I agree that the FIFA rankings don’t make sense but you’re contradicting yourself here. Either the friendlies count for the ranking or they don’t.
I just through in Korea for good measure, but I think you’ll see that the data don’t necessarily support your theory. IMO they are probably slightly higher ranked, maybe 5-10 places too high, but hardly 40 places too high. There’s a rumor that England will play here in a “friendly” sometime this summer. If so I hope that SGE takes it somewhat seriously so that we can see how the two sides stack against each other.
I’m sorry but no knowledgeable football fan or pundit takes the rankings seriously. They aren’t relevant so this deabte is purely academic.
I’d say that the FIFA rankings are accurate to within 10 spots or so. They’re not particularly useful, but obviously far more accurate than, say, owlstretchingtime. The U.S. is a top 20 team. #11 is hard to justify, but #50…:rolleyes: I’ll have some of whatever you’re smoking.
CONCACAF deserves two spots. I wouldn’t give the region any more, but 3 spots could be arguable (the region preformed pretty well in the last Cup). That other half spot is ridiculous.
But I don’t see how Oceania deserves a spot.
Look it’s quite simple. America is not a football power. You may be good at netball and rounders (after all you always win the World series so you MUST be the best) but you are a footballing non-entity.
You don’t have a meaningful domestic championship (ie what passes for football in the USA is worse than what the scots serve up), and the players you do have who play abroad all play for diddy teams.
You have a couple of half decent keepers (although I break out in spots thinking about Casey Keller) and that’s it.
If you want to think that a flawed ranking system (that no one in the real world has any regard for - and I have explained why) is a reflection of the real world of football, then I have a bridge here that I would very much like to sell you.
Stick to games that no one else plays and sending out Team BALCO to the olympics!
Actually, a Canadian team won a few years back and teams from Asia and the Caribbean typically win the youth tournaments. At hoops we’ve had our ass handed to us regularly lately, by places like Puerto Rico, Lithuania and Argentina. Still we probably have the best and most of the talented individuals. More on that in a bit.
This is somewhat true, although I think at this point the top half of MLS teams would fit somewhere between Celtic, Rangers and the rest of the pack. A couple of the top teams (Kansas City and DC) would challenge for the top spots.
DaMarcus Beasley has been pretty successful with PSV Eindhoven. Steve Cherundolo is the captain of a Bundesliga squad. I suspect that Donovan will find success back in Germany or get transfered to someplace in England. Look in the future for Eskandarian, Eddie Johnson, Nelson Buddle, Clint Dempsey and some others to possibly move to Europe and make a mark. John O’Brien also has had a nice career in Holland but has been recently plagued by injuries.
The rankings are only important for bar room discussions and WC seedings, and then only for the top 7 teams or so. It’s not likely we’ll crack the top 7 anytime soon.
Cute. We’ll ignore that one.
I think a more important point that you miss is that the World Cup is only somewhat about the best football in the world. It’s also about the celebration of the sport, by billions of people, most whose team doesn’t have a prayer to win the finals. If you took only the best 16 or even 32 teams, in the most fair and equitable fashion possible, it would exlude a lot of these fans. If CONCACAF only held one or two spots, no one other than Mexico or the USA would ever get to the finals. If Asia only held two spots then only Korea and Japan would ever get there. So, in a rare move, FIFA had the wisdom* to set a couple of extra seats at the table so that Costa Rica, China, Canada, Guatemala, Indonesia, Thailand, Iran, etc. can still harbor hope that they can get to the finals and maybe enjoy some success there. For most of them the group round is as far as they can reasonably aspire, but they still can look to have their eleven on the field against the likes of Germany, Brazil, Holland or England. Maybe even make a game of it.
I was at the Suwon game where the USA thrashed Portugal, and it was amazing, probably the most exciting sports event of my life. Sure, if they played again four times the USA would be lucky to get the same result even once more. But that’s what the World Cup is about, as much as Germany or Brazil taking turns raising the trophy.
Sometimes it’s more about coaching and the moment than the individual talent of the players on the field. Which player from that US team would you take, straight up, for any of the Portuguese? Probably none, maybe Friedel at keeper. But the game wasn’t as close as the score indicated. It’s a team sport and on that night at that place the USA were by far the better team. That’s why I think England have a decent, albeit outside, shot at the top in '06. A little smarter defensive play and they might have beaten Brazil last time. The gap is not that wide anymore. Solid play from them and an upset here or there and who knows?
Sorry man, non-entities don’t make it to the Quarterfinals of the WC.
That’s pretty low!
And ah, Baseball is played in all of Latin America and Asia. Basketball is popular all over the world.
I never made the claim that the FIFA rankings are an accurate “reflection of the real world of football”. I do claim that they’re far more accurate than your rankings. I stand by that. At least they they use better criteria than “America is not a football power” (a claim no one has made BTW).
Damn missed this thread… is it too late to speak about the EPL and how Newcastle have made an utter mess of things? Now that Shearer is leaving, there seems to be little reason for me to continue backing them (though, I probably will anyway). I’m curious to see how many first team players we can piss off this year. A decent gaffer would be nice.
As for the US’s position. People still suffer from the conception that the US is like the team in the early 90s, who were colorful, but not that great. They haven’t seen the great strides that have been made by US Soccer since then. They’ve almost rationalized the WC 2002 as a fluke. I say it’s alright. It’ll make it easier to sneak up on them. Though I would have loved to see the justifications back in 2002 if we had beaten Germany. The US definitely deserves to be in the Top 25, and probably has a good claim for being in the top 20 teams in the world. Perhaps 11 is a bit high, but not by much.
I think it is important to remember that the standard of international football is fairly mediocre. The world cup has nothing to do with the best football in the world at all, and is entirely about other things; one of which is the celebration of football, as you say. I have nothing to contribute on the question of whether the US merits its FIFA ranking, but guarantee that if they visited my home club of Everton for a game they would get an absolute spanking. On current form so would England, come to that.
Chelsea, or Arsenal of last season play football so far above the standard of the english national team that it is not even worth discussing. I happened to be in a pub last week when the Real Madrid - Espagnol game was on, it was a rare occasion of Real actually having their shit together and they destroyed Espagnol 4-0. It could have been 10-0, no international team could have competed with them.
Good points, Myler Keogh. Most national sides are patchwork. That’s why it can sometimes be tough to go against T&T, Grenada, or anyone else that gets to practice, as a team, for months at a time.
FWIW, I coached my son’s peewee team with a Brit expat who’s a big Everton fan, so I’ve sort of adopted them, as much as any other team. In other words I’ll pull for Everton most times if they’re on the television and will go out of my way to look for their games.
I don’t have much problem with the majority of your posts but these two issues bothered me a little.
-
Not at all. Most MLS teams wouldn’t survive in the SPL. Perhaps KC and DC might but they would be way down on the totem pole. A good example of this would be Ronnie O’Brien. O’Brien is a near MVP in the MLS but couldn’t even get his game for Aberdeen. The MLS just isn’t that good and it won’t be for some time.
-
Nobody, and I do mean nobody, with any inkling about football discusses the rankings. Not in a bar and certainly not in a serious discussion. Sorry, but while you seem to know what you are talking about and I agree with most of your posts on this subject, you’ll come across like a stupid American if you keep discussing the rankings particularly if you bring them up in a bar.
Also, the rankings have nothing to do with WC seedings.
According to this they did in '02.
There’s something that everyone here is missing so here it is:
Why America is pants at footer by OWL age forty and three months:
The septics had a run of being quite handy. That is because the majority of it’s players were products of the USA’s coaching system. No one would argue that the USA has some extremely good coaches in sports like athletics etc. So what were produced were supremely fit individuals of questionable foortballing ability, but that didn’t really matter.
At that time the other “major” powers weren’t too worrried about fitness levels over footballing skils (think Maradonna, Gascoigne, Barnes, Waddle etc) so the USAs superior fitness made up for what they lacked in ball-playing skills.
However that has all changed. Look at any of the top European teams - they’re all as fit a fiddles and the tempo of the game has increased immensely in the last decade. But here’s the difference - not only are they playing football very quickly - they’re also doing it very well. Henry is one of the fastest people I have ever seen on a football pitch - and he can go that fast with the ball. So can most other top flight players.
So the one thing that gave the USA a chance has gone. That’s why I think they are not really to be taken seriously as a football nation.
In other news the mighty Spurs humbled the footballing collosus that is West Brom and now have a fifth round tie against Forest - with a bit of luck in the sixth round draw we could just win this if we’re not careful (and we’ve never won anything when the year ends in a “5”)
Has it ever happened that a club won the FA Cup and were relegated in the same year? If not, what’s the highest a club has progressed through the cup in the same year they were relegated?
Also, what exactly is a “derby”? I noticed that today’s Manchester derby is the 132nd. Is it a derby everytime City and United (or any two other clubs from the same area) play? Or is it something more special than that? How many years do those 132 contests span?
Basically, yes. The biggest rivalries are between neighbouring teams - Everton/Liverpool, Spurs/Arsenal, Ipswich/Norwich, Blackburn/Burnley, etc.
I don’t know about the first question, but Middlesbrough reached the final of both the League Cup and the FA Cup in 1997, lost both (to Leicester in a replay and Chelsea respectively) and were relegated. That has to be heartbreaking.
Kind of amusing for us Blackburn fans though - Boro were docked 3 points for refusing to play us one weekend after claiming they didn’t have enough fit players. They were relegated by 2 points. Fools! At the time any team could have beaten us with only 9 men on the pitch…
Sorry, that was me, not Grace. Sometime I can really hate sharing a computer :smack:
owlstretchingtime, I’d like to know how it was, then that the US made it to the quarterfinals of the last World Cup and by many accounts outplayed Germany in that game. The problem with the US team is that we do not have any superstar type players, as most every top team in the world would, and we do not go very deep in talent. An England thrid-best team could compete comfortably with the US first-team. But our best 11-20 players can play with any team in the world and if they are in their best form could beat them (Portugal for example).