From the Round of 16 to the Title

I don't think Japan and South Korea should be lumped together, although I see it done quite often. To me, they don't exhibit the same style of play and each have different strengths and weaknesses.

South Korean teams generally play a lot more directly and rely a lot more on kick and run, although I have to admit the Koreans are actually pretty good in switching play and calling it "kick and run" doesn't do their style of play justice. Still, while capable of nice shot-passing combination plays at times, that is not what they rely on generally. Even if the Koreans control the midfield (which is not always the case), it will be because they have moved their defensive line further upfield and are pressing from that area and consequently taking risks at the back. Their build up, however, is not typically very methodical or patient. It doesn't involve a zillion passes. Their closest counterparts, internationally in terms of their style of play, may be the US. In any case, Uruguay might end up beating South Korea, but that is mostly because Korean teams aren't very strong defensively. Even the best Korean teams still have some traces of the teams that could lose 5:0 to Holland in Wc98 or 4:1 to Argentina in Wc2010.

The Japanese, on the other hand, typically exhibit a lot more short passing plays and feature an Asian version of tiki taka, sometimes jokingly called sushi taka. While the Japanese are capable of playing directly and will do that as well at times, often they will have a methodical build through short passes that sees their lines move upfront together. That doesn't mean Japan will always control the midfield in terms of possession, but that is actual quite key to disrupting and unsettling the Japanese team. If they are denied the chance to control possession and run their nice combination play, Japan will generally do poorly. Conversely, if they are allowed to control possession, they can play real well.

Even playing well, however, Japan can still lose as we saw against Italy in the Confederations Cup, simply because they aren't as efficient upfront as some other teams are. A team like Uruguay, on the other hand, based on what I have seen, doesn't appear to be very capable in terms of controlling the midfield, but they are certainly efficient with one of the best offensive tandems in Suarez and Cavini. Hence, against a team like Uruguay, the Japanese need not only to make sure they are allowed to play well, but that they are also efficient enough upfront to score more often than Uruguay on the chances that will come their way.

It is hard to say who will do better or worse against a team like Uruguay, but generally speaking, Japan will be the side controlling the game against Uruguay regardless of what turns out to be the score. S.Korea might not control the game as much, but may end up forcing Uruguay

 

Well, Bosnia jumped ahead 2:0 on 2 goals scored in a span of 10 minutes, both in the 2nd half, and we then scored 3 goals in reply. Your goalie did get subbed out due to injury but let us assume that your regular goalie would have done better (might have with respect to one of our goals). That game still didn’t tell me that Bosnia was really better than Iran, especially since the game was in Bosnia in front of 20,000+ Bosnian fans. In fact, when you look at it in context, with Iran having defeated Bosnia 3 times before that, you naturally could reach the opposite conclusion. Especially since Iran actually was fielding a side that didn’t feature some of the key players that hitherto had been the mainstay of Iran’s team for many years including in our then World Cup qualifiers (e.g., no Karimi, no Mahdavikia, etc), while Bosnia fielded pretty much the exact same team it was fielding in its World Cup qualifiers.

However, I have said that that I actually rate Bosnia slightly better than Iran right now, even if I predict Iran will defeat Bosnia. I predict that result in large measure because I think our players will have a confidence against Bosnia that they won’t have against a team they don’t have the same record against.

P.S.

The other advantage Iran has against Bosnia frankly is that your coach appears to be an idiot. There are very few teams Bosnia has played as often as Iran! What’s more, Bosnia doesn’t have a good record against Iran and is now facing Iran in the same World Cup group, in Bosnia’s first ever World Cup. No offense, but if your coach doesn’t know anything about Iran (a team Bosnia has played 5times officially, twice in Bosnia, and which even before these official games played Bosnia in what was Bosnia’s first game before it became a member of FIFA) then he is clueless and doesn’t know the history of his own team!

At some point, in any case, you would think your coach needs to start learning! Fortunately, though, I see no evidence that he can be bothered, despite the fact that are legions of coaches around Bosnia who have coached in Iran. Heck, even the guy who coached Bosnia before your current coach took over and who was Bosnia’s coach in the 3:2 game you lost to Iran in Sarajevo, namely Miroslav Blazevic, used to be Iran’s coach. In fact, our first 2 official games against Bosnia (not counting the ceremonial match before Bosnia was a FIFA member) took place during his tenure as Iran’s coach! So I am not exactly sure what excuse your coach has for being clueless about Iran?

 

Until Japan seemed to have turned things around with their draw against Holland and win against Belgium, things looked quite alarming for Asian football as a whole. Japan didn't just lose to Uruguay 4:2; they lost to Belarus, Serbia and even Bulgaria! There was a stretch when things were looking very bad, when the flagship team from the AFC was being beaten up like that, sometimes even at home.

But Japan appears to have learned what they needed to learn from their losses and shouldn't be seen in the same light anymore. Their results against 2 top rated European teams, in Europe no less, is nothing to scuff at or ignore. Belgium, at home with its best players, was dominated by Japan and Japan won fully deservedly. Even Belgium fans can't argue about that. Holland on the other hand was totally outplayed in the 2nd half and even Holland's players admitted they had no answer to Japan in the 2nd half.

That game against Holland, incidentally and by some counts, led Japan to a shift in its composition. "Endo time", as one writer put it, emerged from the Holland match, with Japan learning that Endo is most useful for around 30-40 minutes and needs to be used more efficiently and sparingly than to use him for the entire 90 minutes of play. In both those games, Endo came into the game as a substitute and was more effective that way.

All that said, while I like to see Japan do well, I am never going to put money on Japan. Even when they play well, they can disappoint you. Japan may be fun to watch, but they are the exact opposite of teams like Uruguay or even Mexico. These kind of teams know when to bite and can be quite efficient in that sense.

 

Belgium are lucky to have a rather manageable group, although that is largely because Belgium are the seeded team in that group! Still, I don't think any team in that group is entirely hopeless or entirely safe. All have a chance.

I have picked Russia and Beligum to advance and Belgium certainly has some well known players, but I honestly have seen teams with better names than Belgium flop badly. For now, the last 2 results for Belgium have been losses, both at home, and those can't be entirely written off either. Belgium fans say the loss to Colombia wasn't that bad because Belgium was playing better than Colombia and experimenting. They don't have that excuse against Japan. They had their regular lineup and best players and ended up losing by a score that even flattered them.

 

Forget friendlies: When was the last qualifying game which featured Kompany? A while back. Belgium played its last 3 qualifiers without him. But granted you had some injured defenders (van Buyten was back against Japan) and that is actually something I will keep in mind. However, Belgium were outplayed in midfield at home against Japan. That is what should concern you the most.

Of course, you can pretend friendlies don't matter, but full squad friendlies are actually played precisely to find out things about your team to fix them in time. (Experimental friendlies, on the other hand, are meant to test new players etc). Of course, if Belgium succeed in fixing their problems, they will do better when it matters. But if they pretend they don't have problems, they probably won't do any better.

 

If Belgium didn't finish on top of the same group as Croatia, maybe your assessment would be influenced by more objective criteria! For now, all we have is Belgium doing well in qualifying on top of its group and then losing 2 friendies at home against 2 teams that have qualified to the World Cup from other regions, namely Colombia and Japan. Belgium's group, I should mention, was interesting in that it had a lot of teams of similar caliber (Belgium, Croatia, Serbia, with even Scotland, Wales and Macedonia not rubbish) but didn't have any true top tier team. Clearly, Belgium have some merit otherwise they wouldn't top their group, but what is interesting is that getting seeded mostly by virtue of winning a group with no real top UEFA team in that group (which then gave them the points to jump in the FIFA rankings), Belgium will also avoid any top teams in its World Cup group as well!