World Cup update: What is Ronaldo hiding?

Here's an update on how the world's biggest sporting event is progressing. I'm watching while the rest of you suckers are working. (Well, most of you.) 

Argentina

Translation: Leave it. It is dead. 

On the bright side, Argentine men can devote more time to following their football association's instructions on how to seduce Russian women.

And, sure, thanks to Nigeria beating Iceland, Argentina is technically not yet eliminated. However, they've been the worst team in their group. Nigeria has a real shot at beating them. 

Croatia

They're now a "must watch" team. Luka Modric's strike against Argentine is the soccer equivalent of when LeBron decides to hell with it and just stampedes to the basket.

Mexico
The celebrations when Hirving Lozano scored the winner against Germany literally caused a false earthquake.

It's only one game (against the defending world champions), but El Tri looks as competitive as any of the top teams. By virtue of beating Germany, they are likely to avoid Brazil in at least the first knockout round.

Germany
Reading German tabloids after a soul-crushing defeat really gets to essence of "schadenfreude." Thanks to Google, you can get a translation, but it's more fun to infer from the original German.



Translation: 

“In the past months there has been a lot of talk about boycotting the World Cup for political reasons”, wrote commentator Matthias Brügelmann in tabloid Bild. “But I did not expect that Jogi’s boys would turn that into practice on the pitch in their opener, of all matches.”

Ouch.

Brazil
They'll move on to the knockout rounds easily enough, but Neymar remains as hard to root for as ever:



He was initially awarded a penalty kick for this play, but the referee reversed himself after video review showed that Neymar was essentially practicing a trust fall.

Portugal
Cristiano Ronaldo has scored all of Portugal's goals so far and is the favorite to win the Golden Boot (given to the player who scores the most goals in the tournament). He remains the most polarizing player in the world -- as talented and vain as ever. Tom Brady wishes he was as hate-watchable as this guy.

But can we talk about his stubborn insistence on wearing long sleeves? The other day, Portugal was playing in 90-degree heat and Nashville-esque humidity and he was the only player on the field in long sleeves. 



What sort of scandalous tattoos is he hiding?

France
They're cruising along, but haven't yet put it all together. Paul Pogba has been putting on a clinic, just in case you are curious as to what sort of havoc can be wreaked by a world-class midfielder.

Kylian Mbappe has scored one relatively easy goal and had a couple of other tantalizing chances. Hopefully we'll get to see Les Bleus drop the hammer on some poor team soon. If the soccer gods are smiling, as a bonus, we'll get to the see that thing where Mbappe just toys with a defense.

Spain
Like France, they're doing OK, but haven't yet played to their talent level. Spain versus Portugal was, by far, the most entertaining game so far. 

They remain appointment viewing and not just to see if Sergio Ramos causes an international incident during a game.