But for example Uruguay and England. Or Japan and Spain or Australia and Brazil who do they root for.

What a strange question.

If your country isn't playing, you don't all have to follow the same alternative.


Everyone is different.
Your club side might have a player in another team, so you support them.
You might like the kit of another team, so you support them.
You might want an underdog to do well, so you support them.
You might've been on holiday somewhere, so you might support them.

The list is endless.

Nah. Not strange. In Brazil they favored the Latin American sides and Portugal and Italy.

If it was in the US we would favor the Europeans.

But in Russia? I have no clue. Is it a more Eastern European lean? All of Europe? Asia?

I would imagine quite a few would support Brazil as quite a few Brazilians played club football in Russia, but as I say, there isn't a hive mind.

You say the US would favour the Europeans. That's hardly narrowing it down though, is it. That's a third of the field.

As with all World Cups, there will be a split.
If a team is based in a certain area, they will get the support of those particular locals.

There are no rules for this, you know.

Elo is not an acronym.

Ah, I see. It's a bloke who died 25 years ago, long before his idea was taken, twisted and applied to football.

It's another xG then, is it? Another attempt from Americans to assess something without any actual knowledge.

I repeat. It rates England as 7th. It's clearly bollocks.

England have lost five competitive matches in nine years. Any data based system is likely to rank them pretty highly...

fat bloke at the pub says it's bollocks tho

England #7 seems pretty reasonable to me.

And in those nine years of competitive matches the best they've beaten are Wales, Switzerland or Poland. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Not to mention the draws against Algeria, Slovakia etc.

the teams behind England are

Colombia
Belgium
Italy
Netherlands
Peru
etc

where do ppl think they should be ranked? 9th? 10th? is this what we're griping about?
where does der markt have them?

The market is never a good measure. A lot money gets bet on England, skewing the prices.

All those countries you listed are better than us, btw.

and therefore is bollocks.

Irrespective of how the draw goes, we will struggle to get out of our group. The 7th best team in the world should not have that problem.
Maybe fat bloke in the pub knows a lot more than he gets credit for by young bloke down the lab.

There's a fat bloke who drinks in my pub who played over 200 top flight matches and won the FA Cup.

and he's probably a complete ****ing idiot

He is, but I'd trust his opinion on football over anyone ITT.

how the **** are we 7. goat and ronaldo aside we have the best striker, best #10 and best midfielder in world football, should be at least about 4

ITT blokes who are super rich betting against dumb English punters.

I'm at the point where Euros eurosplaining football makes me cringe more than boorish americans trying to tell me how LeBron would be the GOAT GK and Allan Iverson the GOAT midfielder

That's true but OTOH they beat all four Euro 2016 semi-finalists within a year of Euro 2016. Qualified unbeaten for Euro 2016 & WC 2018. Coming off draws with the top two ranked sides in the world. 1 **** performance v. Iceland & a bunch of run bad doesn't mean England aren't a good team.

Portugal finished third in a group with ****ing Austria, Hungary & Iceland at Euro 2016! There'd be a LOL Ronaldo thread if it was any other recent World Cup or Euros. This time 3rd place gave them a super easy route to the final. A refereeing gift gave them the win v. Croatia (rather than a penalty shoot out), they beat Poland on a penalty shoot out (luck), got a soft semi-final v. Wales and then won v. France. Suddenly they're a great team? GTFO.

England is the most underrated team in 2+2. The idea that Peru are better than them is ridiculous.

The problem with England is mental. They have a higher chance of choking than the other strong sides but their ceiling is quite high. They are strong on every position and have world class talent in some.
Sure they are not top 5 material. But they are top 10 for sure. The problem is that they are compared to the likes of Germany , Spain or France but outside that big 3 they are comfortably one of the best sides of the second European tier.
They are clearly better than Peru, probably better than Colombia , at the level of Uruguay. Worse than Argentina, Brazil.
(My opinion on South American teams that Colombia is weaker than in 2014. Brazil obviously much stronger , Uruguay stronger. Perú are probably the worse sea level team to qualify in years from Conmebol. They seem to me that they are below the pot 2 European teams and at the level of the pot 3 teams from Europe.

Saying England is **** is a thing.
Basically people from England say it because of frustration for basically never winning anything.
People from other places say it because its fun.

Are their actually Trumpian Yanklandians itt criticising english people for overrating their national football team?

That is the pot calling the kettle source of infinite darkness.

Actually no not a single one that I see. One Brit and one Canadian

Yes