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What planet do you live on? Of course Italy and Holland are top tier!
The same one that sees a brazilian team with pele fall to make it out of the group stages, the same one let's saw italy and France fail to make it out of the group last world cup. I could list more but you get my drift, even hugely successful national teams can start playing poorly and they shouldn't simply get a pass when they do.
You said "But, when push came to shove and Italy played the other football powerhouses in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Spain they generally crumbled." Which is hilarious if you compare Italy's record to Chile. You honestly think Italy and the Netherlands - the Euro finalist and WC finalist - are third tier teams (not super powers and not great powers)?
Anyway, here's the NL record since the Belgium game:
Netherlands 2-0 Turkey (WCQ)
Hungary 1-4 Netherlands (WCQ)
Netherlands 3-0 Andorra (WCQ)
Romania 1-4 Netherlands (WCQ)
Netherlands 0-0 Germany (friendly)
Netherlands 1-1 Italy (friendly)
Netherlands 3-0 Estonia (WCQ)
Netherlands 4-0 Romania (WCQ)
Indonesia 0-3 Netherlands (friendly)
China 0-2 Netherlands (friendly)
Portugal 1-1 Netherlands (friendly)
Estonia 2-2 Netherlands (WCQ)
Netherlands 2-0 Andorra (WCQ)
I don't know why you keep on bring up italy historical record. The only factor I use when rating teams is how have they played in their last 10 games. ancient history doesn't matter what matter is what has their recent form has been.
I don't know why you keep on bring up italy historical record. The only factor I use when rating teams is how have they played in their last 10 games. ancient history doesn't matter what matter is what has their recent form has been.
Well this is a very reliable and accurate classification...
Finland has played the last 11 games with a record of 6-3-2 and GD of 15-7.
I think with those results you should be close to being a middle power, as Russia, which will probably qualify has a record of 7-2-2 from the last 11 games.
I don't know why you keep on bring up italy historical record. The only factor I use when rating teams is how have they played in their last 10 games. ancient history doesn't matter what matter is what has their recent form has been.
I'm not bringing up Italy's or Chile's historical record, I'm talking about their current WCQ campaign. You can't just draw an arbitrary line at 10 games (why not 11?) and say that anything that happened before that is irrelevant. You especially can't do this when many of the more recent games are friendlies in which managers like to experiment with new players or strategies. A WCQ played a year ago is worth more to me than a friendly played last week.
You also can't measure form by results alone. Scores do not always represent the balance on the field; a team might totally dominate the other and still win by just 1 goal, or a team might beat the other by a number of goals totally against the run of play. A draw does not automatically mean that the two sides played equally well. In the WC 2010, Spain won 5 of its 6 games by 1 goal difference (and lost the first game to Switzerland by 1 goal). Does that mean Spain "struggled" throughout the tournament? I think even you would acknowledge that Spain was one of the best teams in that WC despite its narrow wins. Likewise, do Chile's big losses against the other top 5 teams accurately reflect the difference in quality between them? With the exception of Argentina, which is clearly a notch above the rest, I wouldn't think so.
If you think football is so fleeting that results from just a year ago are totally irrelevant, I don't know how you can be so confident that Chile will do better at the WC than Italy or the Netherlands. You even said yourself that this opinion is based on present form and quality of opposition. Well, you don't know how either factor will turn out during the WC.
It's a long way to the World Cup yet, but Switzerland is probably the weakest team from Europe who will qualify. They were a joke already at their own Euro tournament, and hasn't improved much since.
Yes, those are very good players, but the top teams from Europe have 20 or 40 players of similar class.
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