Men's Soccer (Football) Thread Soccer • Page 256

You can take Martinez away from the team, but you can't take Martinez out of the team.

 

aren’t they third in the world? Also, the past decade of hearing all about this golden generation that hasn’t won anything. Not to mention felaini needed a haircut for so damn long

 

lol at Doku holding the ball too much again and it coming back to bite him big time

 

Rom was in miles of space, Trossard!

 

Reminder that the US was ranked 4th heading into the 2006 WC and even though FIFA ranks are a bit more accurate they genuinely don’t mean or reflect anything legitimate. Speaking of Belgium, I would say anyone with a bit of common sense would tell you their last real chance of winning something was probably WC 2018.

 

To be fair to them, you don’t get many chances to actually win something as a nation. Especially given how competitive the Euros are.

You basically get about four tournaments with a “golden generation” at their peak, and need to hope giants like France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, maybe England, all have a bad tournament. And that is just European nations.

Also, before this generation Belgium weren’t even regularly qualifying for tournaments iirc.

 

Yea but you have to go off of some ranking to have comparative convos about chances and FIFA is what we have for this tourney. They ranked BEL 3rd.

 

No peak Verthongen (benched), Alderweireld, Kompany or Vermaelen doesn't help matters.

 

That would’ve been early contender for goal of the tournament

 

Lukaku is a strange player. I never know how to rate him.

 

as someone who always chose BEL when playing FIFA back in the day, I know all of those names

 

I greatly miss peak Jan and Toby

 

Dubravka’s crazy bold goalkeeping is really throwing off BEL in the best way

 

Polite reminder that Lukaku earns roughly 17m per year.

 

Doku’s teammates are about to run riot in locker room on his ball hogging

 

Had to go shop in the middle of this half so stuck Five Live on.

there was a commentator who was so cringey, so awful, I had to stop.

Of course I then find out it was Chris Sutton.

 

Respectfully if you’re going off of rankings that have Belgium third, you’re just being lead astray. If you really want to have informed conversation about who is most likely to win amongst the contenders, I would suggest just reading proper tournament previews from respected journos or even youtubers who know their stuff have been good for such things. FIFA rankings have been notoriously laughable for the couple of decades i’ve been following the sport.

 

I hope the lovely Jules Breach got a big bag for having to sit on a panel with Alexi Lalas for a month

 

Just realised I've got Slovakia in the sweepstake - been cheering on the wrong team the whole first half!

 

Onana is lethal in that area. If he signs for Arsenal, heaven help the league.

EDIT: offside anyways.

 

This is wild

 

I wouldn’t put much stock in the rankings, they can be gamed as we saw with Wales, who as good as they were at the time weren’t the third best team in the world. This Belgium side just has so many holes. Despite having De Bryune their midfield doesn’t create enough. The defence just isn’t very good, and they’ve left their only great keeper at home.

 

Wasn't there a more accurate rankings site which was used by us way back in the AP days? I remember a site which takes into account the opposition teams face before moving up or down in the rankings.

 

Ended his euros in less than 45 minutes.

 

https://eloratings.net/

This, probably?