Quote:
Originally Posted by bravos1
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>"
I mean if you were trying to make the LolEuros look reasonable by comparison, what would be doing differently?
Quote:
Originally Posted by BAIDS
citing friendlies = citing nfl preseason results. i mean, literally the same thing. stop.
Not totally analogous, but much closer to right than weighting them the same as competitive matches. Certainly a 2011 friendly (well before players are really jockeying to "get on the plane" as they say) between two countries with no real history doesn't tend to mean a whole lot.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PlzBeALevel
Yeah 1994 they were at home. I threw that one out, always a huge boost.
Also advanced in 3rd place in their group if memory serves. Not to mention needed an OG so catastrophic they literally killed a guy for it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lars1
USA are probably around the level of the likes of Scotland and Iceland. Would rarely qualify for the world cup if in europe.
Too far.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nutshot2
marty, what makes you think your vote matters?
Quote:
Originally Posted by DWetzel
To some degree, but if those teams like Slovenia (who are like exactly the 2010 version of these teams we're debating about) are better, why don't they get better results? Why can't they beat inferior teams like the US, or at least have significant creation advantages against them?
This is where you're wrong, Slovenia is another tier down from the Croatia/Ukraine/Bosnia level teams.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BAIDS
i mean you're citing results from '94 and 2002 as if they show some long term pattern of overachievement relative to roster strength, and then introducing concepts like wim and team chemistry to explain it. if 4-5-10 is overachievement then america is much more lol than anyone could have reasonably expected.
If you look at the relevant rosters from '94 to 2002, I'd argue that we DID outperform our talent level.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BobboFitos
Boom, headshot
You're still on probation for Jozy Altidore.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BobboFitos
Biggest issue is friendlies shouldn't be completely discounted. It's still a game, it's still a game teams try to win, and it's still a game teams try to win with some mixture of A level players.
SPR weights it reasonably; if we remove all friendlies, we really don't have enough meat. It's additional info, and info that has value.
Regardless, it's a weird criticism of the USA that "they crush friendlies". Uh, that's much better than the alternative!
It's not a weird criticism if you are arguing that ELO or some other results-based metric overrates them.
Last edited by sethypooh21; 10-21-2013 at 07:56 PM.