England being somewhere between 6th and 10th seems like a reasonable assessment of our talents. Markets have us 7th favourites for the World Cup. We are a 19/1 shot, which I assume means that a bullish BAIDS will be selling a kidney to get money on at such a welcoming price.

What about people saying it because it’s true?

It's only true if you think there's only ~5 non-**** teams in international football. In which case it's your standards that need adjusting.

The only team ranked below them on the Elo list they are worse than is Belgium imo. Who are now becoming quite underrated themselves due to recent major tournament chokes.

England doesn't even look good on paper. They don't have a single player I'd want on my club team. Most overrated team of all.

Imagine this league:
Spain
Brazil
Belgium
Argentina
Holland
Germany
France
England
Portugal
Italy

Would England win more than one game?

Home and away? Of course they would.

replace italy and holland w/ sweden pls

Is this serious?

Belgium/England are the two teams that I wouldn't be surprised if they beat France or if they lost against Senegal.

Who do you support?

estefaniocurry is an amazing poster. I suggest people look up his posts.

The one about roundabouts is a favourite of mine.

how is Mexico not on this list but Belgium, Holland, England, and Italy are?

Of course not, even a team of small children can beat the Netherlands home and away, which is why I think the FA has arranged a friendly in Amsterdam for next year

Ask yourself would Belgium, Holland, England or Italy lose 7-0 to Chile in an international tournament and you have your answer

No team underperforms like England, to the point where its not an intangible narrative fat bloke in pubism.

The problem is when you point this out you are accused of over rating England.

That is the narrative tho, by underperforming, I dont mean actually win anything lol lol lol, I mean beat Iceland.

England underperform in the knockout games. They have only won 3 of those since I started watching football back in 1994.
But they don't underperform in general. Their results are what you would expect from a top 10 side in the qualifiers and group stages.

Chile were cruising to qualification before deciding to get 0 points and -4GD from games against Paraguay and Bolivia. That is epic underachieving , losing a knockout tie against a legit top 25 team is not as horrible as you put it.
The fact that Iceland has 300k people made it look much worse than what it really was. I mean that team is now in the pot 3 of the World Cup.

E
A
S
Y

USAno1 and he expects them to top their qualifying group and progress from their WC groups EVERY time.

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Link please OAFK.

"esto no es la copa de oro , esto es la copa america , en la copa america, ay jugadores como estos, en la copa america, tarde o temprano , te enfrentas con equipos como esto"

luckily for you cruizin , you guys arent part of conmebol

Thread has been great today. Already looking forward to some scorching takes flying once the World Cup starts, though I'd imagine there'll be fewer ideas to fix soccer this time around

We will however all agree to bemoan the new loltastic format in 2026 which will take all the last day of group play drama away from us.

i mean, it's an obv case of runbad ---> narrative

1996: lose on PKs to Germany
1998: lose on PKs to Argentina
2002: lose 2-1 to Brazil
2004: lose on PKs to Portugal
2006: lose on PKs to Portugal
2012: lose on PKs to Italy


flip a couple of those shootouts and everything is magically different

i mean, they beat Germany in 96 and all of a sudden they're playing the Czechs in the Euro final, and maybe not considered losers forever


this is technically still a poker forum, right?

we've underperformed but a pretty decent slice of it is penoluck.

most underperforming country is america not close, developed country of 350m people with high soccerball participation rate and they've never had a decent side

I'm still not sure what percentage of penalty shootout are luck and what is skill. I don't want to go there.
I mean it's obvious that losing 6 shootouts in a row is bad luck but at the same time I suppose we all agree that it's not like their equity was 3 wins from 6. ( My guess is something like 2/3 luck 1/3 skill at World Cup level).

England were legit good at euro 96 and even beat spain on penos (actually probably < spain over 120). Unfortunately gazza’s genius couldn’t geller this over the line.