Match 13: Cote d'Ivoire x Portugal Post-Match Thread

During the prep matches Queiroz has tended to play players out of position.

Domenech may be worse: he's still playing them out of position.

 

I think a reason why good African teams always seem to get a raw deal when it comes to the draw has to do with the seeding. It's almost guaranteed that a good African side gets put in a group with a 1st tier football team, and a 2nd tier football team. That creates a group of death.

I think the draw really favours portugal though. CIV need to go into the match against Brazil thinking that they must get a result. I have a feeling that North Korea will not go down easily, I think they are capable of a draw/win.

If CIV can qualify for the 2nd round, I think they have a better chance of beating Spain than Portugal (or any other team that was mentioned earlier...) Portugal play a similar game to Spain, except Spain play it better. CIV play attacking power football which can frustrate the Spanish. The Spanish can get out-powered by CIV which could lead to a win. Spain will not get outplayed....

I think that Brazil and Portugal make it out of the group though. I hope I'm wrong though..

 

I'm actually impressed that Deco spat that, it's unlike him. A good thing, actually. Unprofessional, but still a good thing.

 

He makes it sound as if Queiroz went nuts in the locker room.

"Reconheço que Portugal não jogou bem e a maneira com que o técnico abordou o time no intervalo não foi a melhor."

 

That's EXACTLY what i screamed. CROSS THE BALL or the whistle will blow.

How thick were they?

 

Portugal is too dependant on Ronaldo and the whole team seems afected by the fact that he is not scoring. Its turning into a psychological thing, agravated by the fact that CQ is not a good coach. They should take the captaincy away from CR He may be a talented player but he is the worst captain Portugal have had for many years.

If he scores in the next game then I believe Portugal can make it, otherwise we are in trouble and could even lose points against N Korea. What worries me the most is that Portuguese teams have the bad habit of underestimating theoretically weaker teams.

As for Brazil facilitating Portugal, I don't think so. They are too proud to want to lose against any team in the world.

 

I really hope this is true.

 

I work with a Portuguese gentleman and we talk football every day of this Cup so far. From what I gather from talking to him, Brazilians think pretty highly of Portuguese and vice-versa. There are even some Brazilians playing with Portugal. It's not that I think that Brazil would knowingly help Portugal, but subconsciously...

Anyways it's besides the point. As an African fan my wish has to be that an African team wins this cup. CIV is the best African side we've had since the Nigerian teams of the mid-90's, probably even better than them, and this is the best opportunity to grab a bit of enthusiasm. So if they want to win a World Cup, which should be every team's goal from N. Korea to Greece, then they should be good enough to get a result against Brazil. Hoping that Brazil helps us in the final match is a defeatist attitude anyway. CIV may lose, but they need to win. That should be the goal and f*ck the rest.

 

It depends. I know not every Brasilian have this "warm" feeling for Portugal. Its more of the other way around. Brasil has influenced Portugal alot over the past 15 years and it continues to do so to this day. Music, TV, football, food, and even the way they speak is slowly finding its way into Portugal. There have been estimates of around 500,000 - 1,000,000 Brasilians currently living, and working in Portugal, not all of them legal ofcourse. One thing I know is that they are very visible in cities such as Lisboa, Porto, and Portimao as well. I think the Portuguese LIKE the fact that we are "related"...Also many of Portuguese tend to have family living in Brasil as well, sometimes vice versa (I have family that lives in Fortaleza!)

But in Brasil I think its a different story. Portugal has very little influence on Brasil, and besides the language and some other cultural aspects, we don't have much in common with them. Many Brasilians have a little bit of hatred for Portugal, other simply do not care for the country.

However, with that said. I find Brasilians/Portuguese migrants, living in other countries around the world tend to get along very well. For the reason being we tend to flock to each other in Portuguese speaking communities around the world. This goes for Cabo Verdeans(New England) and Angolans(Toronto) as well.

Would Brasil lay over for Portugal? I doubt it, especially since group H is a mess and no one will want to play Spain immediately. Regardless, I think Portugal have the ability to get out of the group. I sure hope so.

 

While I think they'll sneak through, I don't see Spain topping their group.

So to avoid them you may want to drop some points.

 

It was interesting to find how many Portuguese are living in South Africa then someone pointed out what should have been obvious to me, Angola is right next door.

That said, it will be interesting how the Spain dynamic plays into all of this. Personally, I don't think that any quality side should fear them. They seem to be mentally frazzled on the world stage to this point. First the Confederations Cup, now this. If they lost to Chile, I wouldn't be surprised. They do this all the time.

 

Well. Surelly this is going to be very complicated. Not sure if Portugal can beat NK and if CIV will lose against Brasil. Even if this happens, i believe that we still have to decide things with goal average.

 

That is true, but there are also many portuguese living in South Africa. Part of this country was controlled by Portugal until the 17th or 18th century, if i'm not mistaken. But the main reason is that since there were many portuguese in other countries like Angola, Cape Green and Guiné Bissau, some of them migrated to South Africa.

 

Since you talked, i became curious about that and came to this numbers: Portugal has between 200000 and 300000 emigrants living in South Africa. More than 1 millions all over the world, and about 30 millions portuguese descendents, and Portugal only has 10 millions. And that isn't going to change in the future, because economy here is one of the worst in Europe.

 

Diaspora. It's interesting trying to get a handle on how things economically settle out in EU members from here in the States. I assumed that linking your economies was supposed to alleviate most of the disparity.

 

One of the worst of Europe's richest, to be correct. Yeah, we're not as rich as England or Germany, but look around the world and be glad you were lucky to be born in a relatively wealthy country.

 

Well, some things are not accurate in your perspective. There's way less brazilian soap operas in national tv (probably 2), the mediatization of brazilian musical artists decreased immensely in the last years and I have no clue of gastronomy influences you're talking about. As for football, even in that area we're having less tolerance for brazilian players as it slightly decreased (thankfully).

I doubt that Brazil might play subconsciously for a tie, especially when there's so much at stake. The so called cultural bond might become a reason to go passive or overly agressive, but I think the deciding factor for that will be the ramifications in group H.
Whatever it is, I just hope Portugal goes on full force.

 

I think Brazilians and Portuguese tend to be condescendent to one another. Many Portuguese have the image of Brazilians being poor and lazy and many Brazilians have the image of unsophisticated, not very smart Portuguese.

This all changes when we meet in other countries, though, and I think Portuguese and Brazilians get along quite nicely after they see the stereotypes are ridiculously wrong.

 

Yes. I meant European Union, not all Europe. But my point isn't that we are poor, but that emigration is something that is still happening. Many of the best minds continue to emigrate, and that is a problem.

About Brasil, we give along each other better than with any other country that i know, despite those stereotypes. But i seriously doubt that they won't play to win on their last game.

 

Net migration has been positive ever since Portugal joined the Euro.
http://www.nationmaster.com/time.php?stat=imm_net_mig&country=po

My brother did his PhD in London and came back. He has doctoral students from Pakistan and many other countries. So we're also attracting bright minds. This government may have done a lot of BS, but they did invest a lot in education (MIT, Harvard, Carneggie Mellon all have research centers or university partnerships with Portuguese universities).
MIT: http://www.mitportugal.org/
Harvard: http://www.hmsportugal.org/
CM: http://cmuportugal.blogspot.com/

This helps keep some of the best minds (even if the top will always go to the US or London, but that's also true for France and Germany...).

This stuff is exactly what Portugal needs not more Renault factories looking for cheap labour.

 

Ahm, not necessarily. The older generations are generally uneducated, so we do need those factories.

As for the partnerships, do you think they are there to serve a true purpose?
I'm honestly asking as I often hear colleague students rambling about how inacessible they are.

 

This is not an econ forum, so maybe we're going off-topic for too long... I agree we need some factories, definitely, but my point is that economic policy cannot be focused on that. It's what we did until recently and it led nowhere.

These centers are not meant to take the whole university into them, so it's always going to be the few best students who go there. But I think they do drive the whole faculty to be better. Why? Because you need some top-class research centers to attract professors in those fields. The professors at the universities can also work with those in the centers and so you can create a small critical mass to improve research overall and therefore improve the level of professors which teach the rest of the university.

This will take a lot of time to bear fruit, but I don't see how we can continue to try to compete on price against China or other developing economies. We have to go for innovation and I think this is the way to kick start it.

I know this is a hopefully optimistic view, but I don't see a better way...

Would be good to hear your thoughts, although this is my last post on it as I don't want to anger the moderators and have it all cleaned out.

 

No, it seems a fair point to me. I'm also an optimistic even though I'm suffering some hardships, so I can relate to that.

Thanks for your interesting posts so far.

And yeah, let's go back on topic...

 

That was also my concern about getting offtopic. But i would like to discuss it. Just my final point, i agree with those partnerships, but what concerns me most is the general education. The best students are not just the brightest but the ones that, previously, had access to private schools, while others go to public schools and have a mediocre education.