Welcome to the Thunder Football Newsletter. #18
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What today’s email is all about:

• Germany wins the FIFA World Cup! 🏆

• UEFA EURO 2024 Draw ⚽️

• Angry Haaland is angry 🇳🇴

• Memes 😂

Germany are Champions of the World!

It felt good writing this headline 🇩🇪.

In case you didn’t notice, the Thunder Football newsletter took a 3-week holiday… But if there was ever a reason to start writing again it would be to write about Germany (my country of birth) winning the FIFA World Cup.

So let’s break it down. A world cup is a world cup. And on Saturday the 2nd of December 2023, Germany beat France on penalties to win the U-17 FIFA World Cup in Indonesia!

Let’s face it, the German senior team hasn’t been too hot recently - only winning 2 of their last 11 games. But give these U17 boys some time to grow up and maybe we’ll win the 2030 FIFA World Cup.

Back to the U-17 World Cup, this is what the road to the final looked like:

• African teams have a history of performing well in the U-17 World Cup with Nigeria 🇳🇬 having won the tournament the most amount of times. They have lifted the trophy on 5 occasions, 1 more than Brazil in 2nd place.

• Mali 🇲🇱 has finished in the Top 4 in each of the last 5 editions of the tournament. They are yet to lift the trophy but did well in 2023 by finishing in 3rd place.

The Award Winners

• Golden Ball: Paris Brunner 🇩🇪

• Silver Ball: Hamidou Makalou 🇲🇱

• Bronze Ball: Mathis Amougou 🇫🇷

• Golden Boot: Agustin Ruberto 🇦🇷

• Silver Boot: Ibrahim Diarra 🇲🇱

• Bronze Boot: Claudio Echeverri 🇦🇷

• Golden Glove: Paul Argney 🇫🇷

• FIFA Fair Play Trophy: England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Keep an eye on these names. A few of them will be dominating football in the years to come. Previous winners of the Golden Ball award include Toni Kroos, Phil Foden and Cesc Fàbregas to name a few.

View short clips compiled by FIFA for each of the Award Winners.

UEFA EURO 2024 Draw

Speaking of Germany, this past weekend the draw for the European Championship took place. The Tournament will be hosted by Germany in June/July 2024.

Group B will definitely be the hardest with 3 of the World’s top 10 nations (according to the latest FIFA Rankings) all put together in one group. I’m still going to root for Albania to pull off an incredible upset.

Here are the groups:

• There are still places for 3 teams to qualify which will be decided through play-offs in March 2024. The teams still in the running to qualify are Poland, Estonia, Wales, Finland, Israel, Iceland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine, Georgia, Luxembourg, Greece and Kazakhstan.

• Sorry, no Erling at the Euros next year 🇳🇴

UEFA EURO 2024 key dates

• 21 March: Play-off semi-finals

• 26 March: Play-off finals

• 14 June: UEFA EURO 2024 opening match

• 14 July: UEFA EURO 2024 final

What else is good? Angry Haaland!

In a tough game at the Etihad Stadium, Spurs and Manchester City were tied at 3-3 with only a couple of minutes left. Haaland received the ball and was fouled but was still able to play Grealish through who was onside and clear on goal… only for the referee to cancel the advantage and blow the whistle for the foul.

Manchester City has been charged with failing to control their players after the ref’s decision not to allow City a possibly important advantage in the final minutes of play. The match finished 3-3.

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