2017 FIFA Confederations Cup

After Round One of the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup, all three UEFA teams are undefeated. Germany and Russia came out with a victory, while Portugal managed a draw against CONCACAF side Mexico. CONMEBOL got a victory when Chile scored two late goals to deliver Cameroon and CAF a defeat to start their journey in the competition.

As expected, OFC and AFC are having a hard time securing points.  OFC’s New Zealand suffered the first defeat of the competition while  AFC’s Australia took the final defeat of the round.

There is no clear winner for boot yet.  12 different goal scorers and one own goal completed the scoring done in the first round.

Group A

June 17, 2017  

Russia        2–0    New Zealand

Michael Boxall 31’(o.g)

Fedor Smolov 69’

From the balance of play, Russia came out with the right amount of points but not the right amount of goals. A goal in each half gave the host nation an ideal start to the competition.

Russia opened the competition with a victory over New Zealand.

With Portugal and Mexico in this group, it is quite difficult to see Australia do better than this result for the remainder of the competition.  

June 18, 2017

Portugal    2–2    Mexico

Ricardo Quaresma 35’            Javier Hernandez 42’

Cedric Soares 86’                   Hector Moreno 90’

Mexico scored a late goal in each half to come from a goal down on two occasions for a point against Portugal.

Cristiano Ronaldo couldn’t get on the score sheet for Portugal, but Javier Hernandez did for Mexico. Had he not miss a late first-half clear goal scoring opportunity, Hernandez could have had a double and given Mexico a lead before the break.

Group B

Cameroon       0–2       Chile

                                                                         Arturo Vidal  82

                                                                         Eduardo Vargas 90’

The CONMEBOL champions took all three points from their match with CAF champions. It took a while but Chile eventually did the expected and got their winning goal against Cameroon.

June 19, 2017  

Australia      2–3     Germany

Tom Rogic 41’                                 Lars Stindl 5’

Tomi Juric 58’                               Julian Draxler 45’(pen)

                                                                Leon  Goretzka 48’

Germany would have kicked themselves if they had failed to get an expected victory over Australia, especially after dominating the match in all good areas that statistics are kept.

It ended with a flattering score for Australia. Had Bernd Leno been a little stronger in goal for Germany, this would have likely ended as a 3-0 victory for the defending FIFA World Cup champions.