World Cup Groups I & J - My Picks

1% France not to win at 33c (good to 37c)
1% Iraq +1.5 at 41c (good to 45c)
OR
1% Iraq +2.5 at 64c (good to 69c)
OR
Some combination of the two above
0.5% Lionel Messi Anytime Assist at 30c (good to 35c)
1% Austria -1.5 against Jordan at 46c (good to 52c)

Alright, the first round of group stage games is well underway and one of the big themes we've been seeing so far is that fortune favours teams that keep it tight at the back and are willing to gamble just a little bit while still maintaining their structure. Now we have a fresh set of games with clear favourites and underdogs that will want to stake their claim to a point or three. Let's go through these in turn.

France vs Senegal - France have a ridiculous amount of talent such that they could play an entire second string side and still get reasonably far. The 26 man squad selected by Didier Deschamps is very heavy on forwards and much lighter on defensive players. My concern is that their squad may be too top heavy. Kylian Mbappé is a popular figure in the dressing room but his defensive work leaves a lot to be desired. Combine that with Didier Deschamps announcing that this is his last tournament with France and this becomes a tournament of genuine uncertainty as France's forward line of Mbappé, Olise, Dembélé and Doué will have to figure out a way to accommodate each other. Tchouaméni may in his mid 20s but Adrian Rabiot is 31 now. Senegal meanwhile thought they were AFCON champions until their title was retrospectively stripped away from them and given to Morocco, which can mask the fact that they have quietly become quite a good team. They thrive in more volatile games, having strong physical players that are capable of playing on the break and stretching the game. This is where Mbappé's lack of defensive workrate may cause a genuine vulnerability and that's why I see potential value in Senegal to avoid defeat.

Iraq vs Norway - Norway enter this tournament as one of its dark horses but they are very widely known as dark horses. They have certainly done well in qualifying, topping their qualifying group ahead of Italy. Although they are heavily favoured against Iraq, I am not so convinced it will be a straightforward match. Iraq are managed by Graham Arnold, who led Australia to the last 16 of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, making them tight and difficult to beat in the process. Iraq under Arnold have kept most of their games close and if they manage to compress the game, they can make it very difficult for Martin Odegaard and Erling Haaland to create and finish dangerous chances. Based on how Graham Arnold sets out his teams, I don't expect this game to explode in volatility if Iraq go behind and I also do have concerns about Norwegian squad depth so if this game drags on, this would favour how Iraq play their game. This has been a recurring theme with Asian and African underdogs so far, where playing tight and disciplined at the back keep them in the game against teams that don't have wildly unpredictable attacks so that's why I see see some value on Iraq against the spread.

Argentina vs Algeria - it is ironic that Messi has had more success with Argentina at an age where many of the game's greats had already retired with a squad that didn't boast the talent he played with at his peak, yet Argentina's success under Lionel Scaloni has come from building a system with high clarity of role, including that of an aging Lionel Messi. In the 2022 World Cup, Messi dropped deeper and became more of an attacking conductor while more recently load management has become a big part of Scaloni's deployment of Messi. At this stage of his career, Messi does not sprint or do vertical runs anywhere near as much as he used to and he is now being used selectively seeking out final balls, passes through defence, the kind of offensive contributions that a 39 year old does not need to be his 26 year old self to do consistently over 90 minutes. Argentina are already priced quite aggressively to win the match and their main concern in in defence, where they have had a lot of injuries. I don't necessarily think Algeria will be best equipped to exploit that but if Algeria try to play tight the way other underdogs have I can see the game becoming quite compressed and that's exactly the kind of situation where Messi's guile can be crucial to a breakthrough. If Argentina manage to break Algeria down consistently then that is where I would expect Messi to have had a role in it.

Austria vs Jordan - I am generally sceptical of system teams in international football because you have nowhere near as much time and flexibility to build a system at international level as you do at club level where you can fine tune complexity week by week. Austria is one of the exceptions because Ralf Rangnick has been around for a very long time and all of the current squad would have either grown up playing in systems directly influenced by his philosophy or would at least be familiar with it. He made a quick impact on Austria when he took over as manager in 2022 with the players there already being well primed for his methods and they won their group in Euro 2024 ahead of France before losing to Turkey in the last 16. Gegenpressing was originally developed by Ralf Rangnick in the 1990s and it is a style that can up the volatility in games. This can make them vulnerable to teams that can match with chaos of their own but I don't expect Jordan to have the level of coordination to exploit that. There was a bizarre moment in a recent friendly of theirs against Switzerland where a Jordanian forward told his team to ignore his manager's instructions and attempt a high press of their own. It immediately backfired and led to a Switzerland goal in a matter of a few passes. Not only does this raise big questions about the manager's authority, it also raises questions about their ability to coordinate against a football system that Austria have been playing and iterating for years. This will be a night time kickoff at the San Francisco Bay Area Stadium in Santa Clara, so temperature will be relatively cool, only being in the high teens Celsius. Intense high pressing systems tend to falter in hot, humid conditions but tonight's conditions are probably the best that Austria will have to play full intensity gegenpressing all tournament.