Matchday Thread | GROUP G

Well, that's your job here

 

As the resident Brazilian, of course it is! So, I'll be chiming in when Brazil's hegemony is not recognized...

 

Well, you have an easy argument when it comes to title wins but I'm sure all users here know that Brazil are record title holders
But as I said to you before, nothing in football is as important as the present. Reading about title wins in a history book is not even remotely as satisfying as experiencing it while it happens

 

Well, it's not just title wins. Brazil is ahead in almost all other stats. The importance of this has to do with talent pool. You can trust the Brazilians to eventually always produce another generation of great players. They will have dry seasons in between as they rebuild, but eventually it happens, due to the sheer fact that this nation with 200 million people is crazy about football. Compare that to tiny Croatia for example with 4 million or 50 times smaller, or Belgium, and you'll see that these countries sometimes can have good times but they don't maintain consistency like Brazil does.

So, sure, the right now is more exciting, but on the other hands Brazilians can always count on better times coming up ahead, while some European countries are one-time wonders.

Something tells me that Spain for example will take a looooooong time until they again shine in the international stage. They got that tiki-taka generation which is now over, and went back into pedestrian obscurity.

As a scientist, you must be familiar with the concept of regression to the mean.

The thing is, Brazilian mean is pretty darn high so they eventually... let's say, progress to that, rather than regressing.

 

Meh you like to over analyze don't you.

We were talking about the Lineker quote where Germany always wins.

You then said except when Italy or Brazil play.

I then pointed out only Brazil has more wins than Germany in the World Cup, not Italy.

You then brought up World Cup Final wins...which was not what the rest of us were talking about.

Of course Italy has more Cups, but that wasn't the topic.

 

Or tied with Germany and Italy.

 

This is the Group G thread, enough of Brazil who were not in this group

An interesting stat about Germany - USA
It was Germany's first World Cup match where the opponent had no shot on goal and the keeper had no save to make since the 8-0 against the Saudis in 2002

 

any fans from Germany? why Low is keeping especially Howedes as LB? France will kick their asses in 1/4 if both Howedes and Boateng will play LB and RB.

 

There's no other for Löw. Durm is too unexperienced. Großkreutz is no natural LB either. And Lahm doesnt want to play fullback anymore. and he's getting too slow for it with his 30 years. That's why.

 

Höwedes has naked pictures of Löw and Klinsmann together in a hot tub from 2006, so thats why he continues to play.

Boateng, as much as I hate him, has been playing pretty well and will punk the French left flank much like they did in 1940.

 

'Lahm doesnt want to play fullback anymore', doesn't want? he's still better LB than Howedes

 

Yep but he doesnt like the running. And he's right-footed. always was.

 

Lahm's a better anything than Höwedes. Löw is short at DM and wants to use Lahm elsewhere. Against better teams I'd rather see Lahm on one wing and Boateng on the other. Löw seems intent on using the 4-3-3 and flexing back to the 4-2-3-1 when needed.

For me the keys will be the offensive/defensive play of the wing MF. They will have to step up more. Better teams will expose them. My opinion.

 

Most US athletes are black?

Im not seeing all the black athletes in baseball and hockey. Hockey is overwhelmingly white, and baseball is more white and latino. And when the Olympics roll around, most US athletes are white.

And US Soccer's problem is not that black kids dislike soccer. Its that ALL kids give up soccer once they get to high school. Once they get to high school they all focus on other sports. We have elite athletes of various backgrounds spread out through 5 big professional leagues.

Footballing nations like England and Spain firmly has soccer at the top of the list for sport. In England, soccer is the overwhelming most popular sport. So much so that second divisions are filled with teams that have very loyal fans and decent sized stadiums. If you took away one of the other top US sports, the talent pool in soccer would explode as well as the fans. There would just be a bigger fan-pool and player-pool.

 

I think Lahm has established himself on his DM position. I don't see that changing, despite him being better than Höwedes. But I'd finally like to see Durm get a chance. He might be inexperienced, but so were Müller, Özil, Khedira four years ago.

 

2010 everybody said the same thing about Germany than now, namely that as soon as they played somebody like Argentina they would get hammered. Didn't happen because Germany of course wouldn't play against Brazil the way they played against the US yesterday. Against Argentina in 2010 Germany played much more defensively with a midfield back four protecting the actual back four (like USA yesterday). As a result Argentina had no opportunities in the game and slow defenders like Mertesacker weren't exposed. germany could play counter and demolish them.

 

And this happened....

 

Must be Ann Coulter followers.

 

We needed both Ghana and Portugal to end up with a worse GD than us. You did. Generally, when one can say X and Y were worse than Z, it's logical to conclude that Z was better than X and Y. Pretty straight-forward.

Well, tweeters gonna twit. Errrrr... be twits.

 

Um, the US definitely didn't bunker against Portugal. Possession - Portugal 52 US 48. Pretty even there. Every time that the US advances, Mexi-spazzos are always the first to bitch about it being due to luck. It's not about playing pretty football...it's about doing what you have to do to advance. Stay salty.

 

Heh, you make a good point. Brasil should be winning much more than they are, given their population size and craziness for futbol. Their five wins is basically explained along the lines of if you put enough people at typewriters pecking randomly, eventually one will produce Hamlet.

Indeed, we should really judge teams by their per-capita world cup titles, I think. In this case, the order of best country to worst is

Uruguay
Italy
Argentina
Germany
Brasil
Spain
England
France

Brasil would need three more cups to pass Germany. Five more to pass Argentina. This almost makes one want to root for Brasil! Almost.

 

Yeah, maybe, but for the supporter, the wins are fun anyway! Besides, if you did have a point, China and India would be the best footballing nations!

Hey, there you go! You're getting close! Just a little nudge, and you'll jump into the the Brazil bandwagon!
Come on, you can do it!