No. Thank you and drive through.

Beyond that, USA and Mexico send B squads, everyone else not so much. ACN is simply a far more competitive tournament, with (eye test) football of a far higher standard than the gold cup. Arguing otherwise makes TuT look far less ridiculous when he prattles on about US slappys.

And case in point I scroll a few posts down and see someone using Cote d'Ivoire's 2006 results to prove.... something. Who cares what? The idea that a sample of WCQ games from 2006 and 2010 proves anything is so laughable that people making that kind of argument should have all their posts in poker threads accompanied by a disclaimer.

Its evidence that rosta is more important, on rosta IC>USA.

The idea that USA might be able to leverage better organisation is about the only reasonable thing said pro USA so far.

Also lol at reducing the completely reasonable assumption of USA losing more than 2-1 to Argentina and Netherlands to Blah blah blah, that really helps me to conclude you are being detached and objective.

This.

That was in reply to other posters using those data points.

My point is that the most reasonable prediction of team quality is looking at roster, which your post support by extension. 2006/10 came up with other posters trying to assert that results are important.

Yet QPR got relegated. Wasn't their roster sufficiently reasonable for a PL team? Definitely looked like they had sufficient talent on the roster to stay up.

Because a result/assumption about 2006 is relevant to 2013 how?

"lso lol at reducing the completely reasonable assumption of USA losing more than 2-1 to Argentina"

1999: US 1 - 0 Argentina
2003: US 0 - 1 Argentina
2008: US 0 - 0 Argentina
2011: US 1 - 1 Argentina

Completely reasonable, eh?

Yea completely and utterly reasonable to anyone who is not a clueless window licker.

Friendly matches are friendly. (that said, the 2011 result is not totally unimpressive as that was against a more or less full strength Argentina side with Messi, Di Maria, etc playing)

Sort-by-roster-rank-teams (TM)

Far superior than "sort by Friendly results"

That said, I'm glad the NFL added additional playoff slots for teams that go undefeated in preseason.

To be fair, I have never said the US is anywhere near Argentina's level or even in the top-10.

Just that acting like it's a foregone conclusion that we'd get roasted by Mess & Co. is a little off base.

It's not a foregone conclusion, but we'd be massive dogs. EV of maybe 6 points from 10 matches (1 win, 3 draws), and that might be being generous

Can't go wrong with the "I think the other team's players are better therefore they're better, don't look at actual games and stuff!" argument from someone bitching about people not looking at substantive reasoning.

hey oafk

cool it with the implied name calling and personal attacks. actually, i'd love to ban you and all the rest of the loleuros in this thread, so keep it up.

Also can't go wrong with the "the other teams were never trying in friendlies (but apparently the US were going all out in all of them!)" approach.

I dont know apparently friendly results 4 meaningless friendlies in 1999,2003 and 2008 count for lots. As I already said those data points were brought up in a reply to an earlier reference to them.

As regards QPR, there are tons of counters to that point, and and non shallow analysis of the roster would show problems at QPR, but the important thing is, and I cant believe I am having to explain this to a poker player, is that we are talking about best way to make a reasonable prediction, not a perfect one.

Using previous results looks extremely flawed as I and AKQJ10 have both pointed out.

Rosta looks like the best shot of predicting general effectiveness of a team,and then as I have already said its not difficult or unwanted to factor in elements like FA organisation or Coach incompetence.

Given I have been called names numerous times upto now I thought it was cool. If its one rule for USA posters and one rule for Euro's I am totally fine with that, just let me know though.

Not used to seeing homertarding outside of game threads, but then someone argues that the US isn't conclusively much worse than Argentina and here we are.

dont know, i've stopped reading this thread since it's a pile of steaming aids now, but someone reported your post so i looked.

Yes but I have actually used substantive reasoning as why you cant look at games and stuff in earlier posts, and no one has really come back at it.

There are just not enough international games to create anything close to reasonable sample size, especially across federations.

SO after reading the past few days, let me summarize everything

1. US has crappy no-talent players up and down their squad
2. Oodles and oodles of teams have far greater talent across the board
3. With said crappy talent, the US end up with results which outperform the individual talents on the team
4. Most of these other teams fail to post any halfway decent results and far under perform even though they are loaded talent wise

So because of 1 and 3 alond w/ 2 and 4, all of the Euros have sandy vaginas?

I guess it really is nothing more than "LOL <Random European/African country>"

But it's still loads better than "because I said so", which is essentially your side of the argument, and it's also completely laughable that you're completely dismissing the data points you DO have available.

Saying "there isn't enough international games to provide sample size" doesn't mean you get to completely ignore the data points that are available -- and it basically comes back to "European teams are better because I think they're better" (because, obviously, you don't have enough data points to support YOUR conclusion either, right?)

That summary is a great work of fiction, do you write professionally? If not consider it imo.

Because I said so is so far from my argument I assume you just dont understand it. Looking at the players on a teams squad is not because I said so.

Also LOL at euro teams are better, its not geographic, posters are claiming that USA is ~12 in the world, based purely on rosta, that is a hard claim to make and those rostas I put ahead of USA are not just from europe.

You probably think the Ivory Coast is in Europe though.