I think that Chile will top this group if they can win the first match and just not lose to Spain and the Netherlands afterwards. And I see Spain following up so long as they continue to play their style of football.
I think that Holland will top this group if they can win the first match and just not lose to Australia and Chile afterwards. And I see Spain following up so long as they continue to play their style of football.
If there's 1 team who haven't won a WC and deserve to, it's the Dutch. I'm afraid this is not likely to end well for Aussie.
I love how people ridiculed me when I said that both Spain and Germany are in for a rude awakening. Tiki-taka is dead, the secret is out, any "average" team can play against Spain By average I mean Chile's level
What is it with European World Cup champions and failing miserably during defence of their title? France 2002, Italy 2010... Spain not out of it yet of course, but best case scenario it looks like Brasil in the 1/8 final. EDIT: Spain obviously the better team. They had 64% of possession!
Possession has no relationship to domination. The Netherlands dominated Spain at will, and if it not were to another Oscar academy performance by another brazilian player whom got a pk call over a dive (2nd, after Fred's performance, of yesterday), Spain wouldn't have scored any goal today. Of course, whom controls the ball the most time of a match, in theory has more probabilities to win, but if you do not score in all that possession, it is useless, while that team whom makes it count more, the few moments they have the ball, that one is definitively going to win. And this game is not about taking control of the ball, but scoring goals, and today, the Netherlands proved it, by doing that countless times. As the main objective of this game to win, is to score more than your opponent, the Netherlands were inmensely better than Spain.
As happy as I am with this and barely able to contain my celebratory words, Spain can easily pull off 2 wins, Holland perhaps (sorry Oranje) lose one and Spain nets 6 goals on Australia. Right back to where we started. Unless.....sorry, but also go Socceroooooooooos.
Despite Spain's loss, I see them and the Netherlands passing to the next round. Chile is overrated and had trouble with Australia at times and the Aussies are just thankful to be in the tournament this year.
Anybody else wondering how Spain's defense managed to play so badly? Is it because they play on teams that are so dominant in their domestic league, that they never really have to play top-quality defense? Goal #1 - Van Persie splits Pique and Ramos, Casillas indecisive and gets stuck in no-mans land Goal #2 - Robben splits Pique and Ramos Goal #3 - Casillas flaps at ball, Azpilicueta stops marking DeVlij Goal #4 - Casillas muffs back-pass Goal #5 - Ramos caught out of position upfield, outraced by Robben
Or Robben doesn't get injured over it, and Medel gets a red card, and we are out. Bad suggestion. Better would be to outscore them.
Fun fact - Netherlands have never beaten Australia in international competition ;-) http://au.soccerway.com/teams/comparison/?team_ids[]=156&team_ids[]=1552
Now if Spain beats Chile, and Australia beats Netherlands next match-day, all 4 teams could face the last match in the group with the same probabilities to go through if they win in it. Would be pretty odd.
Netherlands has now emerged as one of the favorites to win the tournament, who knew this would be the case even a week ago.
Too early to get that conclussion after one game. They still haven't even made it to the next phase yet, and many things can still happen from here to the end.