The World Cup is always an amazing spectacle; I’m still getting over Germany’s 7-1 demolition of Brazil in the semi-finals last time. Like the Olympics, the World Cup continually delivers moments which are immediately written into history.
Football has evolved over the past decade, with the onus being on the strength of your attack, not the depth of your defence. Defenders don’t make headlines with clean sheets, they make back pages after mistakes – whereas our strikers, the Neymars, Messis and Kanes of the world get almost constant coverage - they are always the main focus.
For me, the squad to watch over the course of the tournament is France. Raphaël Varane, N’Golo Kante, Paul Pogba, Antoine Griezmann, Kylian Mbappé – you’d struggle to put a better five-a-side squad together from one nation. Although not considered a favourite, France could easily reach the final.
Belgium have some fantastic players, but they’ve rarely gelled together as a national team – they won’t go beyond the quarter-finals.
Spain have an ageing team, but the quality and experience of the players cannot be doubted; they’re littered with major trophies but the sacking of their manager must have dented hopes.
Brazil will want payback for 2014 and without a doubt I can see them reaching the semi-finals but I can’t see them overcoming the power of Germany or France.
Finally England - I think we’ve prepared for this tournament in all the right ways. The FA have been clear with Southgate that this is about building a team for the future and if we can reach the quarter-finals, we will have done well.
We have a relatively young and internationally inexperienced team but they certainly proved their worth last season – I’ll be proudly supporting them in a Tooting pub next week!
Predictions:
Winner: Germany
Runner-up: France
Top Goalscorer: Thomas Muller
Rosena Allin-Khan is the Labour MP for Tooting