For your info, the US was ranked 4th by FIFA before the 2006 WC. No one in the world takes FIFA ranking seriously.
chile, ghana or ivory coast is beatable in my opinion, we are that good. for us to take 2nd best we would need to play a perfect game vs. the top two teams.
Euro's dont play well outside Europe amd every other wc seems to be in Europe. This one is not. I.o,w, it is skewed in our favor relative to a European WC.
Things to consider in order: 1) team health and form of top players prior to the cup 2) when we play the top seed in the group if say a top four team (game three would be best); we beat Argentina in game three of the Copa America in 1995. 3) the draw If we are fully healthy then this team can do great things and compete with the best. We beat Spain after all not too long ago and gave Brazil a real scare. That US team with Davies and Donovan in peak form would get us out of the group of death.
Maybe they aren't always accurate, but would you really disagree with someone if they told you that the USMNT was the 13th best National Team in the world?
The chances of the USMNT getting a a group like Spain, Netherlands, Chile and the USA are very slim. If we get a group like that, the chances of advancing may change, but the expectation shouldn't. And its rational to expect us to beat Chile or Netherlands. Why not? Are you scared of the teams that their players play for? Neither team is on a Brazil, Spain or Germany level where they have a world class player at each position.
That would be the odds of drawing Netherlands. What if the other two teams in the group were Switzerland and Burkina Faso? Would that be a group of death? I'm not worried about a group of death because the World Cup is never easy. There are very few bad teams in the tournament. You are going to have to win games against quality opposition to advance out of the group.
I'm not sure how much energy id put into any disagreement, but I see only one team (Switzerland) ranked ahead of us that id argue we might reasonably be better than more often than not, and a half dozen or so ranked lower who have more talent and better pedigrees (France, Portugal, Ghana, Croatia, Ivory Coast, Bosnia) and others around our level or better (Turkey, Denmark, Sweden, Czech Republic, Serbia, Paraguay)
I'm not following. The point is not the games we played? I will contact Klinsi immediately and tell him our results dont matter and to follow how Spain is doing. That was clearly your point.
I don't know why everyone is so afraid of France, Portugal, Ghana, Ivory Coast, etc. Ghana I might understand because of past history, but the small difference is talent level doesn't matter if the team doesn't play well together, the ego's get in the way, the coaching isn't good and the players aren't playing well. Look at Mexico. I am sure that all the Europeans who don't follow CONCACAF are talking about Mexico as a team they don't want to draw if they manage to make it to the World Cup, in a similar way that we are talking about France or Portugal. Frankly, out of all the CONCACAF teams that will/could be at the World Cup, Mexico is the team that I would want to draw if the World Cup started tomorrow. We are going to have to beat a team like France, Portugal, Ghana or Ivory Coast to get out of the group. I don't know about others, but I think we are better than all of those teams right now. Even Mexico managed to beat Ivory Coast.
You said that Euros don't do well in World Cups held outside of Europe, despite the fact that the top 3 teams in 2010 were European, at a World Cup held outside of Europe. That was my point.
True, but then we could draw TWO UEFA teams as well. Most folk are thinking Brazil + Dutch + Ghana as the worst case, and given our recent history with Ghana, this is possible. But remember, since there is an extra UEFA team, if we draw Brazil (or any CONMEBOL seed) we could get two UEFA teams in there with them. Brazil + Netherlands + Italy/France would be even worse. IMHO.
Taken as a whole, it happens to be rather true. Further, the next WC will be held in the Brazilian winter, which is really a very different thing than the South African winter.
I explained in another thread why this would not be possible under the way they dealt with the 9th UEFA side that went into the special pot in 2006. The last time the "special pot" went to the lowest-ranked UEFA team. So it will be someone like Sweden, or Romania, or Iceland, though it's possible that it could actually be France.
Maybe this will be the unpopular opinion, but I think it is unreasonable to think that we should advance out of the group. FIFA rankings say one thing, but I think realistically that we do not rank in the top 16 in the world. If we were to theoretically replay the 2014 world cup a thousand times with the current national squads, I'd say we advance from the group about 45% of the time at the most. Even in 2010, we were literally a minute or two away from finishing 3rd in the group despite having an extremely generous draw. Yes, we are probably a slightly stronger team today, but our group draw will likely be much tougher. If Netherlands/Italy end up in our group, I'd say our chances of advancing are less than 20%. Klinsmann should NOT be fired for not advancing in a group of death. Having unrealistic expectations of the national team is a good way to **** up the whole system.
The exact scenario was, "Brazil, Spain, Germany or Argentina and with a team like Netherlands or Italy." So 4/8 teams from pot A (50% probability) with 2/8 from pot B (25%). Which I believe results in a 12.5% probability of that entire scenario occurring. This of course discounts drawing England, France, or Portugal which when added to the Netherlands and Italy takes the total scenario's probability up to 31.25%. But I'm not a mathematician, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
If something has less than a 50% chance of happening, it is irrational to expect that thing to occur. If you think we have a greater than 50% chance of advancing out of a group that includes both Brazil and the Netherlands, then you are not thinking rationally. You can call that my opinion if you'd like.
Rationally, I expect a R16 game and for that R16 game to be competitive, but right now, there are too many variables to really draw any conclusions. After the draw in December, we'll have a much, much better sense of what is possible/expected. That said, irrationally, I want to be in a group with Ghana, get them in the 3rd group game with the winner to advance and beat their ass.
Well, in fairness, if you draw a group where your chances of advancing are 12.5%, you would have to have that draw 8 times (28 years apart) before hitting 100%. (And I know probabilities don't work quite like that for those offended by my math fu) Once every 28 years is a damned long time and would qualify as rare