2016 Olympics - Men's Football Tournament [R]

I's fitting that Brazil, of all traditional soccer countries, would be the first to reach this position.

 

I believe France did that already. They won gold in 1984.

 

True. Both finalists weren't that believed in the beginning but rose.

 

You're right - Brazil's the first South American team to get this collection.

 

That's some tortured logic right there. In fact, calling it logic might be a bit generous. Even if we concede that the Confederations Cup is a supercup, how do you figure that winning a supercup--a distinct title from any of the cups you have to win to qualify for said supercup--is not a separate achievement? You don't get a Confed Cup title simply for participation. Though, of course, one generally has to actually win a cup to participate in a supercup.

Do I sense some salt? I speak from a experience. Despite being the current holders, this is the first time since way back in 1997 that we won't be participating. We haven't won any cups lately, not even the odd Copa America or WC. It's a shame because the CC usually has some pretty good games.

For some reason, this gave me an idea. Maybe they should convert friendlies into some sort of World League?

World Cup, World League, Continental Championships, Confederations Cup, Olympics, U20, U17.

 

Yes, it's been done by France already.

Argentina needs the U-17, Spain needs the Confederations Cup to achieve it.

 

Yes, pretty much agree. Plus it's a garbage tournament.

 

Germany needs the Olympics and Confed Cup.

 

Right, it is like winning the UEFA Super Cup. It's an achievement, but you are only playing it because you won either the CL or the Europa, which is essentially the achievement. It's like the WCC. The Community Shield holds about as much weight.

 

I understood your original point about supercups.

You're saying that to win a Confed Cup (CC), you generally have to have won some independent standalone cup (such as the WC or a Copa America) in order to even qualify for the CC.

So far so good.

Where you lose me is with your proposed distinction between an "accomplishment" versus "separate achievement."

I don't see much use in that distinction, because it's nonsense when you think about it.

Let's start with the definitions of the words:

a·chieve·ment (noun)
1. a thing done successfully, typically by effort, courage, or skill. Synonym: accomplishment.

ac·com·plish·ment (noun)
1. something that has been achieved successfully.

So, if achievement and accomplishment mean objectively the same thing, then the only difference that's left between the tournaments assigned to the "accomplishment" category versus those that are assigned to the "separate achievement" category is the purported "separate-ness" of the qualifying criteria. Because, recall, you've conceded that winning a CC is an "accomplishment."

But what "separate achievement" are we actually talking about here?

Let's take the WC as the point of comparison to the CC. Just like the CC, the WC isn't a one-tiered competition. Rather, it's a playoff between teams that qualified from each confederation. Qualifying for the WC means winning or placing high enough in a grueling multi-year continental league (CONMEBOL), or a continental league subdivided into groups (UEFA), or a tiered continental league with playoffs (AFC).

How exactly are these things any less of a "separate achievement" than winning or placing high enough (i.e., 2nd, if the WC champion happens to be from your confederation) in your respective continental championship?

They aren't different. And that's the point.

Structurally, WC is already a "supercup" of sorts. Same thing with the Euro. You may not think of or be used to labelling these competitions as supercups, but that's exactly what they are if you follow the specious "separate achievement" distinction to its logical conclusion. If anything, the winner of the CONMEBOL WC qualifying achieves something more notable and difficult than the winner of Copa America.

In sum, to label one but not the other a "separate" achievement is completely arbitrary and logically indefensible.

There's also no meaningful distinction based on the "inherent quality" of the competition either. Sure, the CC isn't as prestigious as the WC. No one claimed that it was. Indeed, for that matter, neither is the Euro. Both the Euro and the CC are newer, shorter and involve fewer teams. They are simply different competitions with different qualifying criteria and formats. Yet, there's no reason you can't have an incredibly good match between the CONMEBOL and UEFA champions in the CC.

For instance, in 2018, you could get Chile v. Portugal, which would pit the team currently ranked 2nd in the World by ELO (5th FIFA) vs. the 6th ranked team by ELO (6th FIFA). That's about as strong a match as you could hope for in international football today according to either ranking system. Same thing with a hypothetical game between Chile and the WC champion Germany, the 3rd ranked team by ELO (4th FIFA) or a Portugal v. Germany match-up. These kinds of confrontations tend to happen in the semis and final of the CC.

Because the CC guarantees a spot to each confederation, we expect to and do get a lot more variance between the ELO rankings of the strongest and weakest teams during the group stage, as compared to a WC, which uses a system of weights to ensure that teams from stronger confederations get more WC slots. Also, it's arguably much harder for the very weakest teams to qualify for the WC than for the CC. To get into the CC, all they have to do is win the continental championship of a weak confederation like OFC, as opposed to winning a longer qualifier and then a 2-leg playoff with the 5th placed CONMEBOL team. Yet, by the same token, a team that wins a Euro or Copa America is far from weak. And that, or winning a WC, is typically how a UEFA or CONMEBOL team gets in to the CC. Because of the strength of these teams, the wide variance drops in quality narrows pretty quickly when only the top two teams make it out of each group.

Generally, you get at least one strong match-up in each group, which determines first and second place, and one or two exhibition matches where the the weaker team gets a chance to play and share the stage with a bigger football power (and be mercilessly hammered 10-0 ala Spain with Tahiti--but note that this only happens in one of the groups group, most of the time).

Once the knockout phase begins, you tend have very strong teams: (1) the World Champion (which so far has always been a top CONMEBOL/UEFA team), the recent CONMEBOL Champion or vice-Champion, the recent UEFA Champion or vice-Champion, and the top CONCACAF/CAF/AFC team or the host (which is generally at least respectable in football--otherwise it couldn't mount the WC). The last group generally holds at least one over-performing surprise.

There's nothing wrong with this format. It's a different competition, that's all. And basically, you're getting at least the strength of a WC quarterfinal or semifinal in terms of team rankings.

Since the "separate achievement" and "inherent quality" justifications for why the CC is less worthy don't hold up, let me propose a criteria that explains quite well the devaluation of the CC relative to other competitions in the eyes of certain fans (read: Argies). That is--your team's consistent failure to qualify for the CC based on its inability to win either the WC or the Copa America in the 23 years since 1993.

There's even a name for this phenomenon: Sour grapes.

 

Notice that you've shifted the goalposts (pun intended). You've gone from talking about "separate achievement" to "mutually independent."

It still doesn't help though.

First, winning one title doesn't guarantee the other. Titles that qualify you for a spot in the CC do not simultaneously assure you of winning the CC itself. The CC is a discrete competition, with its own independent title.

I dunno' if you got the point I was trying to make regarding the Euro (and WC). It's basically a supercup whose participation depends on qualifying from in one of several groups (i.e., small leagues of European countries). Winning or doing well one of those leagues will get you into the Euro, just as winning the Euro gets you into the CC. But you're not proposing elevating the "title" these small qualifying leagues to being part of the international football "grand slam."

Here's a slightly different scenario. Doesn't a club team have to win the CL, its domestic league, and its domestic cup to achieve the "triple crown"? Well, the CL isn't "mutually independent" from the domestic league because you have to win or do well in that leagues in order to qualify for the CL.

So, if we apply your "mutual independence" criteria consistently, the CL should be excluded from the triple crown. Except it really shouldn't. Because nonsensical criteria really need to be thrown out. This isn't about "mutual independence." It boils down to a judgment of what football competitions we like and consider sufficiently prestigious to be part of international football's "triple crown" (heptuple? hexuple), and which ones we don't we don't. There's no need to dress up these preferences with incoherence.

About your other point --

The Olympics is part of the grand slam mostly because of history. Before there was a WC, the Olympics was the de facto world title. Uruguayans will remind you of this whenever they can.


Notice that it has 4 stars. Two of those are WCs, and two are Olympics. FIFA worked to limit the Olympic football tournament to U23 +3 over agre in order to protect the WC's prestige (read protect FIFA's monopoly). But simply being part of the Olympics will continue to give the football tournament some significance.

 

The confederations cup has been a high quality tournament for the past 3 editions at least with all teams sending pretty much their top squads.

 

Initially, you were saying that the CC isn't a "separate achievement" because, according to you, "winning one thing in that list means you had already won one of the other things in that list." In my post, I responded by pointing out how both the Euro and WC are analogous to the CC in the very respect you seem to think makes the CC not be a separate achievement--specifically, being the upper tier or "super cup" for which one qualifies by winning or doing well in another football competition. This rationale implies that a competition can't itself be a separate achievement if it's comprised of separate achievements. It can't feed into another competition; it has to stand alone. In other words, if you're champion of America, that is a separate achievement. But if you become champion of a competition of continental champions, which you qualified for by being the champion of America, that's not a separate achievement. You called this kind of thing "double-counting in-a-way."

Clearly, you seem to think winning the Copa America is indeed a separate achievement.

Earlier, you also said that winning the WC represents a separate achievement.

But for these statements to be simultaneously true, it means that the WC can't be comprised of separate achievements. Otherwise, the WC would *itself* cease to be a separate achievement and presumably become just super cup, like you claim the CC is (as if the "super cup" label alone were dispositive).

Yet, we know that CONMEBOL WC Qualifying (WCQ) is a lot harder to win than a Copa America. In fact, it probably gives better measure of the dominant team in South America, since it involves away and home matches with each team, and the teams are ranked on a common measure of performance (points, goal difference) rather than a single elimination knockout. CONMEBOL WCQ is basically a marathon South American international league played in 18 games over 3 years.

For winning the WC to continue to be a separate achievement as supposed, winning the CONMEBOL WCQs can't be a separate achievement, since they qualify you for the WC--and remember, according to this view, would represent "double-counting."

So we're left with the arbitrary and absurd implication that Winning the Copa America--a continental tournament--is a separate achievement, but pulling off the more difficult and notable feat of topping the table on CONMEBOL WCQs--a continental league--somehow is not. Similarly, winning the WC--an upper tier competition for which you qualify by winning the CONMEBOL WCQs--is a separate achievement. By contrast, winning the CC--an upper tier competition for which you qualify by winning the Copa America--is not.

The CC isn't meaningfully different from the WC and Euro in this sense. You can't distinguish the competitions by calling the CC a super cup. Sure, it's a super cup; but that's essentially what the WC and Euro are as well. The biggest factual difference is that you win a league to qualify for the WC or Euro, where you win any one of several different cups to qualify for the CC--including possibly the WC itself.

Also, no one is saying the CC is more prestigious. There might be valid grounds to exclude it from the grand slam--but they have nothing to do with purported overlapping achievements or double counting. The winner of the CC can simply be the CC Champion, just like the winner of the Olympic Football Tournament is the Olympic Champion. Nothing more or less than the best team of that tournament.

I don't see why there needs to be any more rationale for a competition than that.

 

Talk about hyperbole:
http://www.goal.com/en/news/722/la-...ves-neymar-is-one-of-worlds-best?ICID=HP_TS_4

 

Well, well, well... It seems that winning the gold medal opens people's minds...
Some recognition... at last!

 

That's what I meant

 

I always find it ironic when certain fans call certain tournaments "Mickey Mouse cups" or "garbage tournaments." Granted, the Copa Libertadores or the Champions' League carries far more weight than the Suruga Cup. But a FIFA-sanctioned & FIFA-organized tournament which gathers all the continental champions can hardly be called a "garbage tournament." If anything, the World Cup itself, which happens 1 year after in the same country, is the major reason that the Confederations Cup has "limited" prestige. If the World Cup were abolished and the Confeds were left, the Confeds would become the de facto World Cup, and with good reason: only the champion of each confederation would be eligible.

In 2009 and in 2013, Brazil faced Italy in the group stage of the Confeds. That will never happen in the World Cup. Of course, that a Brazil-Italy group stage confrontation occurred in the group stage does not by itself lend importance or prestige to the Confederations Cup, but it does demolish the "garbage tournament" argument, especially given that Italy was in 2009 the reigning World Cup champion and in 2013 the 2012 Euro runner-up. Brazil needs no introduction.

In 2005, likewise, Germany and Argentina faced each other in the group stage. The latter was there as the 2004 Copa América runner up, and this is a matchup that is all but impossible in the World Cup.

And what about the squads?
- 10 of Argentina's 2006 World Cup squad were in the 2005 Confederations Cup
- 13 of Germany's 2006 World Cup squad were in the 2005 Confederations Cup
- 5 Argentine players faced Brazil in the 2005 Confederations Cup final and played in the 2006 World Cup quarterfinal against Germany (Coloccini, Heinze, Riquelme, Sorin, and Tevez)
- 8 of the players who faced Brazil in the 2005 Confederations Cup semifinal faced Argentina in the 2006 World Cup quarterfinal (Lehmann, Freidrich, Mertesacker, Schneider, Frings, Ballack, Podolski, Borowski)

In fact, 3 Germans from the 2005 Confederations Cup squad were part of the 2014 World Cup squad. Bastian Schweinsteinger and Per Mertesacker were in both tournaments and were in the starting XI in the final against Argentina. Lukas Podolski was in all these 3 tournaments, but did not start in 2014's final.

Not the indications of a "garbage tournament," that players who went to quartefinals or semifinals of a World Cup (and a few winning it) were in the Confederations Cup.

 

7x1 - but I'm sure winning the Confed Cup in 2013 with Germany absent from that competition completely makes up for it. Because you wouldn't swap trophies in a blink if given the chance

 

It will always be a mere slim prologue to the main story, the World Cup. FIFA wants it that way too.