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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Rankings are worthless. Among other things, Switzerland is ranked 8th world-wide by FIFA. If you go by SPI, the US outranks Croatia. You've got to be kidding if you think this Brazil is the strongest in the world. FIFA rankings are definitely worthless, but while SPI is flawed, I don't agree that it's worthless. To use the US/Croatia example, while the US is technically higher, they are basically even, which strikes me as about right, and results bear that out. Recent world cups: Croatia - 2002, Group; 2006, Group; 2010, DNQ, 2014, Group. United States - 2002, Quarters; 2006, Group; 2010, Round of 16; 2014 Round of 16. So the US has clearly had more success in Soccer's biggest competition than Croatia, but going back to 2002 isn't really fair. Going to recent fixtures outside the world cup, the teams are pretty similar, with both beating a bunch of nobodies and drawing a somebody (US drew against Mexico, Croatia drew agaisnt Switzerland). US has a recent loss to Ukraine in a friendly, which isn't great. Croatia had two losses to Scotland in World Cup qualifying, which also isn't great. I don't see any reason to think Croatia is clearly better than the US (or that the US is clearly better than Croatia for that matter). More than that, your claim isn't that the rankings have errors, but that they are worthless. I just don't agree. Take the current top five, Germany, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, and France. Are any of those clearly wrong? All made it out of the group stage, and the three that have been eliminated were eliminated by other top five teams. The only semifinal team not from the top 5 is the Netherlands, and they're ranked #6 (when 4 of the top 5 are all on the same side of the bracket, at least one not top five team has to make the semis). The rankings aren't perfect. They aren't great when you get too granular (I am much more comfortable comparing Germany (91.4 overall) to England (81 overall) than I am comparing USA (78.5 overall) to Croatia (77.6 overall)), they can miss on specific teams, and they can have problems evaluating teams that play very low scoring games (low scoring games have high variance), but I think SPI provides a good approximation of the state of international football. That all said, this game did set up perfectly to expose Brazil's flaws. Even at full strength, Brazil is a middling defensive team that likes to play offense. They also happen to be a great offensive team, which can usually hide their defensive problems. Lacking Neymar weakened their ability to hide their middling defense, lacking Silva weakened an already not great defense. Bad combination all around.
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Jul 9, 2014 19:51
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If you are a good team, you are much more likely to lose to Scotland than a poo poo team. See: France.
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Jul 9, 2014 21:05
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A Tartan Tory posted:If you are a good team, you are much more likely to lose to Scotland than a poo poo team. Well yeah, pretty much every game we play is against a better team, so we've had a lot of practice 
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Jul 9, 2014 21:08
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inSTAALed posted:You don't understand, he is just so good in FIFA because he is absurdly fast for a CB! All purchasing decisions should be based off how players perform in the FIFA video games. It worked for the Oakland Raiders and Madden games! Sort players by Speed, throw money at them accordingly, all other skills be damned.
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Jul 9, 2014 22:31
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Argentina, you better beat Germany cause I have a boon grant riding on this.
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Jul 9, 2014 23:47
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inSTAALed posted:You don't understand, he is just so good in FIFA because he is absurdly fast for a CB! All purchasing decisions should be based off how players perform in the FIFA video games. Well, Miroslav Klose is the best striker in Fifa for like 6 games in a row so they obviously get some things right. hopterque fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 07:59
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hopterque posted:Well, Miroslav Klose is the best striker in Fifa for like 6 games in a row so they obviously get somet things right. If you play Ultimate Team, Klose's first in form card this past year was probably the best in the game. Every ball he touched in the box went in. 99 finishing... mmm...
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Jul 10, 2014 14:39
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They gave him a new card for breaking the record that is literally gamebreakingly good, they upgraded all his stats by 16 and will add more more for each goal scored.
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Jul 10, 2014 14:51
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hopterque posted:They gave him a new card for breaking the record that is literally gamebreakingly good, they upgraded all his stats by 16 and will add more more for each goal scored. I just looked it up... 
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Jul 10, 2014 14:58
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inSTAALed posted:I just looked it up... Yeah it sucks though, he's probably my favorite player on the planet and getting that card would own all the bones but it's almost hilariously unaffordable. It's also one of a kind, there's never been a card like that in any ultimate team so far, they invented a new category and everything (a 'Record Breaker' in form card).
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Jul 10, 2014 15:02
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hopterque posted:Yeah it sucks though, he's probably my favorite player on the planet and getting that card would own all the bones but it's almost hilariously unaffordable. Messi had a similar card in FUT 2012, I believe. It didn't function the same way, but it was based on his goals in a calendar year record.
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Jul 10, 2014 15:06
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So to recap: Brazil gets to host their most hated rival playing the team that gave them possibly the greatest embarrassment in their history. This for arguably the most prestigious award in sport. Jesus, this is so depressing for them it might as well be the movie. Eifert Posting fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 15:16
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Eifert Posting posted:So to recap: Brazil gets to host their most hated rival playing the team that gave them possibly the greatest embarrassment in their history. This for arguably the most prestigious award in sport. My bracket had Germany beating Brazil in the finals for maximum humiliation. What actually happened is almost as good.
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Jul 10, 2014 18:03
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McGavin posted:My bracket had Germany beating Brazil in the finals for maximum humiliation. What actually happened is almost as good. I think the Brazil narrative would be like "If only we had Neymar and Silva we won't have lost!" ...While conveniently ignoring the overall lackluster performance with both playing coupled with some dubious referee decisions in the previous matches that getting into the semis is already quite the miracle. Palladium fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 18:37
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Four days of non-stop reading one page at a time, and now I've reached the end. And all I can say is gently caress Can't wait for the next update.
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Jul 10, 2014 19:07
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Palladium posted:I think the Brazil narrative would be like "If only we had Neymar and Silva we won't have lost!"
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Jul 10, 2014 19:08
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Seven goals is so rare between clubs of any level that it's the sort of thing fans sing about sixty years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTw2Wy2zYHw The game in question happened in a 1957 cup final and at this point is sung by people whose grandfathers were too young to be there.
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Jul 10, 2014 19:14
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Obliterati posted:Seven goals is so rare between clubs of any level that it's the sort of thing fans sing about sixty years later: Well, maybe they should have thought about that before losing seven to one. 
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Jul 10, 2014 19:16
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JT Jag posted:That would have been the narrative if Germany hadn't hung 7 goals on them. Brazil isn't supposed to lose by 6 goals to Germany if they roll out their complete B-team. They lost by 6 because Brazil gave up after a while (probably after the third goal). When a team gives up, alot of points can be scored.
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Jul 10, 2014 23:22
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KDavisJr posted:They lost by 6 because Brazil gave up after a while (probably after the third goal). When a team gives up, alot of points can be scored.
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Jul 10, 2014 23:31
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JT Jag posted:Likewise, even Brazil's entire B-team shouldn't give up three goals in 25 minutes to Germany. Yeah, it's one thing to give up when you're getting killed in the 70th minute. It's another to get beaten so hard you give up with more than an hour remaining to play.
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Jul 11, 2014 00:02
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73 pages in, only discovered the thread last week. And football bores me rigid. I'm impressed, you write a better story than the real world cup. All I can add is:
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Jul 12, 2014 03:22
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Thiago Silva was rubbish in the third place matchup with the usual clowning of David "50M quid" Luis, to the detriment of Brazilians.
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Jul 13, 2014 05:32
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Go Argentina!  I have no idea if I can still win the contest!
Trundel fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Jul 13, 2014 |
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Jul 13, 2014 19:53
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Trundel posted:Go Argentina! Oh poo poo you had Argentina picked too? Well good luck to both of us then.
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Jul 13, 2014 21:07
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I don't really care about the football side of things, I just want Germany to win to see Henning Wehn getting smug on all the panel shows.
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Jul 13, 2014 21:11
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Aaaaaand that's it. Unless Argentina does something really, really fast, Germany is the world champion.
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Jul 13, 2014 22:25
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Nooooooooo! drat it Argentina, I had faith in you!
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Jul 13, 2014 22:26
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I love how I don't even have to watch the match to figure out what happened. My entire neighborhood just exploded in cheers, so I could just figure "oh, Germany must have scored".
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Jul 13, 2014 22:27
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Germany is the world football champion.
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Jul 13, 2014 22:36
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As they have always been.
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Jul 13, 2014 22:37
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steinrokkan posted:As they have always been. Booooo! Ghana should have won.
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Jul 13, 2014 22:43
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Won £500 from the Germany win 
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Jul 13, 2014 22:52
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A Tartan Tory posted:Won £500 from the Germany win Won 88p from the Germant win 
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Jul 13, 2014 22:56
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I think we can say that the best team won the tournament. Still quite sad that it wasn't a GER/NED final, but ah well.
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Jul 13, 2014 23:14
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rizzen posted:I think we can say that the best team won the tournament. Still quite sad that it wasn't a GER/NED final, but ah well. That Goatse goal was so classy, sublime first touch with the chest with a clinical finish in the air.
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Jul 13, 2014 23:21
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rizzen posted:I think we can say that the best team won the tournament. Still quite sad that it wasn't a GER/NED final, but ah well. Argentina were actually very good in the final, almost completely stopping Germany from playing while creating the best few chances and more this-might-become-dangerous situations by far so they could easily have won it before collapsing from exhaustion. Still, overall it's hard to disagree with you. Edit: And agree about the Germany goal. It was well worthy of winning the tournament.
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Jul 13, 2014 23:35
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Four world cups and one world pope.
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Jul 13, 2014 23:36
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Gotze's goal was definitely one worthy of winning the final with. Messi getting the golden ball was a bit of a shock, though. I thought for sure Robben was going to get it.
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Jul 14, 2014 03:17
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That goal was totally beautiful and my mouth dropped when I saw it.
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Jul 14, 2014 03:31
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