Brazil is in a class by itself. As for the mortals, I would say Argentina. Most of their players are the stars of their club teams and have had a lot of success at many levels (club, FIFA youth tourneys, etc.)....only to come up a bit short with the national team. A team with Ayala, Samuel, Aimar, Tevez, Saviola, etc. should easily defeat every team in CONMEBOL other than Brazil and should be able to make it to the semi-finals in Germany (especially since Bielsa is gone). As far as Italy goes, I must commend them for being the only traditional power to incorporate a woman into the national team (the lovely Miss Totti).
1) Brazil - Ronaldo, Adriano, Kaka, Ronaldinho, Juninho, Edu, etc, etc, etc. 2) England - Dafoe, Owen, Rooney, Gerard, Lampard, SWP, strong backfour 3) Portugal - Pauleta, Ronaldo, Quaresma, Deco, Maniche, strong backfour 4) Argentina 5) Spain 6) Italy 7) France 8) Netherlands 9) Germany
Brazil Argentina England Italy Spain Netherlands Portugal You could make pretty strong arguments for interchanging these (Argentina-England, Spain-Italy, etc.) I personally think this is how it plays out. I left off Germany and France as they are good teams but at this time they are rebuilding and wouldn't match the ones that I listed. Brazil is Brazil, Argentina has a very very good lineup this year and I had a hard time putting them second, no real weakness. England has a lot of talent too and I would say a good amount of depth at all positions. Italy and Spain both have great talent that would put them in the top 5.
Goalie, Strikers and Off Mids - Brazil Defenders and Def Mids - Argentina No superstar team would come close
GOALIE???? italy definitely has an advantage there, as do others. For a position i can never think of a lot of good examples for, can anyone come up with a top ten DMIDs of the world list?
Is there any point in this thread now that we have the poll one? https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=150725
I thought that Holland always had one of the best squads of the tournament, but fails because of there were too many star players... Van Nistelrooy, Makaay, Robben, Davids, Seedorf etc. My top 5: (no specific order) -Brazil -Italy -Argentina -Spain -Holland