ends up giving them 1st place. I feel good about our chances against Norway and Denmark right now (Serbia is de facto out of it already).

Antwerp’s naivetee in the Champions League is spoiling another good year for Belgium from being ideal.

And the Faroe Islands keep rising with the mighty Klaksvik!

It would be beyond suicidal if we dropped points in the end for a 3rd match in a row.

We played very well for 85’, West Ham barely threatened us (and it was from set pieces where we are weak), almost all of our starting lineup played well today. We fully deserved the win, and actually 4 points is the minimum we should have given how we’ve played so far in the Group. Let’s hope football will give us something back in England or Germany.

Apart from that, I am really surprised how easy West Ham made the match for us. Our biggest weakness is if you apply pressure high in the pitch, from the 1st pass of our GK to our CB. We are error prone, and can’t handle pressure well. But West Ham was never pressuring the ball, they were always giving us space and tactically waiting a few meters in the back. If you had asked coach Martinez how he’d like the opponent to play, that’s what he would answer you: play like West Ham did. Either it’s a good matchup for us or Moyes didn’t bother to scout us at all.

We’re a fully different team when Hezze and Camara both play. It allows us to use a 3 CM system and they are both high quality players. Fortounis finally starts having big European performances and Podence looks even better than when he left. The defense is overall our problem (apart from Rodinei) but well, that’s not for today.

Ipswich getting a 2nd promotion in a row and doing it so easily is astonishing.

Venezuela is going to their 1st World Cup.

San Marino needs to have a perfect match (for them) like this in combination with a poor match from an opponent when they play a worse team than Denmark, like a Baltic team, Azerbaijan, Northern Ireland (since they aren’t playing other micronations in Qualifiers) to get a point. Against Denmark sadly it’s not enough.

- AEK’s owner should be ashamed of himself for the state of the pitch. This is a brand new stadium, you can’t be bothered to have the grass in good condition ?

- The Spanish referee showed why Lahoz was the best Spanish referee for years.

- We played quite well given our lack of talent in many positions, if we were a bit luckier we could have got points today.

- We should be able to beat Kazakhstan at home and then if we are mentally ready, beat Georgia or Luxembourg and make it to the Euro.

PS. I already see comments about the lasers again, so I will post it again, that if there are matches with fans in Greece, there will be lasers. In football, basketball, volleyball, handball, everything. In penalties, free throws, serves…no you can’t stop them from having them, in Greece the ultras bring whatever they want inside, the police doesn’t do their job, the laws aren’t upheld. You would have to either reshape Greek society and institutions or have all matches in Greece without fans. No other solution.

Japan has some impressive results lately.

I wonder if they will translate to winning the Asian Cup in 2024, or the “park the bus for 90 minutes” tactics that AFC teams deploy against them give them more trouble than actually better teams who play more open.