Quote:
Originally Posted by Bagor
You state the bolded to try and downplay Belgium's history to make a point but fail to mention that they were in the 5 world cups prior to that, one of which they were beaten by the Argies in the semi final. A much richer history than ROI who you accused earlier of underachieving and having a "good pedigree"?  . By your own logic one would think that you'd expect Belgium to be contenders, never mind having more than a 0% chance based on their "pedigree".
In short, you appear to be arguing against yourself.
I agree with Diane. Too many teams will dilute the quality of competition. More teams/games IMO does not necessarily equate to a better tournament. |
Not quite, these are two different issues. I never said Ireland was a contender. I was just disapointed that a team such as Ireland with the pedigree that they have is this poor. Belgium is the same. It is a good comparision. They do have good pedigree but something has gone wrong the last 10 years which makes them no longer contenders. Pedigree doesn't make a team automatically a contender.
I do have to re-think the pedigree argument I made earlier. Perhaps small countries go in cycles and they just have a magical generation and cannot keep this standard. So by calling Ireland and Belgium failures is probably too harsh because they cannot produce the players to be at the top of the soccer world. But that 4-0 loss to Spain was the lowest of the low, I was really dissapointed.
However, Diane argues that Ireland and Belgium and the other countries in Europe or SA would bring more value to a tournament than Japan or USA who would have 0% chance of winning. I disagree.