Worst Team of the World Cup Prediction Contest

To summarize: Friendlies are very indicative for the players and the coaches, but not predictive of future results.

 

No result in football, whether friendly or official, will necessarily be predictive or illustrative of how a team will do in a limited number of games in a tournament where a host of factors (e.g., injuries, luck of the draw, mistakes, etc) can produce results that would not hold if the games were played in a league format over the long run. Teams that show inconsistent form are hardest to handicap, whether it be based on their qualifying results, friendlies or otherwise. Teams that show a consistent pattern are a bit easier to predict, but certainly nothing is a perfect guide.
Uruguay might win Copa America, then struggle to finish 5th (6th really) in Conmebol and might show a different form still in the World Cup. Mexico might be lucky to even qualify, courtesy of some late goals by the US against Panama, but it might get better results in the World Cup then the teams that defeated it in qualifying. But this notion that "friendlies don't count" is simply nonsense. Everything counts; they merely have different weight and none of them count so much to leave no room for surprises.

 

Not even tournaments are a good way to predict results of games. The whole friendly doesn't count thing is only to dismiss results from friendlies which are unwanted.

Brazil lost a bunch of friendlies to top teams in Europe and everyone was saying how they couldn't beat a big team, but that was being said based on the results of friendlies.

Meanwhile... all of the wins Brazil had, including the Confed Cup win, were played down because... it's not the WC so the other teams are not as serious...

And you hear those same arguments every time people want to downplay a team, or to show how superior they are... Like people putting Belgium ahead of Switzerland in rankings, because Belgium had a really good qualifying.. So did the Swiss, and the past 2 WCs they only lost in penalties. But sure.. let's say Belgium is awesome! cause we want to because Belgium has a couple of players we know while we know nobody from the Swiss team.

 

Well, isn't that a good reason? They are household names because they perform well for big clubs. And there is more than just a couple of them.

Also Belgium did slightly better in a tougher WC qualifying group.

Finally, Switzerland didn't lose in penalties in 2010, they were eliminated in the group-stage.

None of this guarantees success in the future, but its not difficult to understand why Belgium is generally rated higher for the time being.

 

how about recent results? instead of people we know?

Last loss for the Swiss was 30th of May 2012 against Romania
while Belgium before they lost their last 2 games (Colombia and Japan) had last lost a game against Romania on Nov 14 12...

Last big win for Belgium...
August 2012 4 x 2 Dutch
Last big win for Swiss
August 2013 1 x 0 Brazil - before that 5 x 3 Germany May 2012

Recently.. they are a better team than Belgium.

 

In the very short term Swiss has better results. But friendlies played 8-12 months before a World Cup aren't exactly critical. WC qualifying results will and should gain more attention.

Also I take those recent results with a grain of salt because Kompany was injured.

 

so the 2 points the Belgians got ahead of the Swiss in qualifying combined with recent results such as the 2 losses Belgium just had to Colombia and Japan and the win the Swiss just had against Brazil, still gives and edge to the Belgians? for the 2 points?

 

Well , firstly there is no shame in losing to Colombia. Colombia is better than any opponent Belgium will play in the group-stage. Secondly (I repeat), Kompany was injured for both games. Thirdly, 2 more points in a tougher group.

Do you also think that Switzerland is better than Argentina just because Argentina lost to Uruguay and tied Ecuador without their best player?

 

Have you done your scouting to see if Switzerland had it's full roster on all of those games =P you wouldn't know because you don't even know their players.

Again you're throwing around names that you know while being ignorant to the other team. I believe Switzerland will have a WC pretty much on par with the previous ones they had. Extremely good defensive side which will tie 0x0 or win / lose by a 1 goal difference. While Belgium I have no way of knowing how they will do not enough of a history on this current team for me to make an opinion outside of they haven't really played anybody.

 

What makes you jump to that conclusion? I watch most Arsenal games, I follow Serie "A" and the Champions League too so of course I know many of their players. I just don't think any of them are top players (some are downright poor).

Neither team has enough history on their current squad to build from. You have to go back 8 years in Switzerland's case so the team was quite different obviously.

I agree about the unpredictability of Belgium. Part of me thinks that 2014 could be a total disaster for them. OTOH, the have world-class game changers in their starting XI which you need to go far in a World Cup. So it could go either way. But of course you can say the same thing about England, Italy, France, Netherlands and many other teams.

 

less than 4 years ago Swiss were in the WC and had their team base almost the same as the current.

 

Before World Cup 2010, only a troll or a fool would predict the then reigning World Cup champions, Italy, finishing last in a group with New Zealand, Slovakia, and Paraguay! In fact, the fact that none of Paraguay, Slovakia and New Zealand qualified to this World Cup or really even came close to doing so, underlines how ridiculously easy that group was. Yet, Italy finished dead last in that group.

There are, at least in my book, roughly 25 teams in the tournament that might finish last in their group or even last in the World Cup standings without that being something that would be considered an unbelievable turn of events. In fact, given the number of teams that could easily finish last in their group, I think its more sensible for me to list the ones who are almost surely not going to finish last. These are Brazil in Group A; Spain in Group B; Argentina in Group F; and Germany in Group G. While there are still others who are very unlikely to finish last, you cannot rule out any of them doing worse than expected given the match ups that await them. And I certainly think there are at least 20 teams that have a good enough chance to finish last.

 

In Group F, any of Bosnia, Nigeria or Iran might finish last. In my head and my heart, I am pretty sure Iran will actually advance for the first time to the knock out rounds. And, contrary to what you say, it has done something to suggest as much. Otherwise, it would not end up ranked just above Nigeria by ELO and FIFA and it would not have the head to head record it has against Bosnia.

 

Great story, except that they failed to advance against Honduras then failed to qualify for the Euros behind Montenegro.

 

Yeah, I didn't expect Italy to finish behind NZ, but on this forum I did post several times that Paraguay would win that group and Slovakia and Italy would battle for 2nd. That's pretty much how it turned out. It wasn't that surprising if you factored-in the teams' forms heading into the tournament.

 

Since MexiKampeon seems very interested in bringing up Iran's World Cup record, here is a short summary of Iran's matches in World Cup 1998 and World Cup 2006 courtesy of FIFA's match reports, augmented by some comments of mine as well.

This record shows to me that against teams that were clearly better than Iran (Germany and Portugal) we lost, even though we weren't embarrassed. Against teams that were a bit better than Iran (Yugoslavia and Mexico, with Mexico a seeded team in Wc06!), Iran put up a big fight -- and lost late in what were closely contested games. Against teams that Iran would have had its best chance to get a result, namely the US in WC98 and Angola in Wc06, Iran won and tied.

________________________________________________

World Cup 1998​

(FIFA match reports are linked, but unfortunately they don't contain statistical summaries of shots, corners and posssesion)

Yugoslavia v Iran 1:0 (0:0 HT)
Goals scored: 73' 1-0 Sinisa MIHALJOVIC (YUG) (free-kick)

This was a game of even possession and better chances for Iran, which Yugoslavia won on a late free-kick.

Iran v. USA 2:1 (1:0 HT)
Goals scored: Hamid ESTILI (IRN) 41',Mehdi MAHDAVIKIA (IRN) 83', Brian McBRIDE (USA) 87'

Listening to American fans at the time, this was a very unfair result. But it really wasn't. The US had better chances to take the lead, but Iran had already been wrongly denied a penalty earlier in the first half before it scored its first goal. After Iran took the lead, the US actually did not have any other truly good chances to score and the match ending 2:1 was no more flattering to Iran than saying the US was flattered that it didn't end 3:0 in Iran's favor. That is the kind of game it was.

Germany v Iran 2:0 (0:0 HT)
Goals scored: Oliver BIERHOFF (GER) 50',Juergen KLINSMANN (GER) 57'

Germany beat Iran. There isn't more to say about it than that, except even Germany went into the locker room in the first half without the lead.

World Cup 2006​

Mexico v Iran 3:1 (1:1 HT)
Goals Scored: Omar BRAVO (MEX) 28',Yahya GOLMOHAMMADI (IRN) 36',Omar BRAVO (MEX) 76', ZINHA (MEX) 79'

Even though the goal that broke the dead lock between Iran and Mexico was actually gifted to Mexico by Iran, I am glad to say Iranian fans showed more class in accepting their defeat than many Mexican fans on bigsoccer showed in victory. The truth was that until the deadlock was broken late in the game, this was a closely contested match with Iran having the upper hand in the first half and Mexico doing much better in the 2nd half.

The stats for the match can be seen in FIFA's match summary. The pertinent ones are: Shots (7 Mexico 7 Iran) Shots on Goal (4 Mexico 5 Iran) Corner Kicks (6 Mexico 5 Iran) and time of possession (53% Mexico 47% Iran).

Portugal v Iran 2:0 (0:0 HT)
Goals scored: DECO (POR) 63', CRISTIANO RONALDO (POR) 80' Penalty goal

Portugal dominated and won deservedly, even though they had to go to the locker room still scoreless. No need to bring up the stats, although they can be found in the link I have posted.

Iran v Angola 1:1 (0:0 HT)
Goals Scored: ABOU TARIKA (ANG) 60', Sohrab BAKHTIARIZADEH (IRN) 75'

Unlike Angola, who could have still qualified to the next round if they beat Iran, Iran was already eliminated. We didn't even field some of our best players to give some of our bench a World Cup experience after being eliminated, yet we were better than Angola and the draw flattered the African team.

The pertinent stats are as follows: Shots (18 for Iran 15 for Angola); Shots on Goal (13 for Iran 7 for Angola); Corner kicks (3 for Iran 6 for Angola); Possession (54% Iran 46% Angola).

 

Good for you. But the point is no one would have predicted they would end up last. Besides, I don't see what was so hot about Slovakia. They are a dime a dozen. Neither terrible nor all that good. They are a team that was heading to the World Cup having lost to teams like Chile, Norway and Slovenia, and with a draw against Iceland that year and the previous year it was worse: besides losses to Slovenia in qualifying, they had lost to Greece, Cyprus not to mention Ukraine or England. Yeah, they had defeated San Marino, Liechenstein as well as Poland and Czech Republic. But truth be told, they were nothing special and opened up the World Cup with a draw against New Zealand!

Italy doing poorly in that group shows a lot more about how far Italy had fallen than anything about the teams in that group.

 

@Bosnian Diamond,

They matter and they don't. The same way, technically speaking, what has Iran's World Cup record which is always used against us have anything to do with how we will do in 2014? At least, when Iran played Bosnia in 2009, we did face many of your still best players like Dzeko, Pjanic, Ibisevic and Spahic.

That said, the head to head record establishes some clues about how 2 teams match up in their playing styles and is important in the psychological and expectations part of the game. Nothing however is determinative; not even if we had beat Bosnia yesterday in a competitive match. Every game is a new one.

 

We've grown a lot since then.

We've experienced two playoffs vs Portugal where we just missed out on major tournaments. We played France where we needed a win to qualify to Euro (we drew/BS penalty for France ). Five big games there. Also Pjanic was around 17, or 18 then and is 23 now.

Our defense was awful back then and our most notable change is from Hasagic (probably who that is) being replaced by begovic at keeper (one of the best keepers in the EPL). Begovic has come up big so many times for our team, that match would be very different if he were there. Our squad is much, much better now.

Also, for the 2009 game, Hasagic (who was our first choice keeper) wasn't even in that match, it was our second-choice keeper Nemanja Supic. Then we subbed in our third-choice keeper (b/c Supic got injured) and you scored all three goals on the third-choice keeper (including one in the 90+2').

 

Everything you say is right. But my point is different. I am not saying that because we beat you in 2009, we will beat you again. No. I am saying that because we have a good record against Bosnia, including against many of the same names, our team will go into the match against Bosnia a lot more confident (but certainly not over confident at all) than it would go against a side that it doesn't have a good record against. And that helps us do better against Bosnia than we might against a team who, on paper, might rate similar to Bosnia.

Besides, I really think Iran matches up well against Balkan sides. Even Yugoslavia, with all the stars it had included the guy who had scored Real Madrid's goal to win the Champions League in 1998, didn't manage to impress against Iran. And frankly Croatia had to cheat to even draw us at home in 2006 in a friendly we had where they were losing 2:1, we scored another goal that was disallowed for no reason, with the referee giving them 6 minutes of extra time and then giving them a penalty to draw us 2:2. You put those results in the basket of results we have against Bosnia, which was very good when we beat Bosnia 4 straight times (Bosnia qualifying to the playoffs for UEFA both for the 2006 and 2010 World Cups), and naturally we aren't going to accept that we are going to lose against Bosnia until we actually do.

Anyway, whichever one of our teams advances, the best of luck to that team.

 

In 2006, we had a star studded squad that failed. In 98, it was only a few players who played abroad. The reason most bookies rank us below other teams is because they don't do any research into the team and prefer to just write us off. I'm not complaining, most of it is probably due to the fact that USA and England have a high shot of getting rocked in the world cup due to unfavorable draws. The position of underdog suits us well, we have something to prove and Team Melli will if we stay focused. The mere fact that this is the most defensively disciplined squad in our history speaks volumes about our abilities going into the world cup My prediction is we will lose to Argentina but the score will be 0-0 at halftime, just because of our DM's frustrating Messi and Aguero. No way we lose any game by a large margin.

To the idiot who said Iran ends up as worst team of the world cup, please check your facts. We NEVEFR have, not in '78, '98, or '06.