Noah MT

While I hate how the World Cup was awarded to Qatar on so many levels, it is hard not get excited about the fact that the world's biggest sporting event is only a year away. As I am a follower of the Premier League and Champions League who also follows the progress of La Liga, Serie A, the Bundesliga and Ligue Un, my footballing knowledge is rather Eurocentric. In this list I am going to be looking at the European qualifiers and guessing the order that the groups will end in. Let's go! Group A: Portugal Serbia Ireland  Azerbaijan Luxembourg It was basically a tussle between Serbia and Ireland for 2nd and Azerbaijan and Luxembourg not to come last. In the end I let the first two group matches decide who went where. Serbia took the three points at home against Ireland and fielded, in my opinion, a stronger team. While Azerbaijan lost to Portugal, they were no push-overs and I felt that, despite one mistake, the Azerbaijani goalkeeper (Sahruddin Mammadaliyev) displayed brilliant a...

I know it's a weird idea at first glance, but hear me out, OK. This idea was ignited by all the talks about how Tariq Lamptey's possible move to Arsenal, and I started thinking about how this may cause them to line up. I then noticed how good either team might become if they could just get a select few players from the other to get transferred to them for free. I played with a few lineups before deciding on this exciting and gifted 3-3-2-2 team. No loan players other than Mat Ryan (who is on loan from Brighton to Arsenal) will be included, so no players loaned in, such as Martin Odegaard, or players loaned out. So here we go! Goalkeeper: Bernd Leno Goalkeeper was a toss-up between three players; Robert Sánchez, Mat Ryan and Bernd Leno. I find Bernd Leno accident prone and don't really rate him, but I think most people would go for him over the two Brighton shot-stoppers so I let that be the final call. To be honest with you, I would have chosen Emi Martínez if he hadn't...