We are very close to knowing who will be the 32 World Cup finalists, with most of the pack (21 to be precise) already decided and a few others decided in fact (e.g., Uruguay and Mexico) even if not officially. It seems to me good to have a thread that is devoted to how their World Cup preparation are coming along, focusing on their friendly and other preparatory matches. In this regard, we already had a pretty interesting friendly last night, with Belgium hosting Colombia. I say interesting because both Belgium and Columbia are what I would call aspiring sides; sides that (along with Switzerland) have been seeded by virtue of their current FIFA ranking despite not being among the traditional powers in the game. Well, for whatever its worth, that match in Brussels ended 2:0 in favor of the visitors, a result which will help Colombia solidify its position as a dark horse for the tournament but which certainly dent Belgium's pretensions in that regard. The other notable friendlies coming up the next couple of days are as follows: South Korea v. Switzerland Italy v. Germany England v Chile Scotland v USA Russia v Serbia Argentina v. Ecuador Japan v Netherlands Brazil v Honduras Equatorial Guinea v Spain There are still other games being played by teams that have already qualified to the World Cup, including Iran playing Thailand for an Asian Cup qualifier today in Bangkok. But while for Iran, which has not been playing any preparatory matches lately, that might qualify as a World Cup preparatory match as well, obviously the games I listed above are more interesting to follow for neutrals. Nonetheless, if Iran get a good result against Thailand, I will update that result as well. (If not, someone else might)
South Korea just finished beating Switzerland 2:1, which makes the Swiss the 2nd UEFA seeded team to lose the past couple of days. The other one, as I mentioned, was Belgium.
Since I had mentioned I would post the result, Iran just finished beating Thailand 3:0 in Bangkok, earning its ticket to the Asian Cup in the process. Incidentally, besides the friendly matches I mentioned, there are also the first leg of UEFA playoffs which begins tonight and continues tomorrow. Those results can be posted here as well.
Other than Spain, Germany, possibly Holland, maybe Italy and France I see the Europeans struggling in Brazil. I think even less get through to the knockout stages as in SA, and I see only 1 in the semifinals. Winter South Africa would be more of an advantage to them than Brazil
I agree. I mentioned elsewhere, the fact that 3 of the 4 semifinalists in WC2010 were European merely disguised a far more significant fact: most of the UEFA sides proved next to nothing in that World Cup and their record in the group stage against teams from other confederations was average. Teams like Greece, Denmark and Serbia lost to their Asian opponents, South Korea, Japan and Australia respectively. None of them advanced to the knock out rounds, and neither did two established UEFA sides, Italy and France, both of whom in fact finished dead last in their group. Several other UEFA sides (Switzerland, Slovenia and Slovakia) managed to beat only their fellow UEFA opponents with the first 2 failing to advance nonetheless to the knock out rounds while Slovakia was able to advance on the strength of beating Italy and drawing New Zealand! Sure, Spain and Germany were great but the rest didn't impress much. Not even the Dutch despite their success in reaching the final, and certainly not the rest.
Sanchez is ON FIRE. Both for Barca and for NT. You can tell he's got that spark again. Chile needs him to be at the top of his game come WC. You know you can always depend on Vidal.
Bosnia - Argentina Monday night at 8:30 pm EST. No Messia, but still good lioneups. We are missing Lulic and Mujdza, two key players, Lulic on the LM spot and Mujdza at the RB spot. Not sure who else Argentina is missing besides Messi.
Chile looks like they might be for real. They were pretty good in the last World Cup as well, so I am not surprised. To recap the relevant scores for the past couple of nights: Belgium 0 Colombia 2 South Korea 2 Switzerland 1 Russia 1 Serbia 1 Italy 1 Germany 1 England 0 Chile 2 Scotland 0 USA 0 P.S. Last night UEFA playoffs had Greece beating Romania 3:1, Portugal beating Sweden 1:0, and Ukraine beating France 2:0, with Iceland drawing Croatia 0:0. Among these results, I am quite surprised by France losing to the Ukraine. If Ukraine hold on to eliminate France, they will have accomplished a lot and will make UEFA even less capable of doing anything useful in Brazil 2014. Yes, there is still Spain and Germany, as well as Italy and the Netherlands. But apart from these 4 teams, the rest are mediocre in my eyes. Hence, Belgium losing 2:0 to Colombia at home, England losing 2:0 to Chile at home, and Switzerland losing to their hosts, South Korea.
Why would the result be surprising? I also don't see why this would damage the belgian team in any way as it was a pretty even match. On the contrary, it gave us some valuable experience: it has been a long while since we went behind in a game.
Friendlies don't mean anything concerning results. Belgium tried an experimental defense, England tried numerous things, Holland gave away a lead after subbing some players... I wouldn't read too much into it. For Belgium even the loss reinforced my believe we'd beat teams like Colombia with our regular lineup.
My view is that no match is a dis-positive or definitive account of how 2 teams might fare against one another or in the larger scheme of things, not even a World Cup match much less a friendly. A team might lose one match, be it friendly or otherwise, and look horrible and then turn around and look rather good in another match. That said, friendlies that we can watch and see, and judge based on our knowledge of the teams that are playing, aren't irrelevant either. They give us a clue or glimpse into the larger picture whose pieces we still need to try to put together.
Japan v Netherlands 2:2 Good results for Asian teams that have qualified to the World Cup this past couple of days.
If it is shown in one of the satellite channels I get, i will definitely watch it. Incidentally, Argentina (without Messi) played a friendly against Ecuador a couple nights ago which ended scoreless. From what I read, Argentina wasn't all that impressive in that match. Also, Brazil beat up on Honduras 5:0 in a friendly last night.
Australia plays Costa Rica on Tuesday, it's first game under the newly appointed Australia Manager. Wasn't as big a mass clean out of older players as expected with only Mark Schwarzer, Luke Wilkshire, Sasa Ognenovski and David Carney the older recently regular players being left out of the squad. Will be interesting to see if the new manager can change anything in the short time before Brazil to save the Socceroos from humiliation at the World Cup. Mark Bresciano has just been banned by FIFA for 4 months for an illegal transfer between Middle Eastern clubs but as the ban has no start date yet he will probably still play on Tuesday. Not sure how strong the Costa Rican squad is as I don't really know what their strongest line-up would be (8 of the starting 11 from the vs USA WCQ match from September) , but there are plenty of European based players coming so the team must be fairly good. There is room for the 2 New Zealand based Ticos in the squad though, Carlos Hernandez and Kenny Cunningham.
My Spanish friends would like to believe that the Spanish didn't feel like playing the game. But given that Bosque fielded reserve players who are basically playing fighting for a place on the Spanish squad I don't buy that. In my honest opinion it was the heat + humidity (which by the way will be identical with what will be encountered by teams which will be playing in the Equatorial zone at the Brasil WC). Spain were suffering (maybe also a case of jetlag?) - misplacing passes, losing concentration, physically weak, unable to control possession. They went 2:1 up after an offside goal (both goals scored off schoolboy defensive errors) and almost let Eq. Guinea equalize in extra time. If they had players up front who know how to score Spain could have easily lost. And we're talking about losing to a team that isn't even in the top 30 in Africa. Enough said that this Eq. Guinea squad basically consists of low league Spanish players. It was like Spain B vs Spain Z. As I said somewhere else: This isn't about Spain per se, but any European team that get thrown into a group which is located mainly in Manaus, Fortaleza, Natal or Recife and to a lesser extent Cuiaba, Brasilia and Salvador (group A, group C, group D and group G) will suffer. Heat is one thing, but heat + humidity is something entirely different. I've seen my professional footballer friends from Italy play in Ghana in the middle of rainy season in similar conditions and they basically lasted half a game, while their semi-pro counterparts hardly broke a sweat. Yes, Spain has humidity levels at 50-60% and temperatures over 30 degrees, but believe me - 80-90% is a whole other ball-game. Naturally its just a friendly and can't read too much into this, but it was pretty evident Spain were suffering during this game. There were multiple shots of Spanish players gasping for air in between play. The key question is why? Jet-lag or weather? --- I guess we'll have a better idea on Tuesday when Spain play Gabon, a much better team with Aubemeyang leading the lines.
Eee... Not really sure about that. It reminds me of the Nigeria - Argentina game played in Nepal (?) a few years back. Nigeria flew into Nepal some 12 hours before the game after playing a grueling tie vs Mozambique as part of some qualification campaign. The players were basically sleepwalking on the field. And here we go again: The NFA allowed for a friendly to be played 48 hours after an all-important playoff game. Basically they have one days rest (where 6 hours will be spent on a plane). What does that mean? Either playing tired legs or giving the B team a run out: And the B team is as follows: -----------------Ejide---------------- Kwambe------------------Benjamin -------Egweukwe-----Okwuosa---- ---------------------------------------- --------Ogu----------------Reuben-- -----------------Mba------------------ -Oduamadi------------------Obinna ----------Ameobi / Dike------------- Ejide is a great keeper, but apart from that you have four Nigerian league defenders, Ogu and Reuben (two club benchwarmers), Mba (a player embroiled in a long battle for ownership, thus lacking match fitness), Oduamadi (a Serie B player), Obinna (a Russian league benchwarmer) and Ameobi (a EPL has-been) or Dike (a MLS striker with one goal behind his belt). As much as I admire Keshi's work with his first team, I can't help but question his bench (no Imoh Ezekiel, no Lukman Haruna, no Ike Uche, no Sylvestre Igboun, no Sone Aluko, no Michael Olaitan).
There are a lot of friendlies coming up the next few days as well, including several that involve teams that played just recently. Here are the friendly matches scheduled for the next few days involving the World Cup finalists: Monday 18 November Italy v Nigeria Tuesday 19 November Argentina v Bosnia Australia v Costa Rica Russia v South Korea S.Africa v Spain Netherlands v Colombia Austria v USA Belgium v Japan England v Germany Wednesday 20 November Brazil v Chile Ecuador v Honduras
Nigeria vs Italy Also live on BEIN sport Monday at 11:30 AM pacific we will be going into the match with only 1 day of rest after our qualification match against Ethiopia yesterday. I don't expect much because our bench players are a bunch of scrubs who should be nowhere near the national team, and if the first team gets played, they will be dead tired.
Sometimes, losing a friendly is better. The coach would figure out something in a loss. A victory would sometimes give a team a false sense of security.