This is my new series covering the World Cup. I will pick talking points from each gameday to write about. I will most likely write one or two daily posts until the final. Today, I will be talking about the following:

• Ghana vs. Uruguay

• South Korea vs Portugal

• Cameron vs Brazil

• Serbia vs Switzerland

• What you might have missed about the 229 billion World Cup cost

Ghana vs. Uruguay

Take away the 2010 Suarez handball incident and this match really wouldn't be worth talking about a lot.

Ghana has been unimpressive in this, which could be traced to their lack of creative players in the team, not deep, not on the sides, and upfront. This leads to Ghana only performing when the game gets chaotic, similar, but definitely not in quality, to Liverpool. This lack of creative quality comes with the exception of Kudus, who is not that much of a creative player, but most importantly wasn't utilized to be the creative player in the team.

During all their World Cup games, Ghana has shown an excessive amount of randomness that usually comes from the opposite team scoring. Either that or become the counter-attacking team. The problem with the first is once you open the game to such randomness, the team with the better players' quality wins, as we saw against Portugal and of course Uruguay.

Uruguay, on the other hand, wasn't that impressive either. You might look at the names of Uruguay players and think they have enough quality, but it's a deceiving list. A midfield with Valverde and Bentancur sounds great on paper but in reality as both are very similar so they were undercutting each other all the time. Their attack force is similar. Núñez was done a huge disservice in the team's tactics.

When I wrote about Federico Valverde's problems in a previous post, I was told how he is the best in the world and he is improving. The only issue people were still insisting that he was playing as a midfielder when he wasn't most of the time. Federico Valverde is perfect and a problem solver at Real Madrid, but much like Tent-Alexander Arnold, he is a bit exposed once the style shifts.

South Korea vs Portugal

Much like the next match on this list, this was a game between a side that needed the win and a side that couldn't care less about the result as it is a sprint, not a marathon.

What baffles me here is that Cristiano wasn't rested, this could be simply because Cristiano Ronaldo wanted more goals or the coach simply decided so, but either way, it wasn't the best decision to make for a player who couldn't finish the whole 90 minutes in a single match so far, no matter the reason.

Cameron vs Brazil

Not much to say here really as Brazil couldn't really care about the result of this match as they already had the best defense and attack in the World Cup. Vincent Aboubakar's goal solidified him as one of the best surprises in 2022. The shirt move was very smart as it ensured he will be remembered as people will always see the photo of his red card and say how he scored the winning goal and as time goes by people will forget this was Brazil's B team and that it was a team taking it easy ahead of the round of 16.

Serbia vs Switzerland

This match can be one where we point out how even the most tactical teams can be overwhelmed with emotions considering the history of some of Switzerland's players with Serbia, and vice-versa.

We had two teams who could be praised for their tactical presence in any of the games we saw them playing, in fact, there were times when they were overdoing it. Especially in the case of Serbia as we saw against Portugal in the qualification and this match how their attack can be good but was restricted by the coach's tactics.

What you might have missed about the 229 billion World Cup cost

There's been a lot of talks in the days, months, and years leading up to the 2022 World Cup about the cost of preparing for it. Some estimate it to be 100 billion, some say 150, I have gone with the highest number just so people don't think I have missed it. In comparison to Qatar's 229 billion, Russia has spent 11 billion, and Brazil spent 15 billion.

The media lied about the cost of World Cup preparation cost by playing the numbers, very similar to what they did by tallying the total death of migrants in Qatar and presenting it as the number of workers who died, but more on the latter point in a later post.

The one thing we could agree on is that, yes, this is the most expensive World Cup to date. Where the numbers were used to present an inaccurate description was that most of that money was lobbed into the World Cup budget when presented while it was simply used to build the country's infrastructure. It would be something like the UAE hosting the World Cup and the cost of Burj Khalifa gets added to the country's World Cup budget.

People tend to forget, or simply are unaware of the fact that Qatar, much like many countries in the region, is relatively new. While I can't use any of those pictures here, a simple search comparing Qatar now versus 10, 20, 30, and 40 years ago could show you how much Qatar was developing throughout that period, there is literally a time period where the capital of Qatar only had the Sheraton hotel in a vast land of nothing but sand and very few roads.

Meanwhile, if you do the same with Russia, Brazil, South Africa, and Germany you might have very little to no difference as their budget was focused on facilities improvements, accommodation, and road safety. Qatar is in a very different place than those nations.

Qatar's metro station alone cost 36 billion, do people believe it was/will only be used for the World Cup? What about the roads, hotels, housing projects, and companies that started in the same time period, will those also disappear after the World Cup? The answer is no.

In fact, all of the stadiums built have use intended afterward, including one that will be completely dismantled (974) with everything used in it to be sent elsewhere for other usages and another that will be repurposed (Al Bayt) into a hotel, a shopping center, gym, and a whole other branch of Aspetar, a sporting center that includes a sports academy.

What the numbers fail to show or even mention is how much of that budget is made for the future. The entirety of the World Cup for Qatar was an advertisement, the UAE gets around 20 million visitors each year, and Qatar is a few steps behind the UAE.

Every dollar or Qatar Rial was used for the betterment of the entire country, the World Cup is merely a step in the country's overall plans. Qatar simply isn't in the same place as any of the nations to be judged the same way. Most of Qatar was building during the World Cup other nations had already built it long ago.