Iran looks like a trap game to me. A little bit Canada like in that they have real quality up top. They are a low block team that plays better on the road than at home. The most worrisome part to me is that we never seem motivated against lesser known teams. Iran, OTOH, will be very motivated to beat the US. On the plus side, Iran haven't played against many good teams over the cycle. They've rarely been tested.
Winning football matches is often about winning matchups with individual players. Find the weaknesses in a team and exploit them. Find their strengths and neutralize them. The perpetual battle between skill and desire plays out. England has too many weapons in attack to discuss. If we're honest, it's a long shot for the USA to even get a point. Here's the last friendly against England in 2018. Pulisic stands out. Iran has a striker that is probably better than any striker in CONCACAF. Here is Medhi Taremi. Furthermore, Iran is a very difficult team to score against. Also, Iranian fans will be numerous in Qatar. Many USA fans think Iran will be an easy opponent for the USA, but that is far from reality. Ukraine should get past Scotland, but I'm not sure they will get past Wales. Wales has to be the favorite of the three. FWIW, here are highlights from the USA x Wales match in 2020. Add Gareth Bale, and Wales will be difficult to beat.
With regards to your comments on Iran, I haven't seen anyone say that Iran will be easy. The caveat here is that I don't do the twitters and reddits, so maybe that is a popular fiction in those realms. This is a really tough group, no matter who the 4th team ends up being (that said: Scotland please!). Anyone who underestimates Iran is a fool. And by "fool" I don't mean "idiot", I mean it in the traditional sense that is still commonly understood when we say "foolish".
Well, if you can't get motivated for a World Cup match, then you simply can't get motivated. Especially for a critical third game in the group, which will almost certainly determine whether or not we go through. For that reason, if no other, I'm not too worried about us overlooking Iran. I don't expect Johnny Casual to understand all the reasons why Iran is certain to be a tough and important match, but Berhalter and his 23 or 26 will.
Most worrisome for the USA is the GK situation. We may have our top 3 goalkeepers (on paper) who are all riding the bench. What to do then? Do you go with Sean Johnson or go with a player who has played few league games? If I'm Zack Steffen, I'm pushing for a loan in 2022/23. Perhaps Newcastle United? Very, very worrisome. I don't think we get out of the group if we have to play a rusty GK.
Ive heard good things about Taremi, but if you’re going to make that claim about him you should probably post a better highlight. All I see in there are PKs (half the video), comically short dribbling clips, and cleaning up rebounds.
You didn't watch the whole video, did you? Because there is a lot more in there than what you say. He plays for the best club in Portugal, Porto. Portugal is the 6th strongest league in Europe, just behind France. He's 2nd in the league in both scoring and assists. Since he came to Porto in 2020, his goals to games ratio is 0.51.
My issue with them is their having great finishers, and defending as a group superbly. We struggle to break down mediocre concacaf teams when they defend in numbers and are reasonably organized, what are we going to do against a team that habitually shuts out and shuts down opponents and can finish well while we're pretty terrible at finishing. I dont think that's a lock at all. I do think we got lucky with the draw as we avoided the very best of the 1 seeds, the very best of the 3's and the very best of the 4's, but we also got a collection of teams that are very talented at exactly at whate we struggle with: organized teams that defend exceptionally well. As such we're gonna struggle to collect 3's.
We ended up with the highest rated group with the second highest pot 3 team and very likely to have the highest pot 4 team.
Curious as to your logic here. Pot 3 only Senegal is ranked ahead of Iran. Pot 4 Wales our most likely Pot 4 opponent is ranked higher than anybody else in that Pot. So enlighten me how we got lucky????
FIFA rankings are bull----. They're better than they used to be, but they are still habitually wrong in ranking teams, especially within tiers, and especially CAF and AFC teams. They have Iran ahead of Japan and South Korea. That's absurd. South Korea took 4 of 6 points in the home and home with Iran in the cycle, performs better at the Asian Cup, and has repeatedly performed better at the World Cup. Japan is also ranked behind Iran, despite crushing them at the '19 Asian Cup, and habitually outperforming them in World Cups and Asian Cups in general (just like South Korea, and oddly, Saudi Arabia, all 3 of them habitually outperform Iran in confederation championships going back decades, and 2 of the 3 habitually outperform Iran at World Cups). If you look at CAF, not that I credit their system of qualifying which habitually sends inferior, rather than the top teams, to the world cup, but the WC entrants were ranked by FIFA, 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th and 11th. The third and fourth ranked sides are out, The rankings are a mess, as they always are. How would you rank the pot 3 teams? Do you agree w/the Fifa rankings? I sure as hell didn't. I had them: 1. Serbia 2. Senegal 3. Japan 4. South Korea 5. Morocco 6. Iran 7. Poland 8. Tunisia I do think Japan, South Korea and Morocco are hard to rank around one another, I could have Morocco 3rd or 4th, but I have them 5th due to them not being tested at the AF Con, or in qualifying, so I'm not sure how good they are beyond the fact that they're defending is good like Iran's, but they also score goals more easily than Iran, especially against quality opposition. In terms of Pot 4, I have it: 1.Canada 2. Cameroon 3. Ecuador 4. UEFA 4th place 5. Peru or UAE 6. Ghana 7. Costa Rica 8. Saudi Arabia If the UEFA qualifier is Wales or Ukraine, I'd move them up to 3 probably, if it's Scotland, I'd drop them to 6. It's difficult to rank the UEFA qualifier in comparison to Cameroon, and Ecuador, both because we don't know yet whose through, and we also don't have a clear feel for Cameroon or Ecuador based on their erratic play. Ecuador is young and fast, but deeply erratic in terms of producing results, Cameroon can play wonderfully, and totally incompetently, you just can't be sure what they are going to do, but they have plenty of talent and can be quite explosive. They got knocked out at AFCON '19 by Nigeria in a back and forth match that they lead 2-1 at the hour mark before falling 3-2. They played well as hosts a few months ago producing a bunch of quality performances before falling on PK's to Egypt, and I don't know if you guys caught it but holy crap was their qualification for the cup itself insane. They needed a home victory over Ivory Coast to knock out that rising squad, and then in a home and home with Algeria, after seeingly becoming DOA w/a 0-1 home loss, they scored early to equalize, and then in a back and forth match, gave up the ticket on a last minute Algerian header, only to literally get the winner on the last kick of the game in extra time injury time, a beautiful cross into the box, headed down into the path of their guys, one of home perfectly finished it so beautifully I had to slow it down to see how it happened. Anyway, I can get people quibbling with my ranking of pot 4, but the big problem with pot 4 is obviously covid related, and qatar and russia related in the fact that we can't be sure who grabs the playoff spots until later and that can change things. Nobody is afraid of UAE or Australia, but Peru could be scary, nobody is afraid of Oceania, but Navas and Costa Rica could be a problem for some teams, the differences between Wales, Ukraine, and Scotland are all pretty substantial, especially with the war on. Wales had great results, but doesn't seem special after Denmark slaughtered them a summer ago and they're mostly just older (but props for getting the upset win in their first playoff), Ukraine like Wales, is a clear tier below, but unlike Wales, Ukraine has a complete team, they just lack elite speed or cutting edge in certain areas, and Scotland is, well, not super impressive. If Scotland pulls off some 0-0 type defending and steals some wins, that makes our group way easier, if Ukraine is in, it's way harder, and if Wales is in, it strikes me as a middle. Anyway, my view in terms of FIFA rankings is that they're absurd but at least better since they started modeling more on ELO's system. I would like to assume that people looking at the groups would get which ones are scary, and which aren't. Mexico got the group of life, but that group also earns the finishing move from France if you take 2nd. But the toughest groups? Isn't it obvious what they are? F and G are obvious ones: F features no weak sides period for anyone that knows how good Canada can be, the only mitigating factor is that Belgium and Croatia are both aging, so young fast teams might be able to exploit that. Tougher is Group G, another group with no weak sides, and featuring the #1 side in my view, Brazil, along with the best Pot 3 team (Serbia), along with a reasonably good 2nd tier UEFA side in Switzerland that knocked France out in the Euro's last summer and has made a habit of periodically slaying giants the past 12 years or so, and then there's Cameroon, which might face plant, but also as they showed in knocking out elite CAF sides in Ivory Coast and Algeria to get there, they can get it done too. The only team to beat them in regulation the past two AF Con's was Nigeria in a 3-2 goal fest. That tells you something. I'll thrown in E as the third toughest because in E, you're getting a top end Pot 1, Pot 2 and Pot 3 side, which is why so many people were "Holy ----!" during the draw, until the Pot 4 team ended up being one of the three worst sides (either New Zealand, or an aged out Costa Rican side that when younger and better, still got swept aside 4.5 years earier in Russia). Fifa rankings can say our group is the toughest, but anyone whose watched these teams knows thats nonsense. It's got a middle of the road Pot 1 team, a bottom Pot 2 team, a bottom pot 3 team, and a middle of the road to upper tier Pot 4 team. That aint the best, 2nd best or even third best group in my view, at best it's a middle of the road one. It aint gonna be easy, but that has far more to do with our style of play and weaknesses, rather than the quality of our opponents, on talent alone, we should take 6 and make the knockouts, but it aint going to be decided on talent alone.
Newcastle will go for someone better/more proven than Steffen. I’m not sure quite how much they plan to spend this summer, but goalie is an obvious place for them to upgrade. I would guess they look at someone like Dean Henderson or Robert Sanchez. There’s some talk they’ll get Kepa Arrizabalaga too.
Hate the FIFA rankings? Well, the World ELO Rankings have: 5t. England 19. Wales 21t. USA 23. Iran 24. Ukraine 35. Scotland According to ELO, we're the dog in the group. I don't know if ELO is right, either, but it's objective, it accounts for every game, and it doesn't come with the FIFA politics. (I would not trust my eye over ELO simply because I've never watched most of these teams and certainly not a mutliple games, but it is worth noting that ELO seems to LOOOOVE South American teams. Which is actually even more frightening for us given that if that is an incorrect bias, our opponents may be underrated!)
I can't really hate the FIFA rankings anymore since they moved to an Elo-type system this cycle, so the two systems are much more similar now. But from recent threads on this I recall that ELO still makes a couple minor methodological choices (taking into account home field advantage, and awarding fewer points for beating up on much lower ranked teams) that seem more sensible to me and would tend to result in lower rankings for the US. And indeed it looks like the main difference between FIFA's and ELO's ranking in our group is that ELO has us ranked 6 spots lower than FIFA does.
You are annoying, misleading, and too stubborn to be worth my time, since you have repeating your spin on clear facts for over a decade, changing the supposed goal-posts to arrive at your predetermined destination. For others who might be misled by you, I give the simple facts. I. World Cup Qualifiers Iran and S. Korea have been in the same qualifying group 4 consecutive times. Iran has finished above S. Korea as the #1 team in its group in the last 3. In this cycle, Iran missing a slew of first choice players due to Covid (Taremi, Jahanbakhsh, Ghodoos and....) and suspensions (Ezatollahi and Moharami) lost its first ever World Cup qualifier to S.Korea since 1993. Its record in the last 6 WCQ v S. Korea is 3 wins, 2 draws, 1 loss (which I described). Ii. Asian Cup Iran finished above S.Korea in the 2019 Asian Cup as a semifinalist, while S.Korea exited in the quarterfinals. Iran did lose to Japan in the semifinal. That was a rare loss by Iran at the Asian Cup (first loss in 90 minute regulation since 1996 and first since aet loss to S.Korea in 2011). Overall, Iran has won more games and earned more points at the Asian Cup statistically than anyone else, but since it has been booted out of quarterfinal or semifinal quite often by the penalty kick tie-breaker (2015, 2007. 2004, 1996, 1984), its title achievements at the Asian Cup all date back to 3 consecutive titles between 1968-1976. That is still better than S.Korea which last won the Asian Cup in 1960. (Japan, otoh, has an excellent record of titles and achievements in the Asian Cup and certainly the best in Asia). III. World Cup In the last 2 World Cups when Iran had finished above S.Korea in WCQs, Iran also outperformed them at the World Cup. Iran earned 4 points with a GD of 0 in a group with Spain, Portugal and Morocco in WC18. S.Korea earned 3 points after losing to Sweden and Mexico, scoring goals in the dying minutes of their match against a German team desperate to win with even their goalie pulled up. In Wc14, Iran and S.Korea both earned 1 point/-3 GD. Iran drew Nigeria 0:0, lost undeservedly (was robbed a pk) 1:0 to Argentina courtesy of a stoppage time goal by Lionel Messi and then lost 3:1 to a good Bosnia side led by Dzeko (who scored a brace against Iran).. S Korea had a 1:1 draw with Russia, a 4:2 loss to Algeria (4:0 loss at HT) and a 1:0 loss to a Belgium team which had clinched and rested many first choice players. IV. Head-to-Head Iran enjoys a better H2H record against S.Korea overall and a much better recent H2H record. V. Rankings Iran has been ranked above S.Korea more or less consistently since 2014, by both FIFA and ELO. In fact, Iran has usually been ranked first in the AFC for most of the past decade. The only AFC side that could have a legitimate gripe about that is Japan, not S.Korea. Japan, overall, has achieved more even just the past decade than Iran, but Japan tends to suffer more upset results than Iran and has lost ranking points as a result. For additional facts and figures, refer to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–South_Korea_football_rivalry Iran–South Korea football rivalry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFC_Asian_Cup_records_and_statistics AFC Asian Cup records and statistics
Having put the facts hopefully straight, let me add that while Iran was undeniably (even Korean fans wouldn't dispute it) better than S.Korea in the 2018 WCQ cycle, this time the Koreans looked much better than before. At this moment, unless someone is butchering the stats and facts, I don't think it would be unreasonable to say S.Korea is overall at least at Iran's level if not possibly better. Despite ultimately finishing behind Iran in the WCQ standings again.
My understanding is that you have some impact going back years and years and if there's a team that looks really, really different a few years ago, its ours. Our team is nothing remotely like it was in 2017-2018. How many teams have turned over more than 90% of their roster and reserves since '17-'18, even parts of '19? Not many. I get that ELO is way better than old FIFA rankings before they started mirroriing ELO, but they still make similar mistakes to what they did in the past, weighting distant results too much (at least Fifa does that), and definitely undervaluing CAF, and over valuing UEFA and Conmebol. I think they get the elites pretty right these days, but I think it starts getting scrambled badly in the 15-50 zone. It's reliably unreliable between 15-50 or 60. A lot of nonsense. In terms of us, we are confusing to rankings because we won confederation championships (inflated), but played like crap in qualifying (deflating), in all other regions the big dogs typically dominate in qualifying save for conmebol (except for this cycle, Brazil and Argentina obliterated the competition this cycle). Despite all my criticism, I still think Iran can easily take the game with us to a draw, maybe sneak a win. I'm skeptical we lose to one of the Pot 4 UEFA sides, barring a wonder strike scenario, though a draw is definitely possible. Iran was a better draw in pot 3 in terms of talent, but in terms of match up, they could be a HUGE problem for us. We definitely need to watch how S. Korea and Japan manage to beat them.
The weakness of any data driven model in international soccer is the lack of actual data. There's not many games, there's less competitive matches, and many teams play regionally, meaning the overlap of competition isn't complete or even a random sampling. So, for example, if South American teams have only played each for the past two years, their data relative to other teams outside their fed is pretty dated. So yeah, the US could be poorly rated. I think we're accurate in being one of the worse teams in Pot 2, though. We had gotten up to 14 or 15 somewhere there and dropped in the last window. I don't think we played very well in WCQ. Whether it is health, cohesion or coaching (or likely a combination of all three), I think we have the potential to be better, but if we play to WCQ as a whole ... yeah, it's hard to say we are better than Iran or Wales. The World Cup is small sample size theater, though, and we definitely had some games where we didn't show in intensity (Panama, etc), I think at our best we could make a run. But I think if you look purely at how the teams have played, our group is England and likely three similar teams. These are challenging games. Our talent, provided we have most of it, should advance. But it's not going to be easy even if we play pretty well.
This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of elo based ratings systems. Elo does not overvalued or undervalue confederation at all because it does not evaluate confederation at all. It evaluates teams based on results. It is the equivalent of saying elo overvalued Russian chess players. There are valid methodological critiques of elo based systems in general and the two major elo based ratings for soccer in particular, but this is not one of them.
It's fine if you don't particularly like FIFA rankings. If you look at ELOratings instead, it looks like we are the third highest ranked group (where the top four groups are all quite close to each other). https://sports.yahoo.com/world-cup-draw-groups-rankings-analysis-192900374.html Replacing a results driven model with completely subjective impressions, often based on a poor recollection of actual results, is not an improvement.
The strength of data drive models, particularly elo based systems, in international soccer is that they tend to be more predictive of results than any other systems. The details and fine-tuning of such models do matter, though, so it is reasonable to prefer one iteration of a model to another one, but it seems pretty foolish to discard them entirely in the absence of evidence of a better evaluation tool. http://lasek.rexamine.com/football_rankings.pdf
I'd like to figure out if an elo system that does not assign different kinds of matches different levels of points improves the predictive ability. I think it would, or at least if you only differentiated between competitive matches and friendlies.
There might be some good stuff in the archives at 538 on this -- I assume they evaluated this on their model.
It may be my bias of past World Cups, but I have always rated Japan as the best team in Asia. They took Belgium to their absolute limits last WC. In terms of who I wouldn't face instead of Iran, it would be Senegal, Serbia, and Japan. Who I wouldn't face instead of Wales, it would probably be Ecuador and Canada.
I'll put it this way, looking back, if there has been a clear cut "best team" from the AFC, it would be Japan the past 10-15 years. No doubt. But it is also not entirely coincidence that Iran has generally ranked above Japan in FIFA/ELO rankings. Japan have lacked quality #9 type target forwards while Iran almost has a monopoly of such players in Asia. The lack of quality #9 type forwards causes Japan to struggle to find the first goal against weaker sides. That makes them prone to suffer more upsets. Looking ahead, S.Korea actually look very good. Iran, at its very best, is IMO still better but even that is not clear to me. What is clear is that this S. Korea team today is much better than any Korean side in the past decade. Japan, in the meantime, are Japan: the most articulate team in Asia without reliable target forwards and finishers.