I'm looking at the FIFA rankings and I notice that we are ranked MUCH higher than Czech Republic (ranked 33) and Sweden (ranked 37). While we haven't played Sweden for some time, we got spanked by Czech Republic before the World Cup by 4-2. I'm thinking that we actually overacheived with this squad. On paper, we are nowhere near the quality of England, but yet we good a good result against them. I would also choose Czech Republic and Sweden over us as well if we faced off in the World Cup, if we were basing it purely on player quality. In fact, we are also ranked much higher than Ivory Coast (ranked 27th), but on paper, our players aren't really close to the quality of Ivory Coast. All in all, we did well in this World Cup - I would give our performance a B+ to A-, given our roster.
we also didnt play a single starting XI player. In fact we played the bottom XI to see who would make the cut and who wouldnt. Using the pre-wc 4-2 loss as an example of quality is folly. toe to toe, anything is possible. But dont go off FIFA rankings on quality