Your mate is a weirdo then, as the youth setup in Portugal has never looked brighter. Already plenty of talk about the second golden generation
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Teams to potentially win a World Cup first time in the future
- Thread starter Aguerovic
- Start date
China is very weird one. China, traditionally whether it be any sport, have never really excelled in any TEAM sports. I'll use Basketball. China are one of the best basketball nations from Asia and have produced stars like Yao Ming, but have never excelled at the global events like the Olympics Basketball, even in 2008 they were bad. In football, China have yet to do anything in Asia let alone the World to win a World Cup. I may be wrong however, with China's vast populations who can produce good players, few golden stars can do the trick, like it did with France 1998 or Brazil 2002. But China wouldn't be on the list yet. To judge a team's footballing potential, you need to look at the country's performance in other sports too and their youth too. USA and Russia fit the bill with this one. Plus USA are into the quarters of the U20 world cup.USA and China are the only potential first timers in the next 100 years.
Soccer is pretty divided in the USA, just like Baseball or Hockey. Sports that are regional, not popular everywhere. For soccer, not the entire USA is interested. Areas like Seattle, Portland, California (San Jose, LA, San Diego, etc), even Texas have good soccer culture. Pretty much the West Coast of USA seem very interested in soccer, but with New England, football has yet to take off. Same thing can be said about the Midwest so areas like Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, etc. But it'd be stupid to ignore the growth of MLS and the average attendance of every club is creeping up. With MLS now attracting stars like Kaka, Lampard, Gerrard, etc, it's only going to get better. Sports like NHL and MLB are going down every day. Baseball has lost its identity, its not the 1980s anymore. Hockey is dead, it is only watched during the Winter Olympics.I honestly think football will never truly, truly take off in the States. At least, not as far as the men's game is concerned. It's true that the women's game already has taken off, big time. But if you look at the three sports that dominate, baseball, American football, and basketball, the one thing that they have in common is that scoring is pretty much constant right through the match. They seem to demand that of their sports. Americans, in my experience, just don't get that, for an aficionado, a draw can by a satisfying result, and that even a goalless draw can be acceptable, if there have been plenty of chances at both ends, posts and crossbars hit, both keepers playing blinders, etc. This is not an anti-American comment — I've been to the States (Massachussetts, California), I've had American friends — it's just what I've observed in talking to Americans over the years.
What will make it take off, if anything does, is the growing Latino-origin population.
Football in India is seemingly growing - but this will take a very long time. Perhaps one day they will compete.
Belgium will have a brilliant spell coming within the next 15-20 years, as will USA.
A team like Colombia will also grow but I'm not sure to what level.
Nigeria, with Kelechi up-front could be an African force again! :)
And England are going backwards
Belgium will have a brilliant spell coming within the next 15-20 years, as will USA.
A team like Colombia will also grow but I'm not sure to what level.
Nigeria, with Kelechi up-front could be an African force again! :)
And England are going backwards
The East Coast apart from New England seems to be embracing football more these days.Soccer is pretty divided in the USA, just like Baseball or Hockey. Sports that are regional, not popular everywhere. For soccer, not the entire USA is interested. Areas like Seattle, Portland, California (San Jose, LA, San Diego, etc), even Texas have good soccer culture. Pretty much the West Coast of USA seem very interested in soccer, but with New England, football has yet to take off. Same thing can be said about the Midwest so areas like Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, etc. But it'd be stupid to ignore the growth of MLS and the average attendance of every club is creeping up. With MLS now attracting stars like Kaka, Lampard, Gerrard, etc, it's only going to get better. Sports like NHL and MLB are going down every day. Baseball has lost its identity, its not the 1980s anymore. Hockey is dead, it is only watched during the Winter Olympics.
without a dream
Well-Known Member
Nigeria could possibly have a shot, 170 odd million people and a bit of a 'golden generation' seemingly on their way.
I'm With Stupid
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In principle, anyone can luck there way through a cup competition. It hasn't really happened in the World Cup yet, but it wasn't long ago that we were seeing Greece pick up the European title. And never underestimate FIFA's willingness to use corrupt referees to favour the home team (*cough*Korea*cough). So given that, I could see Russia having a good go in 3 years.
I don't get this obsession with the USA and China. People assume that big population + money = World Cup. Which is how it works in the Olympics. But football doesn't work like that. It takes decades to get the infrastructure required to reliably produce the sort of talent capable of winning a World Cup. China has a barely credible league, where corruption and match fixing make it somewhere no-one talented wants to work and a horrible environment for young talent. MLS is growing fast, but it's still not yet in a position where it's regularly supplying decent players to the top European leagues. Maybe every few years someone will emerge that's capable of playing for a mid-table team in England or Spain. But have they ever had a genuinely world class player in the same way that relatively small countries like Sweden, Croatia, Romania or even Wales have, not to mention countless African countries? They spend a lot of money bringing big names into the squads, but are they spending the same sort of money on bringing in the best coaches to train their own youngsters? And are the most gifted kids actually playing football, or are the kids who play football still often the ones that couldn't get on the basketball team?
Any country can pump shitloads of money into a minority sport like, well, pretty much anything China wins a medal in at the Olympics, and get results. But it's much harder to do that in a rich, highly competitive sport that pretty much every country in the world takes very seriously. And there's no sport on the planet that's more competitive than football.
Anyway, I'd say that obviously the Netherlands, Portugal or Belgium would be the most likely to win it in the near future. Longer term, I think Russia are a decent bet. Poland have produced a few good players and if they continue to do it, they might have a world class team one day, with that population. Turkey are far from their best nowadays, but they've definitely got the potential to have a very good team at some point in the future. The European teams are always going to be at an advantage, with easy access to top quality opponents. With the likes of Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Ivory Coast, they always produce 2 or 3 world class players at any one time, but they never seem to be able to produce enough decent players to fill out the rest of the team with the CL quality players that World Cup winners usually have. I kinda get the same impression from teams like Colombia and Chile. They're always going to have a few world class players capable of causing a few upsets, but the rest of the squad might be Championship standard.
I don't get this obsession with the USA and China. People assume that big population + money = World Cup. Which is how it works in the Olympics. But football doesn't work like that. It takes decades to get the infrastructure required to reliably produce the sort of talent capable of winning a World Cup. China has a barely credible league, where corruption and match fixing make it somewhere no-one talented wants to work and a horrible environment for young talent. MLS is growing fast, but it's still not yet in a position where it's regularly supplying decent players to the top European leagues. Maybe every few years someone will emerge that's capable of playing for a mid-table team in England or Spain. But have they ever had a genuinely world class player in the same way that relatively small countries like Sweden, Croatia, Romania or even Wales have, not to mention countless African countries? They spend a lot of money bringing big names into the squads, but are they spending the same sort of money on bringing in the best coaches to train their own youngsters? And are the most gifted kids actually playing football, or are the kids who play football still often the ones that couldn't get on the basketball team?
Any country can pump shitloads of money into a minority sport like, well, pretty much anything China wins a medal in at the Olympics, and get results. But it's much harder to do that in a rich, highly competitive sport that pretty much every country in the world takes very seriously. And there's no sport on the planet that's more competitive than football.
Anyway, I'd say that obviously the Netherlands, Portugal or Belgium would be the most likely to win it in the near future. Longer term, I think Russia are a decent bet. Poland have produced a few good players and if they continue to do it, they might have a world class team one day, with that population. Turkey are far from their best nowadays, but they've definitely got the potential to have a very good team at some point in the future. The European teams are always going to be at an advantage, with easy access to top quality opponents. With the likes of Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Ivory Coast, they always produce 2 or 3 world class players at any one time, but they never seem to be able to produce enough decent players to fill out the rest of the team with the CL quality players that World Cup winners usually have. I kinda get the same impression from teams like Colombia and Chile. They're always going to have a few world class players capable of causing a few upsets, but the rest of the squad might be Championship standard.
sam-caddick
Well-Known Member
You only have to look at Uruguay to prove that population and money means nothing in football.
Considering Greater Manchester has a population of around 2.7m and Uruguay as a collective has around 3.4m in population, you get the picture.
I think the USA will eventually win the World Cup, but unlike Europe and South America where the number one sport is football, soccer is still behind the likes of American Football, Basketball, Ice Hockey and Baseball.
Considering Greater Manchester has a population of around 2.7m and Uruguay as a collective has around 3.4m in population, you get the picture.
I think the USA will eventually win the World Cup, but unlike Europe and South America where the number one sport is football, soccer is still behind the likes of American Football, Basketball, Ice Hockey and Baseball.
You only have to look at Uruguay to prove that population and money means nothing in football.
Considering Greater Manchester has a population of around 2.7m and Uruguay as a collective has around 3.4m in population, you get the picture.
I think the USA will eventually win the World Cup, but unlike Europe and South America where the number one sport is football, soccer is still behind the likes of American Football, Basketball, Ice Hockey and Baseball.
I don't want to discredit Uruguay's achievements or anything like that but winning the WC back in 1930 and 1950 does not mean as much as winning the World Cup now. Obviously with now, you have more competition, more teams and back then, football was not professional (I maybe wrong though). You do not need to be a big country particularly to have a good team at one period like Czech Republic late 90s/early 2000s, like Croatia late 90s, Bulgaria 1994, Sweden 1994, Turkey early 2000s, Russia late 2000s list goes on. Hell, one of the smallest nations in Europe, Iceland have got an amazing team now, they are top of their European group, beating nations like Netherlands, Turkey, Czech easily. With all this being said, there's a whole kick to this. Big nations tend to always produce good players, they are able to replace their greats. They never disappear. Look at Czech Republic, tiny country in Eastern Europe who had great players once but now they are nobodies in football present because once their golden generation was over, it never came back. Same thing for Sweden as well.
Another point, small nations can only produce individuals, like the other person said. Teams like Chile, Ghana, Cameroon, Croatia produce few great players but can never come with a whole starting 11 of great stars. Big nations like Germany, Spain, Italy have whole starting 11 capable of playing in the Premier League. You used Uruguay for example. They've got currently Suarez, Cavani, Godin, Caceres, but really rest of their team is pretty mediocre. Like we saw last WC, they are a team relying on individuals unlike Germany where they've got an entire team.
In principle, anyone can luck there way through a cup competition. It hasn't really happened in the World Cup yet, but it wasn't long ago that we were seeing Greece pick up the European title. And never underestimate FIFA's willingness to use corrupt referees to favour the home team (*cough*Korea*cough). So given that, I could see Russia having a good go in 3 years.
I don't get this obsession with the USA and China. People assume that big population + money = World Cup. Which is how it works in the Olympics. But football doesn't work like that. It takes decades to get the infrastructure required to reliably produce the sort of talent capable of winning a World Cup. China has a barely credible league, where corruption and match fixing make it somewhere no-one talented wants to work and a horrible environment for young talent. MLS is growing fast, but it's still not yet in a position where it's regularly supplying decent players to the top European leagues. Maybe every few years someone will emerge that's capable of playing for a mid-table team in England or Spain. But have they ever had a genuinely world class player in the same way that relatively small countries like Sweden, Croatia, Romania or even Wales have, not to mention countless African countries? They spend a lot of money bringing big names into the squads, but are they spending the same sort of money on bringing in the best coaches to train their own youngsters? And are the most gifted kids actually playing football, or are the kids who play football still often the ones that couldn't get on the basketball team?
Any country can pump shitloads of money into a minority sport like, well, pretty much anything China wins a medal in at the Olympics, and get results. But it's much harder to do that in a rich, highly competitive sport that pretty much every country in the world takes very seriously. And there's no sport on the planet that's more competitive than football.
Anyway, I'd say that obviously the Netherlands, Portugal or Belgium would be the most likely to win it in the near future. Longer term, I think Russia are a decent bet. Poland have produced a few good players and if they continue to do it, they might have a world class team one day, with that population. Turkey are far from their best nowadays, but they've definitely got the potential to have a very good team at some point in the future. The European teams are always going to be at an advantage, with easy access to top quality opponents. With the likes of Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Ivory Coast, they always produce 2 or 3 world class players at any one time, but they never seem to be able to produce enough decent players to fill out the rest of the team with the CL quality players that World Cup winners usually have. I kinda get the same impression from teams like Colombia and Chile. They're always going to have a few world class players capable of causing a few upsets, but the rest of the squad might be Championship standard.
Not exactly. India have a huge population and money, yet they can barely get a medal. The problem with China, is that they are a nation that can produce individuals but have been awful at any team sports. I mean, can you really name me any team sport China excels at? Basketball comes to mind but they've been awful at the world stage. China win their gold medals through the great individual they produce.
People think USA have got potential because everyone knows how good USA are in the other sports they play, so they can always implement their skill on soccer. I've always noticed one thing about USA. Yesterday, Bobby Wood scored the winner against the mighty Germans. Yes, Bobby Wood, the man who plays for 3rd division football in Germany. USA have never really produced any great individuals, yet they manage to play very good in World Cups. They are an organised unit, who play as a team.