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On December 02 2022 08:43 Stratos_speAr wrote:
This team will go nowhere and will embarass themselves at home in 2024 if they keep him around. Flick and the older generation (e.g. Neuer, Gundogan, Muller, etc.) all need to go. Start completely new. Start completely fresh. Build around younger players like Moukoko and Musiala. There may be some growing pains but it's better than the apathetic crap we've been stuck with for a solid 6 years.
Looks like they used up all their WC luck on that 7-1 clobbering of Brazil. Ever since that game, they had to really labor for a win at the WC at best.
2014 Final - W in OT
2018 - L, W (at the last second), L, out early
2022 - L, D, W (at the last 5 min), out early
It's crazy. Out of nearly 700 minutes of playing time since that 7-1, Germany had the lead for like 55 minutes at the WC since then?
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On December 02 2022 11:30 evilfatsh1t wrote:
yeah european teams being favourites over any asian team isnt arrogance, its common sense. that doesnt mean the underdog will never win; thats why we love football. but the expectation to win is always greater on the european teams and its rightly so. on paper spain and germany should never have lost to japan. the stats are all greatly in favour of spain and germany also. but in reality shit happens and often times underdogs play with more organisation, desire and heart and in football thats usually what matters.
anyways im excited for tonights games. im hoping korea pulls off another miracle against portugal 2002 style and suarez does another handball to knock ghana out. if i cant get the former then ill definitely settle for the latter. just imagining the scenes if ghana gets knocked out by uruguay again due to another deliberate handball is hilarious
Yes I don't see how it's arrogance. Let's not forget that Japan got completely outclassed by Germany in the first half and by Spain for most of the game. I'm happy for Japan but they were also lucky to win both of the games.
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Yeah scoring 4 goals and having chances to score more against both Germany and Spain in group stages is not luck anymore. It's class.
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Norway28675 Posts
Group F is proof of how much luck and coincidence there is in football, not that Japan is as good as / better than Spain or Germany. Japan was unlucky vs Costa Rica and should've won that game, but they were lucky vs Spain and Germany and should have lost both. 
![[image loading]](https://gfx.nrk.no/5mUEU1hsUvXMoMFBZbIQlgmSwnwGsES47D3J5iBd6Gyw.png)
If this ball is what, 2 millimeters more outside, Germany stays in. All of this is a big part of the magic and allure of football, and why low-scoring sports are more exiting than high scoring sports.
It's not like people are saying that Japan is bad, just that they're not as good as Spain or Germany. They're a fine team. Belgium on their end was lucky to not lose against Canada, but won. Yesterday however, they were massively unlucky for Lukaku to squander all his chances. That shot in the post is a coinflip. (Similarly they avoided conceding a penalty from an offside that was called by less than a centimeter. Also luck.) Tbh, of every World Cup I've seen (that is, every one since 1990) I think only Brazil in 2002 was clearly the best team and not in real danger of being knocked out at any point. Maybe you can make the case for France last WC, but they too struggled against Argentina in the ro16. Aside from those, they all win penalty shootouts, or on overtime, or with some clutch late goal, and there are some shots that go in that easily couldve gone out and some shots that go out that easily could've gone in.
In league play there are some teams that are so good at minimizing the role of luck that they manage to be truly dominant, but nation team football does not give them same opportunity to gel tactics over hundreds or thousands of hours. Championships are fantastically entertaining - but bo1 matchups primarily deliver in terms of entertainment - not in terms of necessarily determining who the best team is.
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On December 02 2022 15:22 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2022 11:30 evilfatsh1t wrote:
yeah european teams being favourites over any asian team isnt arrogance, its common sense. that doesnt mean the underdog will never win; thats why we love football. but the expectation to win is always greater on the european teams and its rightly so. on paper spain and germany should never have lost to japan. the stats are all greatly in favour of spain and germany also. but in reality shit happens and often times underdogs play with more organisation, desire and heart and in football thats usually what matters.
anyways im excited for tonights games. im hoping korea pulls off another miracle against portugal 2002 style and suarez does another handball to knock ghana out. if i cant get the former then ill definitely settle for the latter. just imagining the scenes if ghana gets knocked out by uruguay again due to another deliberate handball is hilarious Yes I don't see how it's arrogance. Let's not forget that Japan got completely outclassed by Germany in the first half and by Spain for most of the game. I'm happy for Japan but they were also lucky to win both of the games.
Well Japan and Costa Rice were certainly a class above Germany and Spain when it comes to shot-to-goal efficiency 
Also, saying that "if that ball was out, then Germany goes through" would have been correct if that goal occurred at the end of the game. Japan only began turtling after they were in the 2-1 lead. If that ball was out, they would have pushed for the 2nd goal regardless, and probably gotten it given how prone to mistake Spain's defense was today. From what I can recall, Unai Simon single handedly almost lost the ball at least 3 or 2 times to Maeda in the 1st half.
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How is Germany a better team if Japan performed better than them in more difficult groups in two world cups in a row?
Isnt consistency proof of who is better?
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On December 02 2022 16:11 Liquid`Drone wrote:Group F is proof of how much luck and coincidence there is in football, not that Japan is as good as / better than Spain or Germany. Japan was unlucky vs Costa Rica and should've won that game, but they were lucky vs Spain and Germany and should have lost both.
Maybe Germany, but not against Spain. I don't remember Spain creating any real scoring chances after Morata's goal apart from one 1v1 with the goalkeeper near the end of the game.
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On December 02 2022 16:28 sharkie wrote:
How is Germany a better team if Japan performed better than them in more difficult groups in two world cups in a row?
Isnt consistency proof of who is better?
The only way Japan was in a 'harder' group than Germany this world cup is if you start from the position that Germany is the better team than Japan.
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Norway28675 Posts
On December 02 2022 16:38 don_kyuhote wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2022 16:11 Liquid`Drone wrote:Group F is proof of how much luck and coincidence there is in football, not that Japan is as good as / better than Spain or Germany. Japan was unlucky vs Costa Rica and should've won that game, but they were lucky vs Spain and Germany and should have lost both. Maybe Germany, but not against Spain. I don't remember Spain creating any real scoring chances after Morata's goal apart from one 1v1 with the goalkeeper near the end of the game.
Fair, looking at xG it's 0.95 for Japan 1.14 for Spain, so 1-1 would've been most reasonable. That'd see Germany advancing!
Germany Japan was 3.7 vs 2, Spain vs Germany was 0.78 vs 1.26. So Germany has a) poor strikers b) some bad luck c) ran into good gks.
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Today the interesting thing is that every team can still qualify for the next round. SK and Cameroon have tough matches but might still pull off a Japan against more relaxed Portugal and Brazil, and then you have very tight matches in Serbia vs Switzerland and Ghana vs Uruguay.
I hope FSantos mixes up the team to let some players rest and we get to see Vitinha, Matheus Nunes, António Silva, Rafael Leão, Gonçalo Ramos and Diogo Dalot, all of which are surely part of the future of the NT.
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Northern Ireland25507 Posts
On December 02 2022 10:50 aseq wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2022 10:24 Acrofales wrote:On December 02 2022 09:13 WombaT wrote:On December 02 2022 08:41 RowdierBob wrote:
There’s def a bit of elitism that comes from South America and Europe. As an Aus fan it’s def there also when we play teams from those areas. Not sure if it’s arrogance but there’s this expectation we’re not very good and they shouldn’t lose to us. Suspect it may be a bit the same with Japan. Youse are alright, there’s plenty of other decent sides. Sometimes the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts or, a team can have been together so long they kind of have the patterns of play and coaching sorted out. But I mean broad brushing most of the top European sides have players who are starters for teams in the big Euro league So does Japan... https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Japan_national_football_team#Current_squad Yeah, a couple. Like 3 (Tomiyasu, Minamino, maybe Yoshida)? A squad like France's consists of 25 players who are all better than everyone except those top 3. As we're seeing right know, that doesn't mean a lot in terms of results, but the difference is clear.
I mean, yeah. France’s depth is so absurd one can forget that this is a squad without Pogba, Kante and the reigning Ballon D’Or in Benzema
The beauty of football is that a well-drilled unit can overcome a more talented side on paper, or indeed on any particular night a team can ride its luck
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Northern Ireland25507 Posts
On December 02 2022 16:11 Liquid`Drone wrote:Group F is proof of how much luck and coincidence there is in football, not that Japan is as good as / better than Spain or Germany. Japan was unlucky vs Costa Rica and should've won that game, but they were lucky vs Spain and Germany and should have lost both. If this ball is what, 2 millimeters more outside, Germany stays in. All of this is a big part of the magic and allure of football, and why low-scoring sports are more exiting than high scoring sports. It's not like people are saying that Japan is bad, just that they're not as good as Spain or Germany. They're a fine team. Belgium on their end was lucky to not lose against Canada, but won. Yesterday however, they were massively unlucky for Lukaku to squander all his chances. That shot in the post is a coinflip. (Similarly they avoided conceding a penalty from an offside that was called by less than a centimeter. Also luck.) Tbh, of every World Cup I've seen (that is, every one since 1990) I think only Brazil in 2002 was clearly the best team and not in real danger of being knocked out at any point. Maybe you can make the case for France last WC, but they too struggled against Argentina in the ro16. Aside from those, they all win penalty shootouts, or on overtime, or with some clutch late goal, and there are some shots that go in that easily couldve gone out and some shots that go out that easily could've gone in. In league play there are some teams that are so good at minimizing the role of luck that they manage to be truly dominant, but nation team football does not give them same opportunity to gel tactics over hundreds or thousands of hours. Championships are fantastically entertaining - but bo1 matchups primarily deliver in terms of entertainment - not in terms of necessarily determining who the best team is.
France battered Argentina in 2018, one of the most one-sided 4-3s I’ve seen. Maybe Spain’s golden side, but generally most winners come from a pool of ‘good enough to win it, not clearly outstanding ahead of everyone’ kind of category.
But yeah football more than most sports is one where the better team doesn’t always take home the match. It’s why it’s (relatively) hard to bet on, and quite resistant to a full-blown analytics approach.
Why we all love it despite its many flaws! It’s a 4 year cycle leading up to a World Cup, injuries can happen, fortunes can change. One bad game at any stage can send you home.
Hell we don’t even necessarily have the best teams right now at the WC, given how long qualification takes, or is structured. The African Nation’s Cup finalists had to eliminate each other to get here. Or perhaps a Norway could have made it if we’d started qualification at a different time given how their own ‘golden generation’ is shaping up
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On December 02 2022 20:31 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2022 10:50 aseq wrote:On December 02 2022 10:24 Acrofales wrote:On December 02 2022 09:13 WombaT wrote:On December 02 2022 08:41 RowdierBob wrote:
There’s def a bit of elitism that comes from South America and Europe. As an Aus fan it’s def there also when we play teams from those areas. Not sure if it’s arrogance but there’s this expectation we’re not very good and they shouldn’t lose to us. Suspect it may be a bit the same with Japan. Youse are alright, there’s plenty of other decent sides. Sometimes the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts or, a team can have been together so long they kind of have the patterns of play and coaching sorted out. But I mean broad brushing most of the top European sides have players who are starters for teams in the big Euro league So does Japan... https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Japan_national_football_team#Current_squad Yeah, a couple. Like 3 (Tomiyasu, Minamino, maybe Yoshida)? A squad like France's consists of 25 players who are all better than everyone except those top 3. As we're seeing right know, that doesn't mean a lot in terms of results, but the difference is clear. I mean, yeah. France’s depth is so absurd one can forget that this is a squad without Pogba, Kante and the reigning Ballon D’Or in Benzema The beauty of football is that a well-drilled unit can overcome a more talented side on paper, or indeed on any particular night a team can ride its luck
better than most yes, i dunno about absurd. like after benzema, they got.... giroud. after varane at CB, who do they got?
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On December 02 2022 20:52 zev318 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2022 20:31 WombaT wrote:On December 02 2022 10:50 aseq wrote:On December 02 2022 10:24 Acrofales wrote:On December 02 2022 09:13 WombaT wrote:On December 02 2022 08:41 RowdierBob wrote:
There’s def a bit of elitism that comes from South America and Europe. As an Aus fan it’s def there also when we play teams from those areas. Not sure if it’s arrogance but there’s this expectation we’re not very good and they shouldn’t lose to us. Suspect it may be a bit the same with Japan. Youse are alright, there’s plenty of other decent sides. Sometimes the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts or, a team can have been together so long they kind of have the patterns of play and coaching sorted out. But I mean broad brushing most of the top European sides have players who are starters for teams in the big Euro league So does Japan... https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Japan_national_football_team#Current_squad Yeah, a couple. Like 3 (Tomiyasu, Minamino, maybe Yoshida)? A squad like France's consists of 25 players who are all better than everyone except those top 3. As we're seeing right know, that doesn't mean a lot in terms of results, but the difference is clear. I mean, yeah. France’s depth is so absurd one can forget that this is a squad without Pogba, Kante and the reigning Ballon D’Or in Benzema The beauty of football is that a well-drilled unit can overcome a more talented side on paper, or indeed on any particular night a team can ride its luck better than most yes, i dunno about absurd. like after benzema, they got.... giroud. after varane at CB, who do they got?
Konate, upamecano, hernandez, pavard, saliba, kounde... All of these would play for Germany over anyone apart from Rüdiger.
And for the 9 - griezmann, mbappe, giroud
Kolo muani and thuram are also not bad.
They are ridiculously stacked.
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Northern Ireland25507 Posts
They’re also missing Nkunku which I’d completely forgotten about.
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Drone sums it up best. Football is a game of skill but also luck. I'm a big supporter of Asian teams. But Japan beating both Spain and Germany in the same tournament is really a black swan event. It's too simplistic to say that the results says everything about team performance. Japan beat Spain despite having less than 20% possession. Anyone who thinks playing with only 20% possession is the winning formula against Spain and that Japan would've won more games in a series of 10 matches against Spain is seriously deluded.
In my view, teams like Poland and Croatia played far worse than Germany against similar level opposition teams in their groups. And yet, both teams were lucky enough to sneak through the group stage because their opponents were bad in finishing chances. I also don't think Japan played any far better than Tunisia, Iran or Saudi which all didn't qualify.
Football is a game of slim margins of error. Think of Roberto Baggio's horrible penalty kick miss in WC 1994 final. Or Zidane's sending-off in WC 2006 final. Top players and teams can make mistakes at any point of the tournament. An early elimination doesn't necessarily mean a team played horribly, and vice versa.
That said, I think we can all agree that Denmark and Belgium were the clear-cut underperformers this WC.
The one underdog team which has really played well and deserved their results is Morocco. It's odd that people are only raving about Japan and not Morocco.
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Also, I'm fairly certain that Spain would've taken the game against Japan more seriously if, hypothetically, finishing second meant meeting Brazil, France or peak Belgium 2018 in the round of 16. I wouldn't go as far as believing that they were deliberately 'tanking' to eliminate Germany or avoiding Croatia though.
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On December 02 2022 14:47 don_kyuhote wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2022 08:43 Stratos_speAr wrote:
This team will go nowhere and will embarass themselves at home in 2024 if they keep him around. Flick and the older generation (e.g. Neuer, Gundogan, Muller, etc.) all need to go. Start completely new. Start completely fresh. Build around younger players like Moukoko and Musiala. There may be some growing pains but it's better than the apathetic crap we've been stuck with for a solid 6 years.
Looks like they used up all their WC luck on that 7-1 clobbering of Brazil. Ever since that game, they had to really labor for a win at the WC at best. 2014 Final - W in OT 2018 - L, W (at the last second), L, out early 2022 - L, D, W (at the last 5 min), out early It's crazy. Out of nearly 700 minutes of playing time since that 7-1, Germany had the lead for like 55 minutes at the WC since then?
2016 Euro's was alright, but everything since then has been bad.
They got trounced in the first season of the Nation's League and have been a non-factor in that competition since then.
They backed into the knockouts of EURO20 and then get bounced in the RO16.
And of course two group stage exits from the WC with a total record of 2-1-3.
This has really been an absolutely awful 6 years for this team. I think they need to move onto something like this lineup, including a complete coaching overhaul as well:
Moukoko
Wirtz/Musiala/Sane
Goretzka/Kimmich
Raum/Schlotterbeck/Sule/Klostermann(??)
Ter Stegen
Werner/Havertz/Brandt/Gnabry would make up some solid depth. Add a bunch of youth prospects/role players to round out the bench.
I think that lineup would be better than anything we showed at this tournament, and with the time for players like Moukoko, Wirtz, Havertz, and Schlotti to develop, it would only be better at EURO24. If my Googling was correct, this would also mean that the only player 30+ years old starting would be Ter Stegen and almost no one from the WC-winning squad would be left. I honestly think this is needed; it would inject much-needed hunger, creativity, and pace into the squad.
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I honestly think South Korea wins here. I don't expect Portugal to let up, though, because if Ghana wins and they lose, I'm 99% sure they face Brazil first round and go home, but I think Son will deliver
Uruguay vs Ghana is going to be incredible. I expect it to be intense and violent. It'll be the most hype match of this WC group stage
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On December 02 2022 22:20 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2022 14:47 don_kyuhote wrote:On December 02 2022 08:43 Stratos_speAr wrote:
This team will go nowhere and will embarass themselves at home in 2024 if they keep him around. Flick and the older generation (e.g. Neuer, Gundogan, Muller, etc.) all need to go. Start completely new. Start completely fresh. Build around younger players like Moukoko and Musiala. There may be some growing pains but it's better than the apathetic crap we've been stuck with for a solid 6 years.
Looks like they used up all their WC luck on that 7-1 clobbering of Brazil. Ever since that game, they had to really labor for a win at the WC at best. 2014 Final - W in OT 2018 - L, W (at the last second), L, out early 2022 - L, D, W (at the last 5 min), out early It's crazy. Out of nearly 700 minutes of playing time since that 7-1, Germany had the lead for like 55 minutes at the WC since then? 2016 Euro's was alright, but everything since then has been bad. They got trounced in the first season of the Nation's League and have been a non-factor in that competition since then. They backed into the knockouts of EURO20 and then get bounced in the RO16. And of course two group stage exits from the WC with a total record of 2-1-3. This has really been an absolutely awful 6 years for this team. I think they need to move onto something like this lineup, including a complete coaching overhaul as well: Moukoko Wirtz/Musiala/Sane Goretzka/Kimmich Raum/Schlotterbeck/Sule/Klostermann(??) Ter Stegen Werner/Havertz/Brandt/Gnabry would make up some solid depth. Add a bunch of youth prospects/role players to round out the bench. I think that lineup would be better than anything we showed at this tournament, and with the time for players like Moukoko, Wirtz, Havertz, and Schlotti to develop, it would only be better at EURO24. If my Googling was correct, this would also mean that the only player 30+ years old starting would be Ter Stegen and almost no one from the WC-winning squad would be left. I honestly think this is needed; it would inject much-needed hunger, creativity, and pace into the squad.
I agree with the offense part mostly. Depends a lot on how good moukoku will turn out to be. The players you put in the defense are the ones that have been playing a lot this wc and are simply not good enough though. They would have to improve a lot. And Brandt should not play a role in anyones plans for the future...
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EPT
