So, how many countries have a Messi/Ronaldo/Mbappe/Haaland type player? If you put Kane down at the next tier, which is fine, then there are only a handful of countries in the entire world who have a top tier player like those 4.
Sure. A player like that is incredibly hard to develop but someone the last two World Cup champions have had. And obviously France has a lot more than just Mbappe. And someone like Kante was also one of the best players in the world when healthy. He just happens to play a bit less high profile a position. Germany’s 2014 team probably didn’t have that sort of guy but had a number of players who were close. In Iniesta and Xavi, 2010 Spain probably had the two best players in the world who weren’t Messi and Ronaldo. When you have one of the top handful of players in the world, it greatly increases your chances of winning international tournaments.
You're comparing the Unites States and England, two nations that have economic viability. One with an income in league that rivals the best in the world, to a country that is struggling financially both in Domestic, League and the organization itself went bankrupt. But you want to make an apple to apples comparison about Messi should have done it. AFA barely had enough comptency to afford a coach or even put forward a coach that could take the talent that sprung from those u20's. Winning at the senior level is hard, but it's easier to focus when everything around you is stable from a financial and coaching point of view, which the United States and England have had the privilege of being able to do so. And before you blame Argentina for it's problems, how about Leagues actually paying what the players are actually worth, instead of the MLS or the Premiere League poaching talent at 17 years old to benefit their league, and using Argentinian players to lift their profits and domestic league.
Notably England has a lot of economic struggles at current themselves. The aftermath of Brexit has seen them really slow in terms of economic growth and the UK is on track to be overtaken by Poland by the end of the decade. It’ll be curious to see if the economic stagnation has any impact on the EPL’s status. I agree in regards to Argentina. There’s been a number of economic issues and I think it’s hit the domestic league, which has seen a bit of a downtick. They are still exporting good players though and as long as that continues, the national team should be fine. I’m not sure what you mean on your last point in terms of leagues paying what players are actually worth. The Argentinian league is definitely getting poached, but it’s not like they aren’t getting fair compensation for that. Someone like Thiago Almada for instance was sold to Atlanta for almost $15 million.
Yes, there's some good income coming into clubs in the last few years. Especially those that are financially better with their accounting. There are still stories of clubs trying to acquire talent before they even have a chance to develope themselves in the Argentine league, make a name for themselves and lift their valuation. Ideally, a highly elite prospect would play a few years in the league and a club like River Plate would make valuable payback from them. A player like Enzo and Alvarez left in their early 20's, and had already completed everything for their league. Their value's went up a bit, and there were clauses as in Enzo's contract when he was sold to Chelsea,that premeated back to River itself. This is good business, when a player works out. However, you still have clubs that want to pull players right when they are just leaving the academies that trainers, couches have invested so much into. Fans and clubs barely are allowed to see them. A player like 17-year-old Claudio Echeverri, who just annoucned to first team, is already being pushed to move to a European team. The sad reality about this, and we discuss in our forum all the time, this is a regular occurence with Argentinian players. River plate right now is the biggest and probably the most financially viable club in Argentina that past 10 years, so they can take the hit because they have been investing from their player profits. However, then you smaller clubs that sell their talent at 10 m, because the domestic league and the club itself is in need of revenue. Morever, you have clubs like Independiente, which would be like the Liverpool of Argentina struggling to even exsist. With all this surrounding the players and their families in Argentina. Yes, Argentinian players are going to move to the MLS to take decent fees instead of their potential fees. Almada is another systemic issue with Argentina, because his valuation is actually higher than he should be. Now imagine all the other talent. Argentinian players are moving to places earlier than usual like the MLS, out of necessity to make a living - because of the economics climate and the league's clubs sustainabilty.
Gabriel Slonina is a beast. The US always with quality GK, and this kid is the future. But I guess you guys are fully aware. cheers
I don't really follow the EPL or Chelsea but looking at their Gk's , Kepa Arrizabalaga and Édouard Mendy will Gabriel Slonina ever get a fair shot of starting for them? Just curious.... Anyway, Cade Cowell scored again! Go Quakes! USA 2 NZ 0!
Reality is that he will likely get loaned out and eventually sold. There's a chance he gets that good, but even if he does (and it's just a chance), the reality is that he's not likely to get the chance to prove it at Chelsea.
Watched my first u20 World Cup game in many years. The most obvious thing to me in today’s beatdown of New Zealand is how much the technical quality of our players has improved. I didn’t see a single player on our team struggle with their touch including our defenders. This seems light years ahead of where we were 10-20 years ago. I think that speaks highly of the enormous changes we have made in youth development. Having said that, it wasn’t obvious that we have any stars on this team who will go on to be difference makers on the Senior team. Just a lot of good, solid players who should provide good depth…and that’s a really great thing. In terms of players who did catch the eye, Brandon Craig really plays passes well for a cb. In this game, he wasn’t tested on defense, so it’s hard to project what kind of cb he will ultimately become. I could see him become a Ream like player some day. Cowell also looked good, but I don’t know that he has the touch to be an elite player. Luna impressed me with his skill. Just some thoughts watching this team for the first time.
Slonina is the consensus high value player even though he hasn't needed to do anything, yet. The current full MNT GK pool had not reached it's full potential even though it's not terrible. We have three left footed wide players on the team who all have a chance to go to 2026 as Jedi's backup. That's a thin spot for us so I am happy in that regard. This CB pool seems also very, very deep and good in a position that is deep but only so, so. There is an insane amount of potential there. I could complain about the lack of 9s but that's sort of unfair given that Pepi is in this age bracket. Otherwise, yeah, midfield and fowards are highly technical but not high ceiling. Or, not as high a ceiling as I would like.
Really the shame is when these clubs get < 25 senior team appearances from a player and sell for <5-10M and the player ends up going for 4-10X the sale price on the next sale. Happens all the time. And in that situation they don’t get enough value on the field or in the sale + resale relative to the ultimate value. Edit: meant to quote the above post RE Argentinian league.
Agreed. Surround those guys with quality players who know their roles and that‘s the difference. Get as many tactically solid, technically sound players as you can and when you get that difference maker or two you have a shot.
Argentina is an obvious favorite to win this tournament, but I’d say that at this point the United States are the second-most fearsome squad. They are playing loose and easy and still having success.
US is without a doubt a favorite to win this. I think that this round of knock-outs will send a clear signal of who is a true contender. I expect that Brazil will start playing their best, and the match-ups of England-Italy and Argentina-Nigeria will also provide with 2 more true contenders. DO NOT EVER SLEEP on Nigeria, they are really good.
The Israel I saw (watching most but not all of yesterday's match) didn't look as good as they did in qualifying. I haven't watched them extensively in this tournament so I don't know if this was out of character, but they looked pretty out-of-sorts, with trouble connecting.
The best teams coming into the tournament based on looking at qualifying and related performances in smaller tournaments were: Brazil Uruguay France's A team (which didn't come) England I don't think Argentina or the US were anywhere near that level. Of course as the Argentina fan has mentioned, and like the US, Argentina brought a better team to this tournament then the one that was largely quite poor in the qualifying tournament so they're hard to evaluate. But basically Argentina belonged in a pile w/other teams like Colombia, Senegal, Gambia, the US, Japan, Israel, Italy etc who had positive sides mixed in with the bad (Colombia hosted qualifying and finished 3rd, how good are they? Senegal won their qualifying championship but choked away all opportunities in the group stage and went home, runner up Gambia got an easier group and won it, Japan managed to choke their way to an early exit too, Italy was good in UEFA qualifying, but erratic at the this tournament with a fabulous opening game followed by middling performances, Israel hasn't ever looked as great as they did in qualifying, but they have mounted some nice comebacks to qualify for the knockouts and then sort themselves out and snag back to back late wins against Japan and Uzbekistan in the group stage and R16's respectively. It's weird, the clear best teams, period, coming in were England, Uruguay, Brazil and the France that didn't come. After those 3, it's a big pile about 8 deep of other teams of varying quality, with us in there (I think I put us around 7th-9th pre tournament, and then 5th-6th during it. There was a time when it looked like half the first choice team (excluding Pepi) was not going to make it, but in the end, it just ended up being Buck, Paxten, Guti, Neal and a backup goalie, so we brought probably 75-80% of our first team. As such I would've rated them as an R16 to QF caliber team pending the draw, the draw was kind for the group stage but risky for the knockouts, but we lucked out across the board, avoiding C and D third placers which would have been difficult, and getting the cake 3rd placer from A. So a free QF ticket, but after that, it's real. No more patsies. If we play Uruguay, we play a team that was largely equal to the England side that utterly smashed us two months ago and we play them (Uruguay if they beat Gambia) in basically a road match against them. Yikes. Argentina remains purely speculative, they could have easily tied or lost to Uzbekistan, and sucked in qualifying, so we don't know who they are, yet, England will tell us.
I don't know how reliable footystats xG is, so take this with a giant grain of salt, but someone on reddit found tournament rankings and numbers. Game by Game: NZ 2.74 - .97 (4-0) Slovakia 2.58 - 1.69 (2-0) Fiji 3.07 - .76 (3-0) Ecuador 1.87 - 1.07 (1-0) Takeaways: We probably haven't gotten as many shots off as we should have, so some of our final third issues manifest in a lower xG than expected, but otherwise, some of our good luck with keeper errors, or rebounds and a banger or two makes it so our "finishing" is just a slight underperformance after 4 matches Slonina's been great as our overperformance on defense has been a bigger story. That said, we've also gotten a bit lucky as no one has hit a complete banger and there's been no deflections, no unsaveable shots. The top of the rankings table below has a lot of teams that played Fiji and the Dominican Republic, so YMMV. Rankings: https://footystats.org/international/fifa-world-cup-u20/xg