TITO'S TACOS, CULVER CITY, CA - The early games for Group B saw #1 B1-Paris Saint-Germain take care of MLS's #423 B4-Seattle Sounders,
2-0, holding them to no shots on goal (the first of the tournament). Playing simultaneously, SEA's listless play meant #10 B2-Atletico Madrid needed a 3-goal win to advance; they managed just one late goal and the 1-0 win still eliminated them and despite the loss, #58 B3-Botafogo advanced. All three top teams had 6 points but for this tourney, the 3-way tiebreaker is head-to-head-to-head and all were 1-1-0 against each other but PSG had the better goal differential (+3, thanks to their 4-0 win over ATM) to win the group and BOT had the second-best GD (0) to hold off ATM (-3). In the usual format (pts, wins, GD, GF, etc), a 2-0 win would've advanced ATM (via goals for) but with the 3-way head-to-head, they needed a 3-0 (or 4-1, 5-2, etc) win.
The evening games were exciting, action-packed, and in the end, didn't amount to much as the #538 A4-Inter Miami and #24 A1-Palmeiras 2-2 draw determined the whole group. PAL rallied late with 2 goals in the final 10 minutes to tie and win the Group while #47 A2-Porto answered 4 (!) times against #55 A3-Al Ahly to tie 4-4. AHL's Wessam Abou Ali had a hat trick with his 3rd goal off a powerful header to put AHL 3-2. With all the goals POR and AHL scored, when MIA was up 1-0, POR just needed a 2-goal win and when MIA was up 2-0 in the 65' (about 59' in the PORvAHL match), POR needed just a win. When PAL tied it at 2 and kept on threatening a 3rd, a PAL 3-2 lead would mean AHL needed to win by 2 and AHL was leading by one (4-3) for about the next five minutes before POR tied it at 4 in the 89' (the MIAvPAL was about 6 minutes ahead (90'+5).
The unfortunate tie meant MIA got #1 PSG instead of #58 BOT in the Round of 16 and the two Brazilian teams will face off in the other matchup (BOTvPAL). While a MIA win would be epic, a MIA win would also break a lot of pool brackets (15 of 16 have PSG in Semifinals)!
15 picked PSG, 14 picked ATM, 5 picked MIAvPAL draw, and 2 picked PORvAHL draw. All 16 had PSG in the Round of 16 while 11 had PAL. Just 6 had MIA and 1 BOT (
PoolraiderPSG (3rd, 21 pts)) making the knockout round and the
$7.5 million that comes with it (the draws cost all 4 Group A teams $1 million each).
Alyonushka (7th-Tied, 19) and
Oreshnik (7th-T)
got all 4 games correct while
PoolraiderPSG,
Sweet Futbol Fabone, and
Inter's Revenge (2nd, 22) got 3 of 4 R16 teams correct (remember, it doesn't matter if you had PSG as 1A or 2A, you still got the 3 pts).
Sweet Futbol Fabone got 12 of the 16 pts to take sole possession of
1st place with 24 pts and leads with 15 group stage wins.
PoolraiderPSG and
Mauihammy (16th (last), 13)
got just 1 game correct while
Mauihammy got just 1 of 4 R16 teams correct (for a low of 4 pts today). 15 entries lost ATM and 14 POR in their Round of 16 bracket.
Mauihammy lost AHL.
There is this taco place that usually has long lines but the wait wasn't long when I got to Tito's Tacos and their hard tacos are very good, just maybe not $6 good (you do get chips and salsa). I wore my 2022 Seattle Sounders home jersey to support MLS.
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