Which top hockey nation has the best football team?

[Pavel Buchnevich]

Now erase 1-2 of those WC runs if you had had to qualify through UEFA and come back to me with this consistency talk.

You aren't giving us enough credit. We would regularly qualify out of UEFA.

We have performed better than those teams on a consistent basis.

 

[bleedblue1223]

Sure they are. Now you're going to tell me Wales is better than Croatia. They are useless, and anyone using them to prove a point is reaching at straws.

Wales are boosted by a clear outlier in 2015. Next year they will drop as the weighted average of that year falls.

I never said they are written in stone, just that they are much improved and generally are close to what most rankings would show.

 

[bleedblue1223]

You aren't giving us enough credit. We would regularly qualify out of UEFA.

We have performed better than those teams on a consistent basis.

You can't state that as fact. Qualifying in UEFA is more difficult than qualifying in CONCACAF.

The argument can be made that since 13 nations make it from UEFA and the US would be in the top 13, that they would still be expected to qualify, and if they truly are consistent, then they would.

 

[YNWA14]

Wales are boosted by a clear outlier in 2015. Next year they will drop as the weighted average of that year falls.

I never said they are written in stone, just that they are much improved and generally are close to what most rankings would show.

I doubt Wales will drop. I don't think they're really a fluke and their team is improving actually.

 

[bleedblue1223]

I doubt Wales will drop. I don't think they're really a fluke and their team is improving actually.

While true, they still will drop in the FIFA rankings relative to others. They had the highest rated year in 2015. Most teams tend take things down a notch after a world cup year, so that's why it's an outlier. They are still a top 20 team though that could compete with most nations on any given night.

 

[Live in the Now]

If we were in UEFA and qualified our World Cups would certainly be a lot easier. If we were Swiss anyway. Who wouldn't want to play Ecuador and Honduras in order to advance? South Korea and Togo as well. Or Albania and Romania in the Euros? Spain and Chile was a bad one, but all in all fairly irregular for the non-seeded UEFA team to have to do that. If we got in a group where we had to beat Iran and Nigeria to advance I'd laugh my balls off.

It's certainly more difficult to qualify through UEFA, but if you have a good team with an organized defense it's not that much more difficult. There were quite a few groups the US could have qualified from last time and quite a few this time. I'd certainly like our chances of making the playoff round and for other players unaccustomed to traveling so far to our continent to have to travel there. Africa has by far the hardest and most unfair qualifying btw.

 

[Live in the Now]

The answer to the question btw is Sweden. They produce the most top class footballers of the bunch, produce great hockey players, and they have some interesting players and talents post-Ibra. Their qualifying group for this WC is obviously very hard, but I don't think they'll suffer long.

Football is also more important and they finished third place at the WC as a team. The Soviet Union wasn't only Russia and the best outfield player they ever had was from Ukraine, so I don't think it would be fair to call their Euro win or Euro second place equal. They had a lot of great players people here don't really know of though, so I mean no disrespect.

 

[Jonimaus]

If we were in UEFA and qualified our World Cups would certainly be a lot easier. If we were Swiss anyway. Who wouldn't want to play Ecuador and Honduras in order to advance? South Korea and Togo as well. Or Albania and Romania in the Euros? Spain and Chile was a bad one, but all in all fairly irregular for the non-seeded UEFA team to have to do that. If we got in a group where we had to beat Iran and Nigeria to advance I'd laugh my balls off.

It's certainly more difficult to qualify through UEFA, but if you have a good team with an organized defense it's not that much more difficult. There were quite a few groups the US could have qualified from last time and quite a few this time. I'd certainly like our chances of making the playoff round and for other players unaccustomed to traveling so far to our continent to have to travel there. Africa has by far the hardest and most unfair qualifying btw.

Qualifying as the 2nd or 3rd seed (which USA should be placed in based on how good they are, though the hillarious rankings may put them wherever, I mean we had Norway in pot 1 with France in pot 2 ) in the UEFA wc qualifier can be really really tough. The best bet is to hope you get a good playoff draw after comming second in the group. You can either have a fairly easy way to the world cup, or you're 99% screwed because your group sucked. Last world cup qualifier there was a group with Spain and France in it.

There are only a few teams in UEFA who are good enough to always go through, and USA would not be one of them. They'd need the luck of the draw.

 

[Live in the Now]

Qualifying as the 2nd or 3rd seed (which USA should be placed in based on how good they are) in the UEFA wc qualifier can be really really tough. The best bet is to hope you get a good playoff draw after comming second in the group. You can either have a fairly easy way to the world cup, or you're 99% screwed because your group sucked. Last world cup qualifier there was a group with Spain and France in it.

There are only a few teams in UEFA who are good enough to always go through, and USA would not be one of them. They'd need the luck of the draw.

For sure. We'd miss some in the past and possibly the 2018 WC depending on how the qualifying draw turned out, but with our upcoming generation we'd be in a lot better shape. There are a lot of American players coming soon that should turn out really good and we've never really had this kind of talent in our youth ranks.

 

[Phil McKraken]

Switzerland by the options, but I don't think they should be. Then it's a tossup between US and Russia IMO.

US has been best historically of the group, but as of right now, that's how I see it.

Sweden is far and away the best soccer nation of this group historically.

1 Olympic gold medal
1 WC silver medal
2 WC bronze medals

The Czechs/Slovaks are second. USA might be third.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

You can't state that as fact. Qualifying in UEFA is more difficult than qualifying in CONCACAF.

The argument can be made that since 13 nations make it from UEFA and the US would be in the top 13, that they would still be expected to qualify, and if they truly are consistent, then they would.

I think a lot of people around the world look at the names of the teams that our players play for, and immediately downgrade us, despite us getting much better results than the names of the teams our players play for would indicate.

I don't know what it is. Maybe we just are more clutch, we perform better when the games matter, maybe our players play more as a team, maybe we have better coaching, maybe our players are underrated. Whatever the reason is, we get better results than all these other teams that people would say are the same tier as us. When are we not qualifying for major tournaments? All these other teams in this poll are very inconsistent with their results in these tournaments, if they even qualify. You can say we get in every time because we qualify out of CONCACAF, but CONCACAF gets less spots than UEFA. Also, CONCACAF teams have performed very well for the amount of spots the confederation gets. We put three teams in the round of 16 last time, including a QF team, despite only having 4 teams in the tournament.

Only seven teams have qualified for the round of 16 at the last two world cups, USA, Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Netherlands. Five world powers and two teams from terrible CONCACAF. Only four teams have advanced to the Round of 16 from the last 4 World Cups, Mexico, Germany, Brazil and Argentina. Three world powers and a team from terrible CONCACAF. Only 8 teams have qualified for the Round of 16 in three of the last four world cups. Argentina, Brazil, England, Germany, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, USA. Six world powers, and two teams from terrible CONCACAF.

If you think any of these teams that struggle in UEFA would dominate CONCACAF just because you look at the club teams where the players play and see that a country like Scotland or Ireland has players that play at better teams than Costa Rica or Honduras, you really don't know what you are saying.

 

[Jonimaus]

I think a lot of people around the world look at the names of the teams that our players play for, and immediately downgrade us, despite us getting much better results than the names of the teams our players play for would indicate.

I don't know what it is. Maybe we just are more clutch, we perform better when the games matter, maybe our players play more as a team, maybe we have better coaching, maybe our players are underrated. Whatever the reason is, we get better results than all these other teams that people would say are the same tier as us. When are we not qualifying for major tournaments? All these other teams in this poll are very inconsistent with their results in these tournaments, if they even qualify. You can say we get in every time because we qualify out of CONCACAF, but CONCACAF gets less spots than UEFA. Also, CONCACAF teams have performed very well for the amount of spots the confederation gets. We put three teams in the round of 16 last time, including a QF team, despite only having 4 teams in the tournament.

You have 4 spot, and those 4 spots goes to teams that are fairly good/can make some noise. 90% of the other teams would be in pot 5 and 6 in UEFA.

What would happen if we put USA in Swedens place in our group in this wc qualifier? You'd be competing with France and Holland for 1 spot. Enjoy.

I don't think anyone is saying teams that struggle in UEFA would dominate CONCACAF, however, some teams that are close to qualifying but fall short in UEFA would have a better shot at making it through in CONCACAF.

If you took the 2nd place teams from UEFA groups for 2014 and added the top 4 from CONCACAF to it:

Greece
France
Portugal
Ukraine
Sweden
Iceland
Romania
Croatia
Denmark
United States
Costa Rica
Honduras
Mexico

You wouldn't see all 4 CONCACAF teams go through. (Bad example but yeah...)

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

You have 4 spot, and those 4 spots goes to teams that are fairly good/can make some noise. 90% of the other teams would be in pot 5 and 6 in UEFA.

What would happen if we put USA in Swedens place in our group in this wc qualifier? You'd be competing with France and Holland for 1 spot. Enjoy.

I don't think anyone is saying teams that struggle in UEFA would dominate CONCACAF, however, some teams that are close to qualifying but fall short in UEFA would have a better shot at making it through in CONCACAF.

If you took the 2nd place teams from UEFA groups for 2014 and added the top 4 from CONCACAF to it:

Greece
France
Portugal
Ukraine
Sweden
Iceland
Romania
Croatia
Denmark
United States
Costa Rica
Honduras
Mexico

You wouldn't see all 4 CONCACAF teams go through. (Bad example but yeah...)

This is the way I look at it.

Teams much better than the USA: Germany, Spain, France
Teams better than the USA but its close and USA could beat them out over the course of qualifying: Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, England, Portugal

After those 8, I think there's a drop off to the next level where you have maybe about 20 teams (teams like Wales, Croatia, Serbia, Slovakia, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Iceland, Denmark, Bosnia, Ukraine, Scotland, Ireland, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Greece, Turkey).

No question we aren't part of that top 8. I'm not saying we are, we probably wouldn't regularly qualify as a first place team since we are likely to get one of those top teams in our group, but for the second spot, we should be one of the best pot 2 teams, which usually would mean qualification. There's a chance we wouldn't qualify if we got a really good pot 3 team, but there's just as much of a chance we would get a team like Portugal or England as the pot 1 team, and beat them out for first place.

Maybe like 75% of the time we'd qualify, 75% of the time Mexico would qualify. 50% of the time Costa Rica would qualify. After that, maybe Honduras, Panama, T&T, Jamaica, Canada get one participant among those countries per World Cup if we were to say each country has close to a 20% chance of qualifying.

If you dropped these CONCACAF countries into UEFA and combined the spots available, I think you'd find most of the time you get 3-4 teams from North America qualifying for the World Cup.

As for Sweden, I'd think if you guys were in CONCACAF, you'd regularly compete with Costa Rica for third best in the region. I don't think USA or Mexico are much better than Sweden, nor do I think either country are much better than Costa Rica, but I think Sweden would probably only be 3rd or 4th best. That doesn't guarantee qualification either. Costa Rica missed the World Cup in 2010, and Sweden might miss 1 out of every 4 world cups out of CONCACAF. Mexico almost missed the World Cup in 2014. They were a few minutes from being completely out, but we bailed them out with a result against Panama, and they got in from the playoff against New Zealand.

 

[Jonimaus]

This is the way I look at it.

Teams much better than the USA: Germany, Spain, France
Teams better than the USA but its close and USA could beat them out over the course of qualifying: Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, England, Portugal

After those 8, I think there's a drop off to the next level where you have maybe about 20 teams (teams like Wales, Croatia, Serbia, Slovakia, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Iceland, Denmark, Bosnia, Ukraine, Scotland, Ireland, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Greece, Turkey).

No question we aren't part of that top 8. I'm not saying we are, we probably wouldn't regularly qualify as a first place team since we are likely to get one of those top teams in our group, but for the second spot, we should be one of the best pot 2 teams, which usually would mean qualification. There's a chance we wouldn't qualify if we got a really good pot 3 team, but there's just as much of a chance we would get a team like Portugal or England as the pot 1 team, and beat them out for first place.

You need to create a 3rd group with like 5 other teams which should be called "Teams on USA level that we would have 50/50 (give or take a few) to win against". Where Poland, Croatia, Slovakia, Switzerland and Russia should be placed (I'd place Sweden with Zlatan here too ). If you think you would only struggle against those 8 teams you'd be up for a rough wake up.

 

[Live in the Now]

Teams much better than the USA: Germany, Spain, France, England, Belgium, Croatia

Teams better than the USA but its close and USA could beat them out over the course of qualifying: Netherlands, Italy, Portugal

I would say those three countries but the only reason it's true is because those teams don't have explosive athletes and the style they play allows worse teams to keep up with them. I don't know how you could say we're equal to Belgium or any team with athletic players/runners like that after watching our World Cup game. There's a gigantic gap.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

You need to create a 3rd group with like 5 other teams which should be called "Teams on USA level that we would have 50/50 (give or take a few) to win against". Where Poland, Croatia, Slovakia, Switzerland and Russia should be placed (I'd place Sweden with Zlatan here too ). If you think you would only struggle against those 8 teams you'd be up for a rough wake up.

I thought I did create that group in my post, I just didn't format it the same way as the first two groups.

As I said, and you seem to be echoing, the USA would probably be one of the top pot 2 teams. The top pot 2 teams probably have like a 75% chance to qualify for the WC before the qualification groups are picked.

I don't really think we are disagreeing about that. If we happen to get a bad draw, a really good pot 1 team and get a really good pot 3 team (and I don't think there's a huge difference between pot 2 teams and the best pot 3 teams), we might be in a real battle for qualification with that pot 3 team, but the USA should be able to qualify most times for the World Cup out of UEFA.

Teams much better than the USA: Germany, Spain, France, England, Belgium, Croatia

Teams better than the USA but its close and USA could beat them out over the course of qualifying: Netherlands, Italy, Portugal

I would say those three countries but the only reason it's true is because those teams don't have explosive athletes and the style they play allows worse teams to keep up with them. I don't know how you could say we're equal to Belgium or any team with athletic players/runners like that after watching our World Cup game. There's a gigantic gap.

I think Croatia is overrated. They've really done nothing for you to put them where you are putting them, although I understand you are putting them where you are because of the players they have.

 

[Live in the Now]

Their players have a lot better technique than ours, they're much better in possession, have good forward options, and we'd struggle greatly to score against their defense. Now as for why we're closer to Italy than Croatia is pretty simple to me. Italy never calls up and starts their best team, they don't penetrate into the final third the way Croatia is capable of, and they usually play defensively enough that even a poor team can get a good scoring chance or two.

Our current first team is really not that good and will have major problems in the WC if we get there. I don't think we have the same quality of players we've had in previous years and our very good prospects aren't ready yet.

 

[YNWA14]

The Netherlands, Italy and Portugal would stomp the US, among a few other teams not listed.

 

[Live in the Now]

Like Portugal stomped everyone in the Euros? Oh wait, that's not what happened at all even though they had some very easy opposition. They couldn't do a thing against Switzerland the other day either. Great team over there.

Portugal didn't stomp anything when we played them in a real game quite recently. That was a game where the US attacked better, had more shots on target, and equal possession.

 

[Vipers31]

It's a while since Portugal stomped anything.

But honestly, if ones includes Slovakia and Switzerland, one could almost include Germany in the OP, at which point the pointless question would have a deservingly boring answer.

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

Are you listing England there only because they have a lot of Premiership players? I don't see by what metric England are better than Portugal or Italy. And I think any competitive U.S. v England match would be pretty damn tight.

 

[Live in the Now]

Are you listing England there only because they have a lot of Premiership players? I don't see by what metric England are better than Portugal or Italy. And I think any competitive U.S. v England match would be pretty damn tight.

We can't deal with pace very well. They're not better than Portugal or Italy, but they'd do very well against us because of that.

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

We can't deal with pace very well. They're not better than Portugal or Italy, but they'd do very well against us because of that.

They're also notorious underachievers especially if they play against someone who's pretty organized and dogged. Now, granted I haven't followed the U.S. in recent CONCACAF adventures so I don't know how the team looks now but at the last few World Cups the U.S. usually gave 'bigger' teams some difficulties.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

What?

I'd take Slovaks ahead of anyone at the moment because I don't count Switzerland as a top hockey nation.

Sorry but if we are disqualifying Switzerland on hockey then what Slovakia is currently up to there isn't much better these days... There is a reason they are both on the unified team in the upcoming World Cup, those were the two nations that lost their seat at the proverbial table.

To the question Switzerland is the best soccer team of the nations posted. The USA could well be right there if the youngsters step up but we have been saying that for a while so until it happens in 2018 I cannot vote for them.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

Teams much better than the USA: Germany, Spain, France, England, Belgium, Croatia

Teams better than the USA but its close and USA could beat them out over the course of qualifying: Netherlands, Italy, Portugal

I would say those three countries but the only reason it's true is because those teams don't have explosive athletes and the style they play allows worse teams to keep up with them. I don't know how you could say we're equal to Belgium or any team with athletic players/runners like that after watching our World Cup game. There's a gigantic gap.

But it is worth noting for those dismissing the USA, that we have been in a group at the last two World Cups with two of those teams and finished above them. That being England and Portugal. In fact we have ruined Portugal's World Cup twice now.