Okay, I got one. Seems to be a big Dybala love-in around here so I'll dive right in. Argentina would be a better team if they dropped Dybala, moved Messi into his spot, and played Icardi at #9. If they don't do something like that they'll be eliminated very early in the WC. I don't see how they could possibly be successful with Dybala and Messi in the same team and I don't even understand why they'd try to do it.
England is way underrated when it comes to their talent. They are no less talented than a team like Belgium, yet no one will claim they could win the WC.
Olivier Giroud, Vincent Janssen, Domenico Berardi, Marcus Rashford, Andre Ayew, Kevin Strootman, Felix Passlack, Jordan Amavi, Sokratis, Alessio Romagnoli and Loris Karius Is a better group of player than Kylian Mbappe, Fabinho, Thomas Lemar, Bernardo Silva, Jemerson, Djibril Sidibe, Nabil Fekir, Kamil Glik, etc...
I'm not so sure about that TBH. Belgium to me look better at every position except at striker. Even then, Lukaku is pretty good internationally.
England has a lot more depth, I agree that Belgium has a better XI, but England's XI is really good. Very few weak links, and they got a lot of goals in that team. When you can put out a team like Pickford, Walker, Maguire, Stones, Rose, Dier, Henderson, Alli, Sterling, Rashford, Kane, you got a good side. Only weak link in there is Henderson, and he's not that bad. You could probably replace Henderson with Winks, and that might be an improvement.
OK, my hot take : If France starts Lemar/Mbappe/Dembele up front in the next 5 years, they'll win a WC. If they don't, they won't win one.
That side doesn't seem overly special to me. It's worse than the Spurs XI IMO. Belgium have world class players at nearly every position. Their depth is underrated IMO. Yannick Carrasco, a bench player, for example is better than most of the English players in the starting XI. Mertens off the bench is arguably on par with H. Kane the past 2 years. Edit: The fact that Jack Cork and Jake Livermore are getting call-ups speaks volumes, honestly.
I didn't say its overly special, but its a balanced team with depth and a lot of players who score goals. And those players you named were getting caps because like half of their regular team wasn't playing in the last set of friendlies. People act like England is the equivalent of Denmark or Sweden or teams like that, they are way better than they get credit for. And I know the results aren't there, so if you want to say they aren't good because of results, I might not even disagree, but they have talent to be a next tier side in world football.
Henderson btw hasn't been good enough this season to even be picked for England while Oxlade-Chamberlain has been good in a versatile midfield role. They are also closer to a team like Denmark than they are to Belgium. And there's where the hot take comes in. I would rather do that than force two #10's to play when it obviously makes them both worse.
I said based on talent. Based on talent, they are absolutely closer to Belgium than Denmark. Thats why I said a hot take though, everyone rags on England, but they have underrated talent.
Maybe this is another hot-take, but Sweden are definitely on par with England. Head to head they're 7-9-8 vs. them all-time. They rank closely in FIFA ranking nearly every year. I don't see England's talent right now for their senior team being anything special. Their talent lags too far behind Germany, Spain, Belgium, France Brazil, etc. Okay, they won a U-17, but so did Nigeria a couple of times the last decade. It doesn't mean too much when every youngster on that team will all be playing for different teams, styles and systems in the near future.
Not really though. I mean I guess you could say that England has four world class players. Kane, Alli, Walker, and Rose. You could say that, but I don't think I'd put Alli in that category. Belgium has Hazard, Lukaku, Alder, Vertonghen, Courtois, and de Bruyne. There's a pretty big difference there. Two of England's best players are fullbacks, which leaves them on the periphery of the game, and nobody's really good enough to defend Hazard and de Bruyne anyway.
Sure they are. Just because you make up strawmen to go to battle against doesn't mean that those strawmen are not still a figment of your imagination ;-)
I think there should be fact checking involved since Evilo tends to make things up with no proof any time he's embarrassed (the Sneijder better than Eriksen thing case in point among many, many other examples). But you guys like to just take those words and twisting of the truth at face value so... My hot takes...meh I don't really have anything off the top of my head. I know a lot of people disagree but I'll say in general people don't respect off the ball work as much as they do on the ball and that as a result players that contribute a lot in that way outside of traditional stats are highly underrated (Wijnaldum and Firmino come to mind). Firmino is a top 5 player in the PL for me.
Again, just stop posting... "Sneijder isn't the same Sneijder of 2010, but he's still a legit, quality AM. Two footed, lots of pace and a booming shot. One of only two Oranje international who consistently scores a decent grade, Janssen might be the other. He's better than Eriksen." http://hfboards.mandatory.com/threa...sion-thread-ii.2122555/page-14#post-122246089 Who's making some stuff up? Embarrassing indeed. You continue to fall flat on your face. And don't worry, people have asked me to link to all those incredible posts you made a year ago. Gold throughout the thread. So fact cheking is done. Twisting truth... LOL.
I don't know if you could embarrass yourself more if you tried. That wasn't me who posted that. Lol indeed. Swing and a miss as usual. You should take a nap old man.