My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.
Also: after today, I don’t think Spain has nearly as good a chance to advance to the group rounds as some people do, even though they did beat Honduras today. Chile was always going to be their toughest match in this group, and if you assume that Switzerland beats Honduras (and the Honduran team just isn’t on the level of anybody else in this group, so the Swiss have good odds), then Spain has to beat Chile to advance. Chile can cheerfully play for a tie, which still nets them first place in the group.
I still think Spain can eke it out – heck, I picked them to win the whole thing before it started – but, yeah, it’s a bit uphill.
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Its been a bad World Cup for most of Western Europe. England, France, Germany, Spain all having big troubles.
Its got so bad here in England, I can have Wednesday afternoon off work to watch the match, or stay and work. I’m seriously considering staying at work!
People usually underestimate Chile. They did so in ’98 as well. What people new to football don’t get is that the South American group is the toughest one in the world by a good margin. Granted, Chile is probably not on the level of say, Brazil or Argentina, but they’re not to be taken lightly. They may have missed some World Cups, but the ones they go to they usually do okay. Any team that qualifies from the South American group is usually very strong. Starting with Argentina and Brazil, who are always strong, and then going down to Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador… all are usually strong, and all have been very competitive at some point in their history. Heck, lately even Venezuela is competitive. And the day Bolivia makes it to the World Cup, i’m betting they’ll come with a strong team as well. There’s no “easy pickings” in the South American group. A lot of the teams that made it to the WC would never have made it in there.
I *think* Chile will give Spain a run for their money. I can’t say what the score will be or for which team. What i *hope* for though, is that Chile gives Spain a lesson in humility. It’s high time Europe and the rest of the world started giving Latin American football their due.
Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com has developed an interesting method for predicting World Cup matches. He has Spain at 69% to advance with Switzerland at 43% based on 10,000 simulations.
The projections:
Switzerland Win: 37%
Draw: 31%
Honduras Win: 32%
Spain Win: 43%
Draw: 31%
Chile Win: 26%
As you say, Chile might just play for a tie, which could, theoretically, lower both teams win percentages in that game, but that’s speculation.
I disagree on the foregone conclusion of Switzerland getting three points out of Honduras. Honduras actually isn’t the pushover they’ve appeared to be (Silver’s method actually favored them to finish ahead of Switzerland going into the WC) and if Switzerland didn’t score that somewhat fortuitous goal against Spain, we’d still be wondering if they were capable of scoring at all.
Taking nothing away from Chile (they’ve played some beautiful football) but they haven’t exactly been tested yet. Honduras was awful in their opening game and they spent most of the Switzerland game playing against only ten men (and Switzerland almost equalized late). Spain’s loss to Switzerland has made us forget how good they are. Their run up to the World Cup was as dominant as you’re likely to see. If they play the way they’re capable of playing, three points from *any* team in this tournament shouldn’t surprise anyone.
I don’t see how Switzerland winning over Honduras is such a given. In my (not so) humble opinion, that match feel like a tie (0X0). None of the teams has any offensive power whatsoever.
As for Spain, I don’t know what is up with them. They haven’t been playing as well as we know they’re capable of. Hope they don’t decide to start playing when they face Brazil.
Allegretto, I’ve never met a European who doesn’t rate South American football. I mean, an Englishmen will always think England is the best, no matter how crap they play but everyone loves watching a South American side play.
Well, except the Argentians. Unless they lose.
As for South American performance at the World Cup, it depends on what year we’re talking about:
1994: Four South American teams qualified, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Columbia. Bolivia and Columbia (RIP Andres Escobar) finished last in their respective groups. Argentina was knocked out by Romania in the round of 16. Brazil went on to win the whole thing, but I wouldn’t call this a great showing for the continent.
1998: Five teams (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Chile, and Paraguay qualified). Only Columbia was knocked out in the group stage. Chile (losing to Brazil) and Paraguay were knocked out in the round of 16, while Argentina made it to the quarterfinals before losing to the Netherlands. Brazil made it to the finals where they were summarily thrashed 3-0 by home country France. That final loss stings, but overall, South America performed quite well.
2002: Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay qualified. Ecuador, Uruguay and, in a surprise, Argentina were all bounced in the group stage. Paraguay loses to eventual finalist Germany in the round of 16. Brazil wins the whole thing again. I think we can safely posit that Brazil steals strength from it’s fellow South American teams in years that it wins the World Cup.
2006: Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay qualify. The problems start early as a potential fifth team, Uruguay, loses its spot to Australia in a World Cup qualifier playoff. Paraguay gets bounced in a tough group stage (England and Sweden advanced). Ecuador loses to England in the round of 16, Argentina (on penalty kicks to the Germans) and Brazil (0-1 to hated France) get dropped in the quarters.
2010 is shaping up to be South America’s best year in recent history and possibly one of the best years of any continent ever: 10-2-0, 21 GF, 4 GA so far. All five teams look to advance (with only Chile’s situation looking minutely vulnerable) and all five may win their groups outright. Pretty amazing.
Chile was banned in the 90’s from World Cup play because their goalie, during a match they were losing, pretended that something a fan threw had cut him. He had a razor blade in his glove, which he used on himself, and Chile refused to continue the match.
“People usually underestimate Chile. They did so in ‘98 as well.”
This is partly because, until last week, Chile had not won a WC Finals match for 48 years. They do look good, but I hope it works out for both them and Spain, who I do expect to beat them with the onus on them – as I do Germany Ghana, Italy Slovakia and England Slovenia.
@Duncan,
Sure, but that’s a misleading stat, given they also hadn’t even *been* in a WC for a while, in part due to their ban, in part due to their tough group, in part due to their own faults. That’s a misleading number too, if you consider how the only reason they didn’t beat Italy in ’98 was due to a faulty penalty shoot that was very wrongly called (and punished by the FIFA) in the first place. But that’s besides the point:
No team from South America should ever be underestimated or written off only due to people’s ignorance of their existence, is my whole point. I’ve seen far too many “soccer fans” out there who have no idea of what they’re talking about and seem to believe that the fact that they haven’t heard from this or that team or country and said country is incidentally not European, automatically makes them lousy.
South America is actually the “Europe” those “soccer fans” seem to think about when they imagine a continent where everyone is good at football and as such, deserve more recognition. That’s not to say there’s not strong teams in Europe (there are, of course), it’s only saying that South American football is overlooked by the casual fan, from my point of view, due to misinformation and the perpetuation of the myth that is “the uber european football”. The way i see it, it’s opposite day and everyone assumes Europe is football land. It’s really South America, and it’s been for a while too.
Chile managed to classify from football land, it’s bound to be a strong opponent. And, as i said, the day Peru manages to go to a World Cup, they *will* be strong too. You can’t classify from the South American group without being strong, more so than any other group.
Again, the dedicated football fan probably knows better than to worship Europe as some sort of football mecca, but i’m talking about the general perception of football, and particularly that of the new fan. I think it needs to change.
Allegretto, I’m not sure where you come from, but I seriously have never met any European who does not believe South America is on a par with Europe in football. I wouldn’t say South America is better, though, I think both continents have won 9 World Cups?
However, there is still a huge tendency here in the UK to consider North American football as a joke; even with the US so far playing bloody well and winning Group C everyone I know is still dismissing them! But then I still think the US are the dark horse of this tournament.
Nah, i think Europe gives South America their due. But that’s because Europe is a footballing culture and people know a bit about the damn thing, however, now that football is actually becoming popular in the US and other previously uncharted regions of the footballing globe, i feel there’s an unfair amount of attention on Europe, as if they’re some kind of absolute grandmasters of the thing, specially on the web, and specially from said uncharted spots on the planet. I think its unfair to the South Americas. I’m glad they’re kicking ass this time around. I hope the trend doesn’t stop on the group phase.
And yes the US is too overlooked as well, but at least that’s somewhat based on the fact that until recently they didn’t really have neither a strong team nor a real interest in having one, the South Americans on the other hand, have kicked ass at football from the very beginning.
Europe got the message soon enough. I think this new breed of football fans has not. For whatever reason, however, they do think European football kicks ass. And it does, but they have as much reason to think South American football kicks ass, however they defer to the side of the europeans on every turn. There’s probably a deeper sociological conclusion to reach from such a statement, where it to be true, but i don’t dare speculate. Anyways, all of this is based only on what i’ve seen, heard and read this time around. This could all be crazy talk and the vuvuzelas have driven me mad already.
@Allegretto,
I think Europe gets more attention because of their national championships. There aren’t teams in Brazil or Argentina that measure up to Milan, Internationale, Barcelona on Madrid, to name a few (which doesn’t mean our teams don’t beat the european teams now and then).