England 6-2 Iran

I guess my ability to predict football matches is about as good as my ability to predict election results.  6 goals?  I was convinced it was going to be a goalless draw, with England creatively incapable of breaking down an ultra-defensive Iran.  What a pleasant surprise it was to be proven wrong, though I think my prediction was exactly how Iran expected it to go.  Was it as much about Iran being really bad as England being really good?  It doesn't matter, it's the result that counts.  The game was somewhat ruined by knowing the final result whilst watching my taping of the game.  I need to either watch the games live or totally turn off my phone.  But this is the way England have to play - our strength is going forward, and we simply have to score lots of goals to overcome our defensive deficiencies.  Having later watched Wales vs USA, I'm not worried about either of them.  

What else do I take away from the World Cup so far?  Well, the amount of injury time they're playing at the end of each half is utterly ridiculous.  It's way too much.  And I already have my concerns about bad refereeing - you'd think that VAR would mitigate this, but we've already seen some dodgy and horribly inconsistent VAR decisions.  And is it me, but does the atmosphere at the stadiums seem fake?  I don't think the fans are anywhere near as loud in person as they sound on TV - I think they're "enhancing" the crowd noises on the feed, much like they did during those COVID games with no crowd.  Sober fans do not make as much noise as drunk fans.  I suspect there are an awful lot of locals who couldn't care less about the game, or the occasion, being brought in to make up the crowd numbers (hence them all leaving at halftime).  And, as feared, the coverage of the games on American TV has been awful.  I don't want to watch crappy games like Qatar vs Ecuador all the way through, but did they show any highlights of the game later on?  Did they heck, not that there were many highlights to be had.  And the studio coverage is just dreadful.  So, so bad.  Way too many adverts, and way too many "experts" who don't have a clue about the game.  I can't watch a second of it.  And the commentators are not much better - I almost switched to the Spanish-language audio during the Netherlands-Senegal game, if the Scottish commentator said "Oranje" one more time I was going to throw my remote at the TV.