Nothing really surprising though. Uruguay has been playing like crap for many months now. Ivory Coast is a better team than Ecuador. Morocco is about the same level as Brasil. Maybe even better when it comes to their identity and fundamentals.
That's what I've been telling people: "Well yeah the only reason why the South American teams look bad is because the best teams haven't played yet."
haha look our style of play is too outdated. We have way too many old players and our coaches are some of the oldest. I want Argentina to lose haha ... but man we can't go to the 2nd round with only 4 points as a confederation The Saudi's did beat Argentina in the only only game the ref didn't give them free PKs
Iran tied 2-2 not long ago against New Zeland and tghe Iranian striker pretended to shoot the crowd lmao
Uruguay doesn't produce any players that really stand out anymore in the European Leagues. Not even Darwin could stay.
Spain and Uruguay dominated most of their games, and had insane numbers regarding possession and shots on goal (74/26 - 27 shots for Spain, 67/33 and 27 shots for Uruguay), but their rivals knew how to defend and their keepers had great showings (7 and 9 saves respectively, without accounting for the work of their defenders disrupting and blocking shots). As someone said, there's not much variety in tactics and skillsets anymore, and some teams excel on their defensive end, plus study what their rivals love to do. I'm afraid that in either (or both) of our next games we're going to struggle against a team defending with 9 players in the area and that we're going to try the same stupid soft dribles on a wing, then pass back and rotate until the ball gets to the other wing, until everyone is frustrated and we run out of time.
Meh, almost no national team has that many great players anymore, except France and to some extent Spain and (gulp) England and Portugal. Even Argentina has some iffiy players in their starting 11. After that, every team has many suspects that can't break into a top team in a top league, but at the same time, the drop in talent is not so pronounced after the top 10 teams as it used to be. IOW, just a few teams have a good and complete roster, but even the minows have good and skilled players that play competitive football, and that can execute a game plan.
and don’t forget the pointless long ball from our CB’s as well. With that all said - I still think we will be ready, to Nestor’s credit we played several defensive teams in the post WCQ friendlies so we are prepared T-minus 37.5 hours and counting!!
What I'm not enjoying is the inconsistency from the ref's. Foul hard not a foul foul hard a straight yellow That's what I've been seeing all tournament so far.