D Mulligan, Arena can be extremely sarcastic but in this case I think he was serious. He mentioned that he particularly appeciates the wide open style of play in Spain, so it may have been as much about the style of play as the quality. Didn’t see the match yesterday but Villareal supposedly played much better than Arsenal. Who’s ever heard of Villareal? Still, these things are very hard to measure objectively. The most ironic part is that Arena supposedly badly wants to manage an English side after the World Cup. But his partiality to England is mainly language based.
There’s also a huge pay gap between MLS and Europe in general. There is discussion amongst American supporters where they bemoan the transfer of second tier type players to second tier European leagues that actually may be less challenging than MLS but the money is better. A prime example of this right now is Heath Pearce, who is a young player in Norway. He may become a decent player, but some would argue he’d get better development in MLS. Problem is he can earn up to 4x the money that MLS can offer someone like him.
Arsenal completely dominated Villareal in the first leg. I don’t think Villareal even had a shot on target. The opening leg could easily have been 3-0 Arsenal. Let’s also not mention the fact that Arsenal, a team not even in the top two in the Premiership, also dismantled Juventus earlier in the competition, runaway leaders of Serie A.
I didn’t see the match last night, apart from the penalty miss and Thierry Henry nearly scoring, so I have no idea how well Arsenal performed - it’s possible they were just playing for the draw to send them through, though.
As others said, the rankings are a joke. Let’s see, Landon “Bayern Reject” Donovan, Beasley, Pope, Johnson, et. al., six spots better than Beckham, Rooney, Lampard, Cole and
three spots better than Henry, Zidane, Trezeguet, Viera, etc? Get real. As others have noted, this comes from the USA beating up on Honduras, Costa Rica and the like while the European teams usually compete against good teams (each other).
Arsenal clearly were playing for the tie yesterday- I don’t think they even got a shot on goal. They were of course, playing with only Henry up front. Fabregas had a rare off night with his passing. Lehmann really was the star, and not just on the PK.
The group the U.S. won had Mexico, Costa Rica, Trinidad, Guatemala and Panama.
Italy, on the other hand earned the top seed in Group E by getting by the “good” teams of Norway, Scotland, Moldova, Belarus and Slovenia. None of those teams play their home games in Mexico City. I’m thinking none of them has fans who throw bags of urine at the visiting players. And I’ll bet Italy doesn’t play it’s home games in front of crowds that are overwhelmingly for the other team.
I’m not saying the U.S. is the fourth best team in the world. They might be or they might be 14th. I don’t think there’s much difference between #4 and #14. But they aren’t the joke they are often made out to be. The oddsmakers have them a distant third in their group, but don’t be shocked if they knock out one of the Euro-powers. Or not. You can’t count Ghana out either.
That European power was the second best team in Italy’s qualifying group. Italy tied them then beat them by one in the rematch.
Although Norway certainly is no football giant, I’d remind you of an impressive, if rather short record: Norway has played total of three matches against Brazil, and won two of them. It’s one of the few teams Brazil haven’t beat yet. In 1988 they had 1-1 tie, in 1997 Norway won 4-2 and in 1998 World Cup it was again 2-1 for Norway. Of course this won’t mean they’d be in quarter finals even in a good day, but it’s a nice curiosity.
Also from their latest friendlies, Italy has 4-1 win against Germany and 3-1 win against Netherlands so having them as #14 is weird. Those rankings aren’t of much use once the real competition starts.
The ranking is definitely artificially high due to the field of teams the US find themselves regularly competing with. i’d probably say they’re top ten, but only just.
Any true footie fan knows that the FIFA ranks are generally pretty bollocks though - basically they’re generally right with the no. 1, but the rest of the top 10 should be taken in no particular order.
Real top ten lists can only be properly calculated by a minimum of four drunk blokes in a pub - not by artificial means.
Arsenal were playing for the clean sheet and hoping to grab a goal - not pretty, but it worked. We seemed slightly panicky as for the first time in a while we weren’t the underdog going into the game - not a problem we’ll have in the final!
I find watching MLS to be like watching mid-Championship level football. Its relatively entertaining to watch and there’s some good play, but even the best MLS teams would never be able to avoid relegation from the Premiership.
garius, agree with your assessment of MLS 100%. I have never seen a Championship league game, but in years of watching the Premiership, it would be “bottom three” all the way for even the best MLS team. Maybe the top MLS squad go give Sunderland a go, but in my opinion would get thrashed by WBA and Birmingham. To me its like comparing the best college football team with the worst NFL team. Maybe 5-10 players on the college team are good enough to play in the NFL, but all of the players on the NFL team are good enough to play in the NFL. I do wonder how a team of the best MLS players combined, practicing together on a daily basis would rate.
The MLS all stars played Fulham last season as their all star game. MSL beat the snot out of them, 4-1. Now, to be fair, Fulham were not in midseason form and, are in the end, Fulham. But on the other side of the equation you have an MLS team that had been together for about 48-72 hours.
This year they’re doing the same thing with Chelsea. Chelsea will use it as a way to get in match shape and certainly use some second team type players. But they are Chelsea and will have players who never see the field that are arguably better than 99% of MLS players. Might be interesting.
Just since everyone seems to agree there’s not much truth to FIFA rankings, is anyone familiar with some other ranking system, like Elo football ratings (explained on Wikipedia article)? Obviously these are in no way official like the FIFA’s ranks are, but they do give a somewhat different picture. In the current Elo ratings USA is in place 14, which certainly sounds more believable than the fourth place FIFA suggests. Also the overall list looks more like what you’d expect to see in the upcoming World Cup, even though these ratings surely aren’t perfect either.
Also, the Chicago Fire played AC Milan in a similar situation last summer. AC Milan won 3-1. Here’s a link to a recap (biased source, to be fair).
For reference Chicago ended up 3rd in the Eastern Conference last year and made the second round of the playoffs. So they somewhere between 6th-10th best team in a 12 team league. They’ve not won a game yet this season.
Do not recall about the Fulham game, but that reminds me a few months back when an MLS all star squad, also with no practice, got thrashed by Real Madrid 5-0 I think. In that game, to me the differences, not only in score, were obvious. It seemed like Real were just far superior in basics like passing- being able to string together 20 passes in a row was nothing, but would have taken a lot for the MLS squad to do. I also noticed, like all of the big teams, Real would be on defense, then take possession right in front of their goal, and then calmly pass the ball back and forth right around the goal without fear of an interception, whereas the MLS team would immediately kick the ball to midfield in similar situations. Also the presence of Landon “Bayern Reject” Donovan on the field did not help MLS- in games against better opposition, he seems to want to act like he doesn’t care about such games, that way if he plays poorly he has an out.
Beyond the difference between Fulham and Real Madrid, one should note that these were not the same MLS squads. The side which faced Fullham was the actual “all star”, voted somehow as the best players. The team which faced Real Madrid was more of a “most famous” team, including Freddy Adu and Jaime Moreno from DCU, neither of whom was voted onto the MLS All Star team.
ShibbOleth, intimidated by Real Madrid is exactly the way I would describe it, and can’t really blame them for it, going up against Zidane, Ronaldo, Carlos, Beckham, etc. would be very intimidating for some of those MLS guys, especially as you noted, these were not MLS players with a lot of experience against European competition. I fogot who played but it definitely wasn’t McBride, Friedel, Reyna and the like.
I would rank the USA somewhere between 10 & 20 & steadliy getting better. The pipeline for players has greatly improved the last 10-15 years & the junior teams do pretty well in the international tournaments. I still believe they are 10 years away from being a legit top 10 team, but do think they will be. Another good showing at the World Cup will help nicely.
The first 2-3 years of MLS were painful to watch. The last few years have seem great improvement & I am hoping the league will stay viable for a long time. I don’t think they are out of the woods yet. Hopefully more soccer specific stadiums will help.
I think this is a little off, Wee. I suspect that the best college team ever (open to debate, but let’s say a historical Miami or some USC or Notre Dame squad) would have a 0-1% chance of beating the Suckaneers of the 1980’s (Tampa Bay), which I consider some of the worst ever. The gap is there, it’s real, and no college team would win even one game in a best-of-ten.
I think the US pipeline is getting better (at least around Chicago), but the fact that the best athletes play other sports hamstrings the sport. I played through college, and I know that our best players were not near the top of the athletic heap (compare to Football, Hoop, Baseball). It’s simply not the choice of the budding athlete.
Having said that, I do wish that there was a way to find some of those really good sub-6’ athletes and funnel them to soccer. There’s such a premium on size for most American sports…get the smaller ones in Soccer!
Having watched footie fora while, I woudl put MLS general teams in the middleof the Championship pack, with a consistently-practicing all-star squad in the middle of the Premier…really!
Interestingly, the New England Revolution, arguably the best MLS team last year (though they lost in the final 1-0) just got beaten by Boston College the other day 3-1 in a scrimmage. Admittedly, they were missing some top players, but still. But soccer’s funny that way – more so than football (NFL-type), I’d guess.
So true, in soccer, on any given day any team can beat (or at least tie) any other. In last years FA Cup Man U. drew with non-league Exeter I believe. Greece, with only one moderate “star” (Stelios) won Euro 2004, beating among others, a French team featuring Henry, Zidane, Trezeguet, Barthez, Lizarazu, etc. Especially in friendlies or exhibitions. Say an MLS squad does beat Chelsea in an upcoming match- would Chelsea really have any motivation to extend effort in such a game, when they have the league and Europe upcoming? The may get chided for a poor display, but no one would really think “oh the LA Galaxy is better than Chelsea” except some clueless Yanks.
