After 12 rounds of World Cup preliminaries, Argentina topped the list with an unbeaten record of 32 points with ten wins, two draws and zero losses. Brazil rose to second place with 24 points, Uruguay ranked third with 23 points, and Chile ranked fourth with 20 points.
The top four can directly qualify for the Russian World Cup, followed by Ecuador with 18 points, as well as Colombia, Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Venezuela.
The fifth place will need to play the intercontinental play-offs with the first place in Oceania (usually New Zealand), and the winner will advance to the main round of the World Cup in Russia.
The ten teams in the South American World Cup preliminaries will play 18 rounds in a double round-robin. There are still six rounds left in the World Cup preliminaries. Argentina is now 14 points ahead of fifth-placed Ecuador.
If Argentina can win the next round of World Cup qualifying and lead the fifth place by 16 points or more, it will be able to qualify early with only 5 rounds left in the World Cup.
In fact, although Argentina has not yet qualified early, its huge lead means that it has basically qualified. Therefore, after the game against Colombia, everyone celebrated enthusiastically with the fans in the stadium, and then gradually dispersed.
After returning to England and resting for a few days, on November 19, in the 12th round of the Premier League, Liverpool challenged Southampton away.
In this game, Liverpool's state is much worse than that of Southampton. It is not only a matter of home and away, but also because Liverpool is the first in the Premier League and a big player in the international football team. During the FIFA match day that just passed, most of the players got the national football team. He was recruited by the team and traveled back and forth to participate in the World Cup preliminaries. The journey was tiring and his condition was not good.
Even though Willard has no major physical problems, he is inevitably a little tired mentally.
Coupled with Southampton's tight defense and the bad weather with light rain, Liverpool was unable to break the deadlock in the away game. It was not until the end of the first half that Willard saw the goalkeeper standing outside the right side of the penalty area. The ball was a little too close to the near end, and after a large gap was exposed at the far end, he suddenly took a long-range lob at a small angle and kicked the ball to the upper corner of the far end.
Goalkeeper Fraser Forster woke up when he saw Willard kicking the door, and quickly retreated to make a save, but it was too late.
Because Velarde's shot was relatively deflected this time and he deliberately avoided the crowd, he was not greatly disturbed by the pressing. He perfectly displayed his 100-point shooting skills and just hoisted the ball over the goalkeeper's head and against the crossbar. It fell into a blind corner, hit the inside of the pillar and bounced into the net.
Goalkeeper Fraser Forster took two steps back and tried his best to jump to save but failed to hit the ball. Finally, he staggered to the ground and fell inside the goal line, and then looked desperately at the ball that had fallen into the goal. , marveling at Willard's precise and superb shooting ability.
He just neglected his position, and as a result, Willard took advantage of him. From such a small angle, Willard was able to suddenly lob a shot from outside the side line and score a goal. This shooting ability is truly amazing.
Willard finally helped Liverpool break the deadlock, take a 1-0 lead in the away game, and refresh his annual total goal record to 103 goals.
After the deadlock was broken, the game became much easier to play. Anyway, Liverpool does not need to pursue a goal difference or a big score victory, so they can shrink their formation slightly to attract Southampton to attack.
However, Southampton did not seem to be fooled. They knew that it would be difficult to resist Liverpool's counterattack, so even when they got the ball and went into attack, only two or three people would attack for a while, and they would immediately return to defense once the ball was lost. As for the midfielder and backfield, they returned to defense faster, easily leaving no space for Liverpool to counterattack.
This kind of countermeasures, coupled with the slippery field and poor state, prevented Liverpool from scoring again for the rest of the first half.
Soon, the first half ended, and the two sides entered the halftime break with a score of 0-1. Liverpool, playing away, temporarily took a one-goal lead.
After a 15-minute intermission, the two sides changed sides and fought again in the second half. The rain had stopped, but the slippery field was still as slippery as in the first half, causing considerable interference and mistakes in the ground coordination of the players on both sides.
Don’t dare to make too big a technical move, for fear of causing yourself to fall.
Southampton also took advantage of this and successfully maintained the score until more than 70 minutes.
At this time, seeing that Liverpool had not yet scored the second goal and was only one goal behind, Southampton began to have some different ideas. If they can score a goal in the remaining time, wouldn't they be able to draw with the powerful Liverpool and grab a point?
Facing the giant Liverpool, even getting one point is a victory!
It cannot be said that Southampton's idea is unrealistic, because they are actually only one goal behind.
On the football field, goals are sometimes unreasonable. Goalkeeper's hand, defender's own goal, rebound ball, line ball, etc. may all lead to goals.
What if you encounter a Liverpool defender and score an own goal or assist during the attack?
Depends on luck.
But it turned out that Southampton had no such luck.
Not only did their offense in the last ten minutes fail to score, but they received a winning assist from Willard in the 86th minute.
This was a team coordination error after Southampton's frontcourt attack was pressed high by Liverpool. The ball was lost, and then Liverpool intercepted the ball and handed it to Willard.
Willard dribbled the ball and rushed along the left wing. After passing two people, he saw that Southampton's defense in the front court was attracted by his movements with Coutinho, Firmino and others to the center and left wing, and the right wing. Mane is in a gap.
Willard made a prompt decision and suddenly braked inward while dribbling the ball. After opening up the passing gap, he made a long diagonal pass and sent the ball directly to the gap outside the right corner of Southampton's penalty area.
Mane stopped the ball with his chest into the penalty area when no one was marking him. Then, without waiting for the defender to cover in the middle to block the shooting angle, and without waiting for the ball to hit the ground, Mane rushed forward and fired a volley into the air to score the goal. The ball went into the far corner.
The goalkeeper was beyond reach and could only watch the ball hit the net.
In the end, relying on Willard's passes and shots, Liverpool defeated Southampton 2-0 in a slippery away environment and won the 12th round of the league.
After this round of league play, Liverpool topped the Premier League standings with 33 points with 11 wins, zero draws and one loss. Chelsea ranked second with 28 points, Manchester City third with 27 points, Arsenal fourth with 25 points, and Tottenham Hotspur. Fifth with 24 points and Manchester United sixth with 19 points.
This ranking is a good explanation of why these teams are called big6.
Of course, the most memorable one is Arsenal, who are always miraculously ranked fourth in the Premier League.
