I wish some of the other posters would take note from you. You have criticized Portugal plenty of times, yet when you do it's usually founded in facts or objective thinking, to the point I can't even argue what you say and fully agree. With some other people you can tell its blind hate and wishful thinking.
i tend to be agree with most of your posts Boca, but i'm not scared to be silly when i say that Russia will be very tough to beat in 2018 at home even for the best nations in the world. Right now they are not better than colombia or chile i totally agree but i know they'll be a real contender for a semi-final or final in 2018 world cup...you don't know what it is to play an official match against Russia in Russia but best european nations know, they are much better when they play on their pitch, and they know they are very tough to beat there...with the seed at world cup and the environment, Russia is a lock for the 1/4 finals at least. we'll talk about later, if i'm still alive i'll be pleased to quote my own posts. Nor Colombia nor Chile will perform better than Russia.. the group of portugal, england, belgium, croatia, russia, serbia will have 2-3 quarters finalists and at least one in semi-final, i can bet on it. when chile colombia paraguay etc still struggle to reach this step!
nor yugoslavia, nor croatia....still yugoslavia had 2 semi finals before the war...and croatia already one in 20 years of independance....croatia or serbia will come back to the semi-finals soon or later, just a matter of time. in south america, brazil, argentina and uruguay are the only ones that reach this step. the last other semi finalist was chile in 62 at home...so i don't see why russia at home reaching semi-finals would be less deserved than the chile one that did it only at home 53 years ago. chile had their only copa america at home and only semi-final in world cup at home...so..
head to head is like saying davidenko is better than nadal cause he beat nadal more...that's ridiculous... what makes the ranking in history are the best performances achieved. there is nothing special in reaching round 16 or quarter finals...but reach semi-finals is.
usa and mexico take advantage of being fresher physically, players in europe and south america, and even africa play in the best clubs in europe, a game every 3 days all year... when usa and mexico make camps here and there months in advance to prepare the event as a team, the others are involved in their clubs playing champions leagues, europa leagues, premier league, liga, bundesliga, serie a.... if the european teams had the same advantage, usa would be their toy
USA has one semi, Portugal two. Other than those two semis, Portugal has done nothing at the WC while the USA has reached the quarterfinals once and the round of 16 three times. Congrats, now you're just being a petulant brat. They didn't "cruise" into the knockout round, a loss to Ivory Coast would have sent them out. Portugal --> semis in 66 and 06 USA --> semis in 30 Advantage to Portugal. Now compare everything else outside of these three WCs.
No hatred from me for Portugal, I have lauded Eusebio's WC66 performance as one of the top five in history (against many posters including @BocaFan). But I don't think that a NT with two semifinals and nothing else in 90 years should be rated that high against an up and comer such as the USA.
I give you that the USA was always a frequent participant at the world cup and had many good/decent participations, whereas Portugal was very incompetent in several occasions, e.g., 1986, 2002, 2014. However, it is important to remember that the euro qualifiers used to be pretty hard in the 90's and before that, so I don't give too much emphasis to the fact that the US qualified regularly while Portugal didn't. For instance, the 98 team was pretty good, but they didn't qualify at the expense of Germany. The US has the merit of always being competent, but I think they never had teams nearly as good as the 66 or 06 Portugal. I tend to value more the best performances. To me, ranking teams in a hierarchical way (number of titles, number of finals, number of 3rds, 4th places, etc) is the best measure for the purpose of this thread. Here, Uruguay is clearly on top, as shown on this wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Cup#Teams_reaching_the_top_four
Wait, are people debating that Chile is an elite team? I'm half Chilean but I hardly consider them an elite team even with the Copa America win. I always said it was Brazil/Argentina/Uruguay were 1st tier and teams like Mexico/USA/Colombia/Paraguay/Chile were 2nd tier with Peru/Costa Rica/Ecuador just a step below in terms of Americas.
It is interesting to note that Russia does not truly belong there. Yes, I know, in some quarters they are considered the successors of USSR's footballing history. But starting around 1970, USSR teams looked suspiciously like a weakened Dynamo Kyiv (Ukraine) squad. In the 80s, it was not unheard of to have a USSR roster consisting of 10 Dynamo field players and Renat Dassaev from Spartak Moskva in goal
I've never said that, so don't invent lousy excuses. Chile is not a top team or elite, if you want to call it like that. A pretty good team close to the top teams, maybe, but as long as we don't achieve more success, we can't be considered to be among those considered to be elite. In any case, at any moment of time, we are perfectly capable of defeating those whom may be considered as being among the elite and also a very tough bone to chew for almost anyone.
A tough bone no doubt. But do you feel that Chile could possibly beat Germany? Also, the age range of the Vidal, Valdivia, Medel, Alexis generation is now 27 - 30, there should be concerns about their ages by WC18.
Yep. The only WC champion, whom Chile has never defeated before is preciselly Germany. Why not now ? WC18, no problem. Now for WC22, we are screwed.....
I haven't read the 11 pages of this thread but I think it's a no brainer. Last 3 World Cup champions = Uefa. Last 5 of 6 World Cup finalists = Uefa. Uefa > Conmebol right now
Its a little silly to compare 2006 with 1930. Obviously the accomplishment of Portugal in 2006 is much greater. Back in 1930 the road (if you can call it that) to the semis was merely winning a 3-team group. There were no qualifiers so the 13 teams playing in the final tournament weren't the strongest either. After winning the group the USA lost the semi 6-1, clearly showed they had no business being among the top teams of that era.
How did the US get roped in to this debate? I thought this was a Uefa vs CONMEBOL thread. As for the 1930 semifinal, I think you need to look in to what actually happened in the game.
What does that have to do with Portugal? You have to play and do well in 15-25 games to reach the WC semis nowadays, including qualifying (host nations aside). If your road is that long, even if you get blasted when you get to the semis you're still more proven than a 1930 semifinalist that got there by playing a grand total of 2 games.
You're big on the cliches/lazy thinking. First you outright dismiss Elo, even though it is a better predictor of success than FIFA ranking or an "expert" flying blind without it predicting tourney results. Then I show you what Czech accomplished v teams at different levels in competitive matches, which fully justifies the notion that they were really good. Then you move the target a bit and limit your argument to tourney finals and try to suggest Cze underperformed at a Euro. Except you forgot they were in a group with 2 if the 3 best teams in the world. So then you bring up the tired choke argument, neglecting the fact that the entire offensive end of the field was gone with their three best finishers out and their talisman hobbled at 60%. But hey, every team has challenges, right? That's just an excuse though, right? Find me another team as beat up as that team that played well/met expectations in a tourney and it will likely be the first team to do so. You might find a couple from larger powers with a lot of depth who have overcome the challenge better, but you're not going to find a Portugal, Holland, Chile, etc that can pull that off either. Portugal o2 and 14 had problems along those lines (but not as severe) and I wouldn't say they choked. France 02 did too, and they had a lot more depth. The bottom line is in a tournament anything can happen to a given team. If we replayed the last 14 months of major tourneys a dozen times, Argentina walks away with a double a couple of those times and people using lazy thinking wouldn't be able to say they choke when things get tough. They would probably crash out in groups a couple times in Brazil too. Looking at teams can't simply be reduced to how well they did in a tournament as if it's a box you can just tick. Difficulty of the qual path, who they met in the group and knockouts, injury status, lucky/unlucky breaks all enter into it. SK made a semi, and I don't see people extolling their virtues, do you?
I don't care what the freaking ELO says, teams don't play for the biggest ELO points so it's ultimately irrelevant. Teams play for trophies, and Czech Republic only made three tournaments in that span of time (98 - 08), going out at the group stage in two of them. Only in Euro04 did they show to be a very good team, but that's still just one tourney out of six. Sure "anything can happen" but excuse me for remain skeptical when the "anything" did happen five out of six times.
Chile can seem to never make it past the round of 16. I know they did make it to the semifinals in 1962.
Well, they never had a team as good as the current one. So Chile's history is kind of irrelevant here much like it was for Spain in 2007.
The only team to ever eliminate Chile in a World Cup knock out game is Brazil. I wonder how the would have gone if they did not meet Brazil EVERY time. agree, while Chile is not an historically elite team, they have been playing at or near an elite level more or less since Bielsa took over. Just getting shafted by the draws in the last 2 WCs. IMHO they are probably the most entertaining team in the world to watch in recent years.
I would have to agree, Chile is the team I enjoy watching the most outside my own. Really some beautiful entertaining football.