I just read something that blew my mind from Cristiano Ronaldo: “Brazil is very strong, Ivory Coast is really tough and Korea runs a lot. If we get as far as meeting Spain, I’d be happy. We’d have played a good World Cup.” http://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/news?slug=ap-worldcup&prov=ap&type=lgns Ronaldo and Portugal would be happy to just make it out of bracket? I know they have a reasonably tough group, but if you are Ronaldo and your team made the semifinal last time would you really be saying second round is okay? Contrast that to what Donovan says "Any time we don't advance we're going to be disappointed," Donovan said. "That's our expectation now." http://web.mlsnet.com/news/mls_news.jsp?ymd=20091204&content_id=7759698&vkey=news_mls&fext=.jsp How is it that the US and MLS player Landon Donovan have the same expectations as highly reguarded Portugal and UEFA standout Cristiano Ronaldo? Is it just that Americans are more optimistic? Contrast this with the Japanese coach that says the semifinals are their goal. Weird...
Re: Reasonable Expectations I think that Ronaldo realizes that its not such an easy Group. Brazil is assured to make the second round whether they get 1st or 2nd place in there group. Ivory Coast is a tough team and especially in Africa they wont be easy to beat. Portugal is fading from the status as a Top team, and i think Ronaldo realizes that it wont be that easy to get out of their group. No disrespect to North Korea, but they don't really have a shot in this group.
Re: Reasonable Expectations Call me crazy/cynical/whatever, but the chance CRonaldo has seen one second of tape of North Korea playing is about nil. Maybe he thought they drew South Korea, or assumes the North plays like the South, or isn't aware it's not one country? What he should have said was “Brazil is very strong, Ivory Coast is really tough and we're not going to beat Korea by as many goals as they are, so we'll be in tiebreaker trouble."
Re: Reasonable Expectations Nate Silver has NK's advancement percentage at 4%. How is it disrespecting them to say they have almost no chance to escape this group? It's just the truth.
Re: Reasonable Expectations I noticed Nate Silver's article on the draw. Now I'm actually a Nate Silver fan, and followed 538.com religiously during the last election. But is he a soccer fan? What does he base his numbers on? I would think North Korea's chances of advancement are less than 4%. Nate also said Algeria and Slovenia have an equal chance of advancing, not too much less than the U.S. BTW to answer the OP's question, chances of advancement are based on a teams relative strength (versus the other teams in the group). Obviously Portugal is a better team than the US, but our group is much easier. Not sure why this is a question...
Re: Reasonable Expectations Is there another team of Portugal's stature or another player of Ronaldo's stature that would be happy with a 2nd round exit? That's just amazing to me. Roy Keane thought the 2nd round was not enough for Ireland in 02 when Ireland wasn't half the team that Portugal is and got into a bustup with the coach over it.
Re: Reasonable Expectations Yeah, that's a good point... there's a fine balance on has to strike between lack of confidence and overconfidence. Obviously the latter is not a problem for Ronaldo in this case. His assessment is actually probably realistic, though. We in the U.S. are not use to such an attitude, I think; we tend to be optimists, and are perceived around the world as being very optimistic and confident (sometimes too much so).
Re: Reasonable Expectations Because the USA have a completely distorted and overblown sense of their ability. Ronaldo is being realistic, they did poorly in qualifying and they are in a very tough group.
Re: Reasonable Expectations I don't think this is the case. Certainly with respect to this example, Donovan has a very keen sense of the reality of the USMNT. He says alot of things a reasonable BS poster would say. And I think he's being pretty realistic in his assessment that the US should advance from the group.
Re: Reasonable Expectations I think Slovenia are going to create a lot of surprises and someone is going to have to fight them for second. Of course if you swaped the USA with Portugal Ronaldo would be a lot more confident.
Re: Reasonable Expectations No one is penciling in 3 points (or even a draw) against Slovenia. Being confident that we can beat them if we play up to our potential is not the same thing as overlooking them. Why wouldn't our players believe that they have every chance to make it out of the group?
Re: Reasonable Expectations I'd say USA has a 50/50 fight with Slovenia from what I have seen of both teams. It's really hard to say. How England performs against the other teams will also affect you. I mean Slovenia or the USA are capable of grinding out a draw against England so who knows.
Re: Reasonable Expectations as a player, if you're expectation isn't to win every match.. you've already lost. players going in, and just hoping to reach the 2nd round are guys with the wrong mentality. You cannot defeat yourself before the matches even begin. Every team should expect them to win the WC. Even New Zealand. You gotta believe in your team. Maybe I'm taking too much from American sports vs European sports philosophy. Maybe it's customary for Europeans to have humbled expectations. as a fan, the reasonable expectation is the 2nd round.
Re: Reasonable Expectations That's fine (always expecting to win) as long as in public you speak with reasonable modesty and respect for your opponent. A self-delusional sense of expectation--say Japan or Korea predicting they will reach the semis-- (which in my limited experience living in Korea is a problem the Asian teams have) does no good, but so does an overly-pessimistic attitude. There's nothing wrong with Donovan saying not advancing would be a disappointment. Players should always be disappointed in losing to some extent. At the same time I'd be pretty ticked if US players started saying they were gonna win the WC. Right now, the US needs to set its sights on advancing. Everything beyond that is one game at a time. The US players should BELIEVE the CAN win every match they play. The US wasn't one of the best four teams in 02 but they were rightly disappointed they lost to Germany I think some of us are finding C Ronaldo's statements posted by the OP surprising not because it's a bad thing to say as a Portugal player, but well, because the statement just doesn't fit the image many people have of him.
Re: Reasonable Expectations hey guys, I'm going to re-title this as "players" expectations, to differentiate from the other thread
Re: Reasonable Expectations Good idea. I had a thought today that relates to this thread. When Diego Maradona played he was often called a sore loser. Why? When he lost it was always an Italian conspiracy or Fifa conspiracy. After Italia 90 he made this claim and also a couple times with Napoli and then in 94 against Fifa. Two things stand out here: 1) Maradona truely believed he was the best and could beat anybody...he was Michael Jordan or Larry Bird. 2) Cristiano Ronaldo doesn't have that belief, he isn't that player. And also... Maybe Maradona was right? You don't think the match fixing only started recently do you? I'm not sure it was the case all of the time, but perhaps with Napoli.
Re: Reasonable Expectations The Hand of God claiming FIFA conspiracies. I love it. That guy's always been a little off.
There is no bonus for finishing third. Portugal is much worse than Brazil (everybody is), and not better then IC. USA is closer to England than Portugal is to Brazil, and stronger than teams 3 and 4 in the group. USA has better chances to advance than Portugal. Both Donovan and Ronaldo are right.