Forever Blue With Toby Camplin: City Stars Enjoy Victory And Suffer Heartbreak At World Cup

The World Cup has reached its final eight teams in an eventful week of football. We’ve seen drama, heartbreaks and shocks for our boys in blue, all to be discussed in this week’s Forever Blue column. 

As we’ve done for the last few weeks, let's start with our national team, England. The Three Lions played their first knockout game against Senegal on Sunday, winning the game 3-0. A big talking point around the game was whether Stockport lad, Phil Foden would start, following criticism that he wasn’t put into the starting XI for two of the group stage games. 

Phil started the game and bagged himself two assists in a fantastic all round performance, hopefully earning himself a start in England’s quarter final game. John Stones also started, like he has every single game during the World Cup, earning himself and fellow defenders a clean sheet. 

Kyle Walker made his second appearance at the tournament after returning from injury, a sight that all England fans will be delighted to see, considering the Three Lions’ next opponent, France, with the match up between Walker and French forward Kylian Mbappe a much talked about subject. The quarter final will take place on Saturday at 7pm.

In the week since my last column, we haven’t only had round of 16 knockout action, but also the conclusion of the group stages. Both came with huge shocks impacting quite a few City players. Two teams to have been unexpectedly knocked out of their respective groups were Belgium and Germany, home to Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gundogan. 

Both countries were heavy favourites to get out of the group stage, but it wasn’t to be. With a loss against Japan and a draw to Spain, other results in the group meant that even a win in their last game against Costa Rica couldn’t prevent Ilkay and Germany being knocked out. 

Belgium also only managed one win in their group, with a loss to group winners, Morocco, and a draw to Croatia pushing them out of the top two. As these were both big shocks, we can only hope as City fans that the results don’t have a big effect mentally on the likes of De Bruyne and Gundogan.

Belgium’s failure in the group stages meant an underdog side had the chance of playing in the knockouts, this being Morocco. It set up a tie against Spain, home to City’s Rodri and Aymeric Laporte. The game went the distance, with it eventually being decided on penalties. Another huge shock saw the Spanish beaten 3-0 on spot kicks, a truly cruel way to go out. Laporte was pictured in tears after the game, reflecting the shear heartbreak that knockout football can provide. 

As this was such a difficult way for Aymeric and Rodri to be knocked out, will this have an affect on them mentally? As said before, Laporte needed to be consoled after being pictured in tears, so will this affect him coming straight back into a jam packed winter schedule, where City will most definitely need a full squad, especially with the first game back being against close rivals, Liverpool.

It’s not all doom and gloom for our boys in blue, though. Portugal, home of three City players, beat Manuel Akanji’s Switzerland 6-1. Brazil, home of Ederson, had a truly incredible performance against South Korea, winning 4-1 in style. Nathan Ake of the Netherlands and Julian Alvarez of Argentina, will play each other after winning their first knockout games at 7pm on Friday night. 

It’s worth mentioning that Julian Alvarez is having a fantastic tournament, scoring in the round of 16 tie against Australia. As mentioned previously, City have such a tight fixture list following the World Cup, so an in form Alvarez could provide the difference in some key games if Erling Haaland needs a rest.

As City fans, we can be proud of our players who are left in the tournament, all 11 of them, with at least one player playing in each quarter final tie. I for one will be watching the England game on Saturday with great anticipation, hoping that we don’t revert to type and bottle it once again!