K minus 1 day - Matches to Lose Sleep Over

It is time we sacrifice the work productivity by losing our sleep over football and then by discussing it when we are supposed to sleep to compensate the sleep we lost watching the World Cup. Asians suffer the most due to the timings of the matches mostly suited to European audience and the Americans are bound to miss either their work or the match depending on their not-so-much-obsessed-on-soccer preferences. Australians might be feeling like hell as most of their schedule involves waking up too early or not just going to bed altogether

Brazil World Cup is here and the Countdown ends here, well for some people, it ends tomorrow. For the period of these 32 days, every football fanatic on this planet has a single timezone and it starts with a kickoff ,assisted by an assortment of caffeine based delicacies. I'd assume alcohol would take a side step, at least in the eastern hemisphere, so that the dizziness doesn't kick in when they start kicking the ball in Brazil

Well, there will be easy days where the match ends early, or late depending on where you live, and there are grueling days like the 14th of June where the extravaganza lasts for at least eleven straight hours, and that includes the greasy Manaus encounter between England and Italy. With the exception of the opening day and the final four days, the group stage days involve at most eight hours of football, four and a half hours of game time and breaks in between. The final four group days and the next two knockout rounds involve the familiar back to back schedules most football fans are accustomed with. Even EPL rarely feature three blockbuster matches in a day and yes, all the World Cup matches are blockbusters as the chaos theory says, a tiny fluctuation of a butterfly wings might change the entire course of the tournament. But of course you can and will skip some as it would be physically arduous task to witness 5,760 minutes plus the injury times plus the added extra times plus the penalty shootouts plus the celebrations and a few more things in a matter of less than five weeks

Let's look at the most toilsome days of football on which the unmissable action takes place, you can call sick the next day

While the opening day is must-see as it is the opening day, it just features a single match and Brazil wins it but the trouble starts from day 2. On June the 13th, there's the Spain vs Netherlands match and its neither the first nor the last match of the day and then there's the notorious day 3. Thank the almighty that it's a Saturday as you'll definitely suffer from a non-alcoholic hangover from this weekend and you can't even skip the Sunday especially if you're a die hard France or Argentina fan, the latter would suffer the most as they'd be witnessing a coming of age encounter of Bosnia against the Albiceleste

The parade doesn't end here, it would be followed by an early Monday encounter of Group B giants, Germany and Cristiano Ronaldo. Well, you think you can sleep now!!! What about the Mexico meeting the hosts on Tuesday. This is the toughest first week of a World Cup and at this point you will be forgiven if you skip seemingly pointless encounters of Netherlands and Spain meeting Australia and Chile respectively the next day but the Uruguay beating England is not so skip-worthy. You can cool your heels from Friday as the only highly significant matches take place in Group D mostly like the Tuesday's encounter of Italy against Uruguay but the scene would be set for the knockouts throughout these matches, so keep yourselves updated and utilize the break day well, like by talking to your wife or scheduling that meeting you've been postponing so on.

The Knockouts would start on the 28th of June, a Saturday and the World Cup would feel less painstaking from now as most of the matches are in a sense crucial and you get a hang of managing the times and wives effectively. All the matches from now on are non boring and even when they fail my predictions, the encounters are all watch-worthy

Hope you have a happy World Cup, don't worry, I'll keep you updated