For several weeks I broke down rosters, mapped out the knockout bracket, researched historical matchups, considered current form, analyzed tactics and tendencies. And confidently arrived at my pick to win the 2018 World Cup:
Spain. La Furia Roja.
Then I woke up Wednesday morning to learn the United States, Mexico and Canada had been awarded the 2026 World Cup over Morocco, and there, at the bottom of the online report, was a small headline: "Spain fires coach."
Wait. What?
Julen Lopetegui is out, one day after being named Real Madrid coach and two days before Spain opens the World Cup against Cristiano Ronaldo and rival Portugal. Fernando Hierro, the team's sporting director whose only head coaching experience is a single season in Spain's second division, was named interim replacement.
"We have been obliged to fire the national coach," federation President Luis Rubiales said in a surreal news conference at the team's training base in Krasnodar, Russia. "We wish him the best, he has done an excellent job in getting us to the tournament. But the federation cannot be left outside the negotiation of one of its employees and find out just five minutes before a public announcement."
The rest of us, then, are obliged to find another World Cup favorite.
You start with the defending champs, Germany, which is No. 1 in the world rankings and so good that its B team won the FIFA Confederations Cup last summer in Russia at many of the same stadiums that will be used over the next month.
History, however, tells us to pick the defending champ at our own peril. Three of the last four haven't even escaped the first round, and the last country to go back-to-back was Brazil in 1962.
We move on. Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay are good, but you have to go back even farther, to 1958, to find the last time _ and the only time _ a South American team won on Europe grass. So they're out.
How about Chile, which won the last two South American continental championships and were runners-up last summer at the Confederations Cup? Oops, didn't quality.
Italy? The Netherlands? Didn't qualify, either.
Portugal won the 2016 European Championships but, upon closer examination, rode a wave of good fortune and is ripe for a regression to the mean with an aging roster.
France is oozing with talent, and guys screaming at each other in the locker room. Already, one of the alternates to Didier Deschamps' final roster declined the invitation, causing a furor.
Belgium punches well above its weight for a nation of 11 million. But instead of being the lovable outsiders, as they were four years ago, the pressure is mounting for this golden generation of players to win something _ always a dangerous thing.
Mexico has reached the second round six straight times, and lost in the second round six straight times. Plus, it was handed a brutal draw.
England is, well, England.
Which leaves us with ... Spain?
History offers a knowing wink.
Here's what defender Gerard Pique tweeted just hours after Lopetegui was unceremoniously escorted to the exit: "Universidad de Michigan. Baloncesto. 1989. Campeon de la NCAA. No seria la primera vez que ocurre. Todos unidos, ahora mas que nunca."
In English: "University of Michigan. Basketball. 1989. NCAA champion. It wouldn't be the first time that it happened. Everyone together, now more than ever."
The reference is to Michigan head coach Bill Frieder accepting a job at Arizona State on the eve of the 1989 NCAA Tournament. (Gotta love Pique's knowledge of American college basketball.) Athletic Director Bo Schembechler promptly fired him, famously saying a Michigan man will coach Michigan, and replaced him with a little-known assistant named Steve Fisher.
Who, six wins later, cut down nets.
Fernando Hierro, meet Steve Fisher.
