Sweden is not top 10 in UEFA they'll come back one day anyway But you can see that the biggest world cup nation and player missing this world cup is from UEFA and nowhere else.
Congratulations for putting 1/4th of the goals against us that footballing power of Austria managed then.
LOL I'm not a sore loser, I just don't see the great achievement in knocking out a Euro side that had yet to meet a truly decent team at the WC and which had not qualified for anything in a dozen years.
hehe. Belgium reminds me of former Arg teams. Great names and talent, deserved top team on paper, but there´s "something" missing in the team play. Might be experience or temper, don´t know. But I still believe is one of the top 5 teams, name by name.
I think people who participate in this forum are very smart. Having said that, it surprises me the way people compare conmebol and uefa... Sorry, it doesn't make any sense the way some people are comparing the two confederations. And it surprises me that apparently no fellow south americans have pointed that out. According to Fifa's rankings Bolivia is the WEAKEST national team in south America Ukraine is number 10 in uefa... does that mean that we should compare Bolivia with Ukraine? nop... we should compare Bolivia with the WEAKEST national team from Europe which is San Marino. For the sake of this argument, let's suppose that there are 50 nations in europe (i know there are 53 nations in uefa) this is how i think we should compare conmebol and uefa 1st team from conmebol vs 5th team from uefa 2nd team from conmebol vs 10th team from uefa 3 team from conmebol vs 15 team from uefa 4th team from conmebol vs 20th team from uefa 5th team from conmebol vs 25th team from uefa 6th team from conmebol vs 30th team from uefa 7th team from conmebol vs 35th team from uefa 8th team from conmebol vs 40th team from uefa 9th team from conmebol vs 45h team from uefa 10th team from conmebol vs 50th team from uefa i really wasn't sure about how to make a logical comparison between conmebol's number 1 team vs its european counterpart... according to my system, we should compare conmebol's number 1 team with uefa's 5th team... however, i realize that such comparison doesn't make sense since we should be comparing conmebol's best team with uefa's best team... just like we should compare conmebol's weakest team with uefa's weakest team.. So i realize that my comparison system isn't perfect, but at least is better than the way some people are comparing conmebol and uefa. so this is how our comparisons should look like according to the latest fifa's rankings Bolivia vs Liechtenstein
The bottomline is there's no way to compare such different federations. The only valid parameter is accounting for achievements and they are quite even.
Because the 10th "best team" from south america is actually conmebol's weakest team .. on the other hand, the 10th best team from UEFA is not the weakest team from such confederation.
Canis, i guess you're right... but it really doesn't make sense those who use this parameter: 1st team from conmebol vs 1st team from uefa 2nd team from conmebol vs 2nd team from uefa 3rd team from conmebol vs 3rd team from uefa etc
A) Lets see how Concacaf does in Russia B) Africa should have half its slots taken away C) When you consider WHO ARE THE BEST UNQUALIFIED TEAMS?
If you took away Federations and had simple qualifications. 20 of the 32 teams would be from UEFA. Screwed qualifying? As in how UEFA simply has immense depth. Europe is an ever changing continent: Breakup of Yugoslavia, Czech Republic & Soviet Union etc. More changes will occur
no.Dont forget Europe has a lot of tiny countries of some thousands like Liechtenstein and san marino.Yes they belong to eufa, but you just cant count them
I wouldn't say that, on recent history Paraguay has the best WC results of all non qualified nations. Since the tournament expanded to 32 teams in 1998 ( allowing CONMEBOL to have more than 3 participants and then, giving a better chance to the "lesser" Sth Am nations to qualify), they advanced beyond group stages, 3 times out of the last 4 World Cups (not including 2014). No team from anywhere (not in Brazil in 2014) has such a record if we consider recent WC. Sure Sweden has a better football pedigree than Paraguay, but the fact that they reached the final on home soil in 1958 is irrelevant (or at least less relevant than Paraguay recent results). At this rate, you might well say that Hungary deserve to be there based on their football pedigree...
about the CONMEBOL and UEFA thing.At least at this world cup CONMEBOL had all their competitive teams.But in UEFA a lot of teams left out like Sweden,Turkey,Denmark,Poland,Ukraine,Serbia,Slovakia,Ireland and yes i will say it .......even Romania South americans shouldnt argue with this.
The most logical way to compare teams from any confederation, is to compare countries in which soccer/football is the #1 sport, than you measure them against countries of similar population/registered players. If you want to be more precise you can factor in gdp or investment into the sport. Just keep it simple, country A has 5 million people and 225,000 registered players, country B has 4.7 million people and 205,000 registered players. That is a fair comparison. If you do that, you will realize Uefa and Conmebol are easily the dominant forces, which I know most already know. Both confederation second tiers also go through cycles. Right now Chile and Colombia are strong, in 10 years maybe not, but than another few years past that they can return. Much like Uefa in regards to Croatia, Portugal, Belgium etc.
not sure about that! I think Venezuela did pretty well during the last south american qualifying campaign. Paraguay did poorly in south american qualifiers, however, Paraguay did well when played friendlies against teams from other confederations... i remember last year, when Paraguay and Germany played a friendly in Germany.. and the final score was 3-3.