Do you agree that Mexico and the United States are the best non UEFA or CONMEBOL teams?

To me Mexico looked better than CR in Brazil, despite some impressive results and quarter final appearance by CR. CR just carried out a well executed strategy, and caught teams off guard. I don't think we will see much from CR on the world stage again for a while, I just don't see it. I see parallels between what they achieved and Greece winning the Euros in 2004. CR poor form at the gold cup seems to support this.

 

Nigeria is stacked, dude Emenike and Musa are fking demons. Too bad Odemwingie is probably not gonna play since he'll be in his mid or late 30's.

 

Had we won, we would have been in the final against Germany, where we probably would have lost but at least put up a hell of a fight. We would have beaten Costa Rica (who weren't as strong as Mexico were in the World Cup) and we would have beaten Argentina (All we would have needed to do was contain Messi, and there goes their entire attack)

 

I tend to agree about defeating CR, though they had a very effective defense. Disagree about Argentina for a couple of reasons. 1. They are Mexico's bogey team, no matter how well Mexico plays, they always come up just short against Argentina. 2. Argentina had a lock down defense in the knock out rounds. They only goal they gave up in their last 4 games was in overtime to Germany. I think Mexico would have played a great game, but some moment of magic, set piece header, or fortunate bounce would have had Argentina winning 1-0.

Argentina is just a bad matchup for Mexico. Everything Mexico does well (technical ability, ball skill, possession, creativity, etc...) Argentina does better. There are no mismatches in either ability or playing style for Mexico to take advantage of. It is very difficult to beat a better version of yourself. I would have given Mexico a 40% chance of advancing against Arg.

 

My dear friend. Pay attention to what you are responding to. If you had you would have noticed that I did not say anything against Germany in that way. I went as far as to say I would be rude and baseless to say such a thing. That's what I meant that the particular paragraph was labeled clearly as a case of how to overreact (ie troll bait).

I'm disappointed with you. I gave you a lot of material which you could have addressed in a respectful manner but you went out of your way to try to make this exchange inflammatory.

 

Only in the last 2 World Cups did Australia get a free ticket to the WC Finals. Thus they are at a huge disadvantage if we're comparing historical WC records between them and USA/Mexico.

 

Keep dreamin'. Last I checked, Netherlands contained Messi and they didn't get to the final. And of course "containing Messi" is easier said than done, especially for a team like Mexico.

 

Qualifying every 4 years is not the same thing as getting a free pass. Ask yourself why they qualify each time?

 

So for theoretical ease of at least making a play-off.
Looking at the current % more Elo points each top nation has compared to the highest ranked team missing a playoff spot in each confederation, eg AFC 6th - China, OFC 2nd - New Caledonia, CONCACAF 5th - Jamaica, CONMEBOL 6th - Ecuador.
Mexico 14.9%
Argentina 14.1%
Brazil 11.5%
South Korea 10.4%
Colombia 10.3%
USA 10.2%
NZ 9.2%
Australia 8.7%
Chile 8.6%
Iran 8.5%
Costa Rica 8.2%
Japan 8.0%
Panama 4.1%
UAE 3.6%
Uruguay 3.3%

 

Are you intentionally being obtuse or are you new to the sport?
Firstly, Brasil and Argentina qualify automatically many times because they were the defending WC champions. Secondly, if Brasil or Argentina were in a different region they would qualify even more easily. Same cannot be said for Mexico and USA.

 

You apparently have never heard of Brian McBride (8 years EPL), Kasey Keller (16 years EPL) or Brad Guzan (7 years as of now). Heck, Brad Friedel even picked up the world's most annoying accent he was over there so long.

 

You're forgetting Carlos Bocanegra. And I'm a México NT fan.

 

I would say in CONCACAF right now (purely subjectively) it's Costa Rica, Mexico and the US, in that order. If not for getting CONCACAF'd Costa Rica would have walked away with the Gold Cup, they took the Netherlands to the wire (of course, Mexico came within a whisker of beating them as well), and came darn close to winning the Hex.

The US is definitely in a slump at the moment. We have a crap coach, our talent pool is about an inch deep, and the kids in the pipeline who do show promise are losing playing time if they don't speak fluent German.

I'd be wary of putting the current US team in the top 10, let alone the top 2.

 

Costa Rica the best team in concacaf ?

What drugs are u smoking ? Did u watch the Gold Cup ?

 

Yeah, I thought Jamaica were the best from start to finish of that particular tournament.
That said, looking at the bigger picture, Costa Rica weren't any worse in the Gold cup than the 3 other CONCACAF teams that played in the 2014 World Cup. So if you had Costa Rica at #1 after that WC (reasonable choice), nothing happened in the Gold Cup that would alter that ranking IMO.

 

Jamaica had a good Copa America too. I'm not sure that I would put them ahead of the US overall, but at the moment they're ahead of us.

 

I see where u are comming from , but I disagree.

1. Jamaica were not really the best from start to finish. I enjoyed watching them, but they were clearly outmatched in the final, and that was with Mexico missing the likes of Chicharito, Vela, I think a couple other players as well.

2. Costa Rica surely was no worse than US or Honduras, but both of those teams were horrible. Mexico despite playing poorly as well most of the tournament, at least showed they could rise to the occasion at times. Costa Rica couldn't even beat Canada for crying out loud, and Canada is a horrible team.

Truth be told , overall this Gold cup wasn't a great advert for any of the so called top teams in the region.

Instead we see the improvement of some "lesser" teams like Trinidad, Jamaica, Haiti, Panama.

However to me Mexico seemed like the only team (when they got their act together) that looked to be a team that could do anything outside of concacaf.

Jamaica and Panama also impressed me.

Ironically USA probably played their best game of the tournament (excluding the Cuba training excercise) against Jamaica. I thought the result was a little harsh, but never the less deserved.

Costa Rica looked poor, as did Honduras.

USA was god awful in that 3rd place match. Who knows how much of it was down to not wanting to play that game, and clearly Panama were amped up after being robbed by Geiger in the previous match.

I think we will see where the US is truly at in the Confederations playoff, but they are clearly in the decline and youth injection is clearly needed especially looking towards 2018.

 

Canada sucks, but the match was played in Canada. And we know how important home advantage is in CONCACAF. For e.g. during the entire HEX of 2013, only 4 times did a home team lose (out of 30 matches). So Costa Rica kind of got screwed by the schedule because nobody else in the group had to play Canada in Canada.

 

What kind of time frame are we going by? The USA was a minnow until 1990. Their results since then have been anything but that.

Also, be careful with Gold Cup results. They often have not been indicative of how a team performs when the WC/WCQ chips are down on the table.

OT: To be honest, I don't expect any fan of a team in CONMEBOL or UEFA to ever give us an ounce of respect - even if we were to win a WC. CONCACAF had a pleasantly strong WC in Brazil - and that's good enough for me.

Advancing to consecutive WC's isn't enough.

Advancing to consecutive KO phases isn't enough.

Having a top 15 aggregate FIFA ranking (like Mexico and the USA both do) isn't enough. (The modern era of FIFA ranking started in 1993.)

Sending three different teams to the KO stages in a single WC - and eliminating 4 UEFA teams as a result isn't enough (CR, USA, and MEX advanced at the expense of POR, ENG, ITA, and CRO).

Back on topic, I think I'd slot them as follows:

Tier 1: Mexico
Tier 2: USA, Costa Rica, Ghana, Nigeria
Tier 3: Ivory Coast, South Korea

Ivory Coast have more talent than the other teams, but they never seem to find a way to get results when they truly need them. The teams ahead of them have all done this in recent memory.

 

I did this work in another thread...

These charts show the average FIFA ranking over a given time.

Over 20 years USA & Mexico clearly are the best non Euro & non COMEBOL teams (using the FIFA rank as a source).

Best average over 20 years...

1. Brazil - 3.21
2. Spain - 4.90
3. Germany - 5.63
4. Argentina - 5.65
5. Netherlands - 7.19
6. Italy - 7.79
7. France - 7.92
8. England - 9.99
9. Portugal - 11.40
10. Czech Rep - 14.12
11. Mexico - 14.40
12. Denmark - 19.138
12. USA - 19.138
14. Russia - 20.24
15. Colombia - 22.50
16. Uruguay - 24.34
17. Belgium - 34.71

Best average for 10 years...

1. Spain - 3.79
2. Germany - 4.44
3. Argentina - 4.69
4. Portugal - 4.69
5. Brazil - 5.16
6. Netherlands - 5.26
7. Italy - 7.22
8. England - 9.01
9. France - 11.75
10. Uruguay - 14.77
11. Greece - 15.18
12. Russia - 18.88
13. Mexico - 19.14
14. Czech Rep - 19.73
15. USA - 21.44
16. Switzerland - 21.88
17. Cote d Ivoire - 23.22
18. Denmark - 23.77
19. Colombia - 24.63
20. Belgium - 34.71

ELO ranking...
13 Mexico
20 USA
23 South Korea
24 Costa Rica
27 Ivory Coast
30 Australia
31 Russia
47 Nigeria
49 Ghana

 

Interesting to see that Putin decided to move on from UEFA.

 

For some reason the ELO ranking system has Russia categorized in Asia. ELO does not follow the FIFA federations (I wish they did)

To be fair... I did grey out Russia in the FIFA charts. It was nice of you to cut that part out of the quote.