Bad behaviour by some of the Argentinian players. I successfully jinxed Brazil after their extensive goal celebrations by saying "Karma is a bitch" and that they would not win the World Cup. I will do now the same for Argentina. Argentina, your bad behaviour will come back to bite you. Karma is a bitch. The World Cup is not for you. Only an UEFA nation is in terms of quality and sportsmanship worthy of lifting the trophy in Qatar. Be it France or Croatia.
Only Croatia is worthy, when it comes to sportsmanship. The French dive a lot and got a free kick like that 4 years ago. They can enjoy a mutual diving and whining contest against Morocco.
The teams whose football reaches the highest levels of class, creativity, and skill have been eliminated already. But, individually, Mbappe is a player destined for legendary status, while Messi is a legend who can still shine. Of course, neither France is simply Mbappe nor is Argentina just Messi. But France without Mbappe wouldn't be the same; even when Mbappe is uncharacteristically mostly quiet, even when France win as they did against England, they can look ordinary. And without Messi, Argentina would be very ordinary too. Somewhere around the level of Mexico or Uruguay. The other semifinalists Morocco and Croatia, are solid, skilled, capable and ordinarily very hard to beat. They are definitely very strong teams, but if either end up lifting the trophy, the excitement and jubilation will be for the novelty of a new World Cup winner. Their top ceiling is lower than half a dozen or more teams already eliminated.
There is no such thing as "we Argentineans" are like this or "you Brazilians" are like that. There are individuals who act differently some showing respect and others not. In your forum here in BS, there are a few posters who talk a lot of shit when about Brazil with a complete lack of respect. You know that very well. You have always been respectful as far as I've seen, but don't talk about others in general (in BS) because you know that's not true.
Argentina has the Copa America curse on them. None of the nine CONMEBOL World Cup winners so far entered the World Cup as reigning Copa America champions. Additionaly with me having jinxed Argentina for the bad behaviour of several of their players (Karma is a bitch) there should be zilch of a chance of them lifting the trophy now.
Your gypsy curses wont work. Imagine rationalizing this much, ignoring the dutch absolute dirty behavior, Van dik assaulting ect just to support your euro centric or worse the takes of some brazilian loser. I will let you guys do your thing trying to find another excuse but keep thinking argentina has no good players their defense is weak blabla
Im sorry but Argentina WONT be Mexico or Uruguay without Messi, thats very disrispectful and NOT true. Mexico, really?? A Messiless Argentina beat Mexico with this scaloni team 4-0 not too long ago. Plus Mexico is average to bad while Argentina will never be average, have you seen us play? Why would you say such thing? Do you know our players besides Messi? How would you compare us with Mexico or even Uruguay?? Really. Argentina is a top class team, even without Messi. Certainly not on the level of those you mentioned even with our C or D team.
I should have worded what I said differently. My view (I could be wrong) is that at this tournament, without Messi showing well, my expectation would be for Argentina to perform at the level Mexico or Uruguay would perform against the teams you face (e.g., Croatia next). I don't think either Mexico or Uruguay would necessarily lose to Croatia either, but regardless of result, the top elite level football from Argentina will require IMO Messi to show his magic. It is a long story, but I see the differences between teams/players (except for a handful) not so great these days. Except for a few, the variations between the rest is mostly who shows up psychologically and mentally and how different tactics, form and motivation will effect their performance. It isn't about Argentina but almost every team that doesn't have too many genuinely world class players. And even those, as I had already suggested, are not invincible. Several of them have been eliminated already. p.s. I am familiar with most of Argentina's XI. They are all very good players.
Early prediction Argentina will be in 10 years not a top 10 side in the world anymore. Everything points toward that.
I mean you’re not wrong. Just like how everything pointed towards a Netherlands-Portugal Final, right?
You think Uruguay or Mexico are capable of winning Copa beating Brazil and spanking Euro champ Italy? I mean I don't know man maybe you should re-evaluate your views.
We should all re-evaluate our views from time to time. My views were reflected after M2 in this post in this thread. Tell me which part I should revaluate?
I already tried to clarify what I meant by the comparison. Forget it if it bothers you that much. You can find my views more generally about the level of football in different confederations in the OP in the Battle of Confederations thread I started. Again I will have to reevaluate a few points I made, but they may not be the ones you have in mind. Bear in mind this was posted a year before the World Cup, when the qualifiers had not finished yet.
Netherlands was NEVER likely to win the whole thing. It's not about names but actual current football teams. After Kam had hyped Holland as potential winners, I told him Morocco was more likely to win the WC, and that has manifested into reality. Netherlands has a great history, but this current team was not worth all the hype.
Actually overall Morocco has been UNLUCKY. Yes UNLUCKY. Before the tournament even started they lost their #1 impact sub Amine Harit to injury. He would have been a MAJOR boost to this team. They then loose their best centreback and starting leftback against Portugal, yet still prevailed. The other centre back missed half that match and was even playing injured. Players like Hakimi and Amrabat are also playing with injuries, Amrabat had to have shots to play through the pain. Losing all those players is not LUCK. Also in both Spain and Portugal matches, the best chances to score that were missed were FROM MOROCCO. There is actually nothing really lucky about their run, they have actually had a lot of BAD LUCK.
Your argument is laughable. A team like Morocco to go to semis simply needs a sufficient amount of luck. They did not play radically different than 2018. In 2018 they could have easily overcome Spain and Portugal, did you watch those games? But luck was not with them in 2018, but in 2022 a sufficient amount of luck was there. Without sufficient luck, even the top teams can falter. Did you watch Brazil vs Croatia for example? Brazil could have easily won that match, but it wasn't their day. You should know by now the nature of this sport. Morocco could have easily lost to Spain in round of 16, it went to penalties for gods sake. I think you are conflating the concept of "sufficient luck" with "getting lucky".
If Netherlands was never likely to win the whole thing who was? Germany? Spain? Brazil? England? France? Portugal? Argentina? None of these teams were significantly more convincing than Netherlands either. Morocco advanced Spain on penalties, then Portugal 1-0 with a bunch of Portuguese chances somehow not ending up in the back of the net. It happens. This is football. Still credit to Morocco, they did things right to even have the chance for this luck to come to them, but a certain element of luck was enjoyed by them too, and we will see that spell broken against France. Meanwhile Netherlands lost the lottery against Argentina after coming back from 2-0. It happens. To say that because Morocco won penalties against Spain means they would have from the beginning gone further than Netherlands is foolish. Nobody predicted Morocco to go this far, certainly not further than Netherlands. At most one could argue they would be on the same level. Hindsight is 20/20. You didn't predict anything, you have anti-europe bias and have said crazy things like Nigeria 2014 is stronger than France, that is not a prediction, that is emotional nonsense, and out of 100 times 1 time it may come true, now you are clinging onto it as if you "predicted" it.
What hype on the Dutch? They werenot considered contenders in the first place. Some in here hoped for them to rise to the occasion, but as I posted from the beginning in here van Gaal selected a bunch of players who were badly out of form at their club Ajax in the vain hope it would turn around. However it was good enough to get to the last 8 and get Argentina on the brink of collaps. I from the beginning posted were not in good shape, but very hard to beat. We again go out without losing a game.
My wording (and opinion) is that without Messi Argentina aren't good enough to win this tournament. With Messi they may be.
im not so sure, I think like Portugal they may blossom into a wonderful team when the shadow of their superstar is no longer there. They’ve got some very good players but it’s a heavy burden for mere mortals to share the responsibility of doing it for Messi. Just my thoughts
They may do that down the track after Messi retires, but currently I think they rely on him too much in their structure and play patterns and with the relative scarcity of international matches it may take a year or so to get used to not having him there.
Where was Morocco's luck ? Losing many of their top players, or even their top players not being 100% fit, drawing a Group of Death for the 2nd world cup in a row ? There is no luck there. They got to where they are DESPITE getting crappy luck. You are just a bitter hater.