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!

GOATshot

ask me in 2014

You'd laugh hysterically if someone told you to include preseason basketball games in one of your ranking models. It's literally the exact same thing. They are 150,000% meaningless.

lol, troll harder

Do you think the current US team is better or worse than 2010 then?

I'd also laugh hysterically if the BCS ranked teams by Al Davis's draft projections.

I started reading this thread then I threw up in my mouth a little.

I'll check back in a few days to see if I can stomach it again.

Re your edit.

Dont worry, someone whos whole argument is quality of players irrelevant we won a friendly in 94 does not need to be kind to me. Do your worst.

I'm with you completely

Jesus, this thread got AIDSy in the past 24 hours.

Wrong wrong wrong

lol you, that's not the argument and you know it

I mean, please give me a detailed breakdown of the US midfield roster since you clearly know how good or bad they are

Oh wait you don't even know who they play for, therefore you've never really watched them, therefore you don't have a ****ing clue

I mean if you were trying to make the LolEuros look reasonable by comparison, what would be doing differently?

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.

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.

Too far.



This is where you're wrong, Slovenia is another tier down from the Croatia/Ukraine/Bosnia level teams.

If you look at the relevant rosters from '94 to 2002, I'd argue that we DID outperform our talent level.

You're still on probation for Jozy Altidore.

It's not a weird criticism if you are arguing that ELO or some other results-based metric overrates them.

Question for my fellow Americans, how many of you would take an even money bet that we advance to R16, right now before seeing the draw/playoff results? (And actually I think the playoffs still to go improves our equity somewhat because of the possibility of any of the 4 'better' european squads losing as well as Tunisia or Ethiopia possibly beating out Nigeria or Cameroon)

I think you'd be misguided to take that bet, even ignoring the time value of money.

Dwetzel I guarantee you anyone posting itt knows a lot more about the American team than you have any iota of a clue about any of the other teams you've brought up as a comparison.

On phone Seth's, but Slovenia 2010 (not Slovenia 2013) is what I was referring to, if it wasn't obvious.

No way I take us at evens, think it's lighting money on fire. Chance of an extraordinarily difficult draw are much too high with the likely potting procedures. And even best case scenario don't make us prohibitive favorites. Problem of course, is the teams in the tournament that we're clearly, obviously, irrefutably, and significantly better than (like Mexico, NZ, Honduras, Australia, Iran, etc.) are teams we can't draw.

If however, they did a completely blind, random draw I'd probably take it.

ofc none of us would make that bet, what made you think anyone was arguing that? pots are massively stacked against CONCACAF. We will probably be one of the best 16 teams in the tourney, but most likely to be in the hardest group.

There are already at least 10 and probably 12 teams better than us before we add in Uruguay (just guessing), and the UEFA/CAF playoff winners.

Point conceded, but I'm not the one pretending to be a super elite expert on ROSTERS despite not knowing **** about most of the rosters.

which is like 17th assuming the better teams win all the playoffs. Which is unlikely to happen? I mean not going to nit over exact placement, point was we're about 50/50 to make it given a snake or random draw, which this isn't.

So will you accept it from a USA fan that watches all our matches, a fair amount of MLS and a ton of Euro soccer, that you are massively overrating our roster if you think that player by player comparisons are favorable to us vs. the midlevel Euro sides?

As I said above, we have a big advantage in that since we always qualify for stuff, our top players basically always play because they don't feel like its a waste of time, which you can't always say for many of the countries we're talking about (though that's also a double-edged sword in that we've never produced any one good enough to be a prima donna and get away with it at the top level, a la Zlatan or even Adebayor.)

more like 20th-22nd, we'd probably better than Romania/Greece, but either Sweden/Portugal and France and possibly Croatia of the Euros are better. Uruguay, Nigeria and Ghana I'd take over us without much thought. IC probably over us, and though I don't know a ton about the current Cameroon squad, based on the players I do know and the clubs represented, hard not to take them as well.

Yeah and Slovenia 2010 was a notch down from the teams we're talking about.