Ugh, Bayern, what are you doing……
Their league form has been pretty terrible. Lucky neither Leipzig nor Dortmund seem to have things all that together either; they really could be digging themselves a hole.
Well, the USA’s last two tune up games before the world cup were both completely terrible. Dominated by Japan and toothless against Saudi Arabia. Weston McKennie, who’s been penciled in as a starter for a long time was particularly bad. Big injury worries too, and some obvious replacements won’t get brought in because of some animus by the coach.
If they play like that, it’ll be 3 straight losses and out.
Performance in the last friendlies before the World Cup is usually not very predictive of future performance, it’s a worrying indicator but I wouldn’t assume too much.
Plus, McKennie has a habit of playing like a monster in games of importance, while tending to disappear when the stakes aren’t so high. I think he’ll be up for the World Cup.
I am a bit worried about ball progression in the midfield if Musah remains out, as well as wondering who’s going to put the ball in the net. As much as Pefok doesn’t match Berhalter’s designed scheme, he at least provides a good outlet for hold-up play against the caliber of opponents we’re likely to see in Qatar.
That’s better than the opposite, players who only shine in regular games, but fail in important ones. Messi a such a case, at least for the Argentinean team.
I have the firm, and completely unfounded on any fact, conviction that this will change in Qatar…
I tend to cut Messi a little slack because it seems to my eye that Argentina tend to expect a little too much out of him when the chips are down. It’s like they’re expecting some Messi magic, but don’t give him the supporting runs, passing lanes and the like, and he ends up having to try to outdribble five defenders.
In the end, it’s a team game, and I think Argentina would do a little better if the supporting cast were just a little more ambitious and less deferential.
Messi played well throughout the Copa last year and the 2014 and 2018 WCs. If only finals count as big games, he’s played in, what, 5 big games in his career? And it’s playing bad if he doesn’t score even if the rest of his game was good?
I don’t really buy the premise. I guess I’m a “clutch” skeptic in general though.
I don’t think Messi has to score every time, but you would like him to finish a shot like this (link safe for work but not Argentina fans)
Of course, Higuain’s miss was even worse.…
That chance is probably like 0.15 xG. If you were rooting for Argentina you’d like him to score it, but there has never been a player in the history of soccer that you would expect (>50% chance) to score that.
I did a very quick search to see if I could find the xG on the shot and couldn’t. I did see a site that showed, over the tournament, he outperformed his xG by the second most of anyone (behind James Rodriguez and ahead of Thomas Muller). But not in the final, so it doesn’t count.
It’s a bit (well a lot) exagerated, but he tends to shine most brightly against the easy opponents, mostly is a matter of probabilities, you play less against the harder teams and obviously you have less probabilities to shine, the dice just haven’t rolled correctly… yet.
On the other hand God did not have any problems scoring 2 against England first (one of them completely by Himself) and Belgium later in the semis of a WC, so you see what’s compared against, it’s a bit unfair.
Henry Bushnell of Yahoo Sports has put Brazil and Argentina 1-2 in his World Cup power rankings, which surprised me a little, but he makes compelling arguments for them.
If there’s a caveat he mentions that neither have played many European national teams recently, Brazil not since 2018.
Nations Leagues are probably going to dramatically reduce cross continental friendlies. Which is a bit of a shame.
I worry about that, it directly impacts Argentina’s chances to prepare adequately for the WC, we end up playing Honduras and Jamaica which are not a good measure of anything.
I still don’t buy Argentina. They’re undefeated in like 3 years, have some very nice wins, but the talent doesn’t stack up, IMO. Nobody that starts Otamendi can be that good, right!?
That said, who else is really playing all that well?
Yup. It’s both less interesting and to the detriment of all confederations outside UEFA.
I’ve been thinking much the same thing about the flaws being displayed by the top European teams. Germany, Spain and The Netherlands can’t find top level strikers, Belgium is decrepit at center back and France is afflicted by curses from witch doctors! England just finished last in its Nation’s League group.
While I’m not as current on Argentina as I could be, their midfield outside of Messi had better be much improved over 2018 for me to get on their bandwagon.
Look out for Serbia making noise this year.
Oh it has, dramatically so, enough for the world cup? we can only hope.
As for Otamendi… he seems to somehow have learned not to fuck up so often, again we can only hope the not-screwing-the-pooch streak continues for the next 8 matches (1 friendly and the reglamentary 7 WC matches.)
Benzema wins the Ballon d’Or. I don’t have strong feelings about it either way, but as awards go, it probably generates more social media clicks and posts than any other.
Lewandowski won the inaugural Gerd Müller trophy for the highest scorer, which seems fitting given where Müller played, but which also seems like a consolation prize.
I’m pleasantly surprised that the award for best scorer got named after Gerd Müller. If there’s one striker in football history who deserved that honor, it’s the bomber.