I can't be the only one who prefer to play Uruguay over Colombia. Would rather face defensive Uruguay over Colombia who prefer to play in shoot-out/high scoring game.
Interestingly enough, if by the grace of god Jordan beats Uruguay and NZ beats Mexico, then the Netherlands would become a seeded team and be taken out of the UEFA non-seeded pot, and NZ would be added to the CAF/Chile/Ecuador pot as the outlier team instead of the lowest-ranked UEFA team. And if the stars align, it's possible to have: Switzerland Korea NZ Iceland (or Romania or your preferred unseeded UEFA team who qualifies) It's all purely academic at this point, but that would be an unbelievable group for us.
A more balanced group would do us more favors imo. Being grouped with a team like NZ is good and all, but they're a team that'd give away three points to everyone in the group which becomes a wash for all. We need teams that can take away points from each other on any given day to make things mathematically more interesting. This will basically allow us to lose one (which will probably happen) without losing nearly all the probablities of advancing to the second round (losing to NZ, Iceland, or Switzerland in that group above would virtually be game over for us). I'd like to see: Any team from pot 1 except Brazil/Argentina KNT Cameroon England (would love the exposure England brings)
i tend to agree. its question of seeding the strongest teams or rewarding teams who have done good performances of an extended period of time. Colombia and Belgium in particular
The joys of reading different languages of forums - I knew 4 of those guys before, and now I know all. All the Koreans around me have no idea who any of them are, unless they were wealthy teenagers with playstation. Then they know just 1.
That is, wealthy teenagers during the 90s. Not a lot of teenagers in Korea owned a playstation back in the 90s..... Actually, a lot of them went to arcade game rooms back then. BS is slow today. I can't edit.
updated, you can simulate group standing too http://ultra-zone.net/2014-FIFA-World-Cup-Group-Stage-Draws
Oh dear... I got Brazil Korea Republic Ghana Italy Not sure I want that group. Iran got swiss, cameroon, greece. wow.
The sim was created by a Japanese guy so obviously it was designed to be rigged against Koreans /joke.
we can't control groupings so i pay as much attn to these simulations as i do nfl pre-game prognostications. fillers that dumb down america. i'm interested to try and figure out who's going to show grit. which of our players are going to show out as leaders of the squad to spur our men on during times of extreme wc sized duress? who's going to score when given THE chance? in '10 we could count on pjs, pcy to threaten every match. lcy 2nd tier. ldg was a dud, unfortunately. ljs was the asterisk goal v. greece. who's stepping up w/ goals in brazil? tier 1: pcy (if he gets selected), lcy, shm (?) tier 2: kbk (hasn't shown it yet in club play), wookie (if he gets any pt) asterisk: ksy (developed into more of a carrick than gerrard much to my disappoint); hjh (aerials?) '10>'14 atm
I don't know enough about the NT because I don't follow K-League enough (or any league, really..for that matter ), but idk how I feel about having PCY carry a the weight for us to succeed in the WC. I know that this topic/conversation can go back and forth/back and forth (PCY thread...) but if the public expects that sort of responsibility on PCY, I believe he's going to flop. Look at the way HMB is protecting him by not calling him up to these friendlies. He needs to be match fit, he needs to be mentally prepared for big games, and at the current state that his career is going, I don't think he has that. When I think of the NT, I take PCY out of the picture. He hasn't been called up in god knows how long, and it speaks for itself when I see a #30 jersey getting subbed in for the last 10 minutes of a CARLING CUP game, and get giddy about it. I think (and this is completely unbased) our NT can do better than expect goals coming from a player who, flat out, does not play week in week out. If something happens in the winter transfer window and he tightens up, well, great, but rather than considering him based upon speculation, I'd rather look at the K-League or other players doing great, and getting regular playing time, to be on the frontline guiding us in brazil
tw, i see your point. maybe im wearing rose tinted glasses. if not pcy, then who? who's scoring consistently for us at club level? against top level comp? shm is the closest thing. in '10, we had pcy, pjs, and lcy to a certain extent. '10>'14 atm
idk, I really dunno .. I'm not following the K-league at all so i can't say, perhaps someone on bsk can answer that, but I think it speaks for itself when our leading goalscorer in the wc was lee jung soo, a name no one had even heard of (or at least I didn't) until the wc. Maybe the rep isn't there, but that doesn't mean the potential isn't. Also, with HMB at the helm, I wouldn't say 2010 > 2014 just yet. We've got a couple of months left, let's see what happens with the team till then