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| National Teams Who No Longer Are Good | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 1 2011, 10:36 AM (392 Views) | |
| Merengue | Nov 1 2011, 10:36 AM Post #1 |
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This discussion started in the R.I.P. thread in a discussion over the death of Hungarian great Florian Albert but it is an interesting topic on it's own and that is why I decided to start it's own thread. this what Martin and shelsoccer wrote,
And then shelsoccer's reply, which goes into the possible causes for these national teams' drop in form,
I will post my thoughts in a new post. |
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| Sporting | Nov 1 2011, 10:53 AM Post #2 |
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So many things to say here, but just to say that as for Belgium, although of course there's no civil war or anything like that, the two halves of the country, the Flemish and the French, see eye to eye on nearly nothing and the nation has been without a stable government for quite some time. Whether this impacts or not on the national team I don't know. |
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| Merengue | Nov 1 2011, 10:57 AM Post #3 |
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Romania and Bulgaria had their successes in the 90s on teams built around a good generation of players with each country having a standout player amongst that generation, Gheorghe Hagi with Romania and Hristo Stoitchkov with Bulgaria. Prior to the rise of those players and the surrounding generation of teammates, neither Romania nor Bulgaria had much of an impact internationally and since those generations have retired, each nation has sunk back into being European also rans. I think the same can be said about Poland but their success occurred earlier stretching from 1972 (when Poland were Olympic champions with their full national team) through 1982 when they were World Cup semifinalists.) The difference I think was Poland were able to maintain their high level of play for a longer period because of two good groups of players coming up one after the other, the generation of Lato and Deyna followed by that of Boniek. But I do not know if we can associate any of those teams' success to political upheaval, or the lack of. The end of Poland's reign in the early 80s did coincide with the development of Solidarity and their push for political and economic reforms within the then Soviet controlled Poland. Bulgaria's success in the 90s followed a relatively painless overthrow of their Soviet block government just a few years before but Romania's good period followed the bloody overthrow of the Ceaucescu dictatorship. Colombia's best era in the early 90 to mid 90s coincided with a very bloody era in their nation's political history as the government fought the narco cartels, and the cartels responded with a wave of urban bombings. So I think what this shows is there is no correlation, or at least none that I can see between political turmoil and the success, or lack of, for a particular nation. What it comes down to I think, at least for nations outside of the traditional powers, is simply having a good generation(s) of players coming up and reaching maturity together. Back to the topic of Hungary, the problem it seems is Hungary just have not produced many talented players in the past 20+ years. All of their neighbors have produced at the least one or two players who have gone on to become stars with either club or country but who is the last Hungarian who has really made a name for himself? |
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| Winslow | Nov 1 2011, 03:04 PM Post #4 |
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What, no mention of Scotland yet? One thing that distinguished Belgium over a long stretch was its record of qualifying for six straight WCs from '82 to '02--by my count, no other European team had ever done that by going through the qualifying groups. Spain has now beaten that mark by qualifying for the last seven finals. (Of course, Germany and Italy have longer streaks, but both were allowed to skip qualifying on multiple occasions, either as WC hosts or defending champions.) What's happened since? I agree it's mainly a shortage of top talent. The Eastern Bloc's disintegration is a subtopic worthy of its own thread. |
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| Mr. Pither | Nov 1 2011, 03:31 PM Post #5 |
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The Scots are too busy now trying to master tennis! ![]() Scotland almost matched Belgium by qualifying for every World Cup from 1974-1990. Since then, however, they have only qualified once and that was back in 1998. Unlike Belgium though Scotland have never advanced out of group play. I recall discussing this topic on here before too but for Scotland I think their decline is due in large part to the reduced opportunities Scottish players now have in the English Premier league since the Bosman era opened the borders up to an unlimited amount of EU players. Look at English clubs in the 70s and 80s, the top clubs were all filled with Scottish players (plus a fare share of Irish and Welsh too) since then it is now rare to see a Scottish player on a top level English club. Right now I can only recall Darren Fletcher at Manchester United. |
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| Rufus T. Firefly | Nov 1 2011, 10:19 PM Post #6 |
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Pither, there also is Charlie Adam at Liverpool as a Scot playing with one of the better English clubs. But your overall point about limited opportunities for Scots at top level English clubs is a good one I think to explaining Scotland's fall. What is interetsing to me about Hungary is that in the past decade at one point or another almost all of the former nations from the old Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia have made a strong run at qualifying for either or sometimes both the World and European Nations Cup. Small countries like Slovenia, Slovakia, Montenegro and Bosnia, not to mention more established teams like Croatia, Serbia and the Czech Republic have qualified or come close to qualifying for major tournaments. Other former eastern bloc countries like Poland, Romania and Bulgaria have had their successes too. But not Hungary. But Hungary simply do not produce enough quality players now to be competitive. Gone are the days of players like Puskas and Albert. |
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| hobbes | Nov 2 2011, 12:58 AM Post #7 |
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I was going to mention Scotland. ![]() One of the reasons I think western nations like Netherlands and the Scandanavian countries (and Belgium to a lesser extend, though they seem to be rebounding) are strong is due (in part) to their immigrant populations. That's something you don't see in Scotland and some of the old eastern bloc nations like Romania, Hungry and Bulgaria. Yugoslavia was always one of the greatest nations at developing talent. There never seemed to be a shortage of quality in their side and yet they never seemed to do much with it. Even splintered as they are, I think there's a lot of talented players per capita there and I think the X factor for the former Soviet states and the former Yugoslav countries is that there's a lot of pride in playing for their nation due to its newness. Some players from smaller nations almost treat international duty like a nuisance, but countries like Serbia, Bosnia & Herzigovina, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine. . . they are fully committed every time out and they're tough to play against and all have tasted some success. At the very least they're not an easy match. After years of underachieving, Croatia went to World Cup semi in their first try. I do think that that has a shelf life and within 10 years a lot of those nations will be struggling to advance to tournaments because they don't have large populations and they don't have strong domestic leagues. Romania and Bulgaria tasted their best era just after independence. I don't think that's a coincidence. But now that wave of nationalism has maybe passed. Colombia is an interesting example because I've always liked their youth teams. I keep thinking they're due to be one of the top three sides in South America and they haven't had any kind of breakthrough. BTW most of the Scottish side plays in England now, though not necessarily in the EPL. Gary Caldwell, Phil Bardsley, Christophe Berra, Alan Hutton, Kenny Miller's in the championship now. Craig Gordon in goal. Gilks the Blackpool keeper has gotten called up a few times recently . . . there's still plenty from the old firm, but there are a lot of Scottish internationals in England. They're just not very good. cheers, hobbes |
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| Sporting | Nov 2 2011, 01:21 AM Post #8 |
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How about Austria? They used to have a decent team in the 1950s. But maybe the lack of a competive domestic league, the influence of Germany, the relatively small population and the fact that winter sports are possibly more popular there have all combined to create, let's not beat about the bush, a pretty useless national team. Furthermore, I don't think an Austrian club has won a European competition. One thing which may also have something to do with it: the relative lack of immigration in the country and a sense of isolation compared with other western countries, making the nation a sort of quasi ex-Eastern bloc nation without ever having experienced totalitarianism. |
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| Johnbuildr | Nov 2 2011, 09:56 AM Post #9 |
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The other thing about Austria is their strong concentration and emphasis on the winter skiiing sports. Many of their very top athletes are encouraged to go that direction and do. I don't know enough about their culture to say for sure, but I have the impression soccer runs a distant second to skiing sports. Not to mention size of pool. Germany and France' total populations run to 10 times that of Austria.... |
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Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum | |
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| shelsoccer | Nov 2 2011, 11:16 AM Post #10 |
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The immigration argument is one that makes sense to me. Belgium may be finding their way back because of that. By welcoming immigrants (or at least granting them quick citizenship), you can compensate for the lack of domestic quality. We've seen that with countries as varied as Sweden, Japan and Tunisia. How that relates to my tenously held theory about domestic unrest and struggles on the field, I'm not sure. |
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| ursus arctos | Nov 2 2011, 01:51 PM Post #11 |
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Switzerland is the best current example of the immigration theory at work. John's supposition about Austrian culture is right. Skiing is absolutely dominant, other winter sports come next, with football behind those. Football's place in Austrian (and particularly Viennese) culture tracked the rise and fall of the industrial working class, which is no longer a force in Austria. |
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| Nkono | Nov 3 2011, 04:05 AM Post #12 |
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It will be fascinating to see what Switzerland's "multi cultural" young team will do as they mature. There is a lot of potential there but it is still a young group and the multi national ties of some of the young players means Switzerland better cap tie them soon or risk losing some of them to their countries of origin. In Africa the cause I think of Cameroon's downfall has been the opposite of what has been pointed out here about European and South American teams who have fallen in level as a successful generation of players leaves the scene. Cameroon currently has a good group of players, many of whom are enjoying success at the club level in Europe but as a national team Cameroon are going through a poor moment as the team seem less of a team than a collection of individuals. One of the theories going around Cameroon is these players success wth their clubs have made them less hungry with the national team. The pride and commitment that Cameroon were known for during the 80's, 90's and early 00's, has not been present recently even though individually there is a good collection of players. |
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| xeneize | Nov 4 2011, 01:40 PM Post #13 |
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I think there are just a handful of national teams, Brazil, Argentina, Germany and Italy who are almost always going to be good. Every once in a while due to circumstances they will have a poor World Cup or continental nations cup but overall they can be relied upon year after year to be contenders. A few other countries like France and Holland have consolidated themselves as being contenders almost all of the time too but every once in awhile they have a generation of players of lesser standard and they slip down a bit which is why I have not included them with the top four. England are pretty consistent in their play but are just below them, almost always a tricky opponent but just not quite as good as the other countries I have named. I think the jury is still out on Spain and we will need more time as the current generation of players pass from the scene to see if Spain's current success is a sign of them jumping up to join the elite or if they are just experiencing success due to a great generation of players. The rest of the world's national teams go up and down in form. Teams like Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, Russia, Czech Republic, Poland, Croatia, Romania, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, Mexico, USA, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, have success depending on their generation of players. Sometimes they can be good, even very good when they get a good group of players combined with a good coach. But they do not maintain that level of play tournament after tournament and that is what separates them from the better national teams. As for a country like Hungary who once were good, their decline predated the fall of the Iron Curtain. I think they had success because of a succession of good generations of players but unfortunately for them they have not come close to repeating such a group |
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| Lalo | Nov 10 2011, 04:45 PM Post #14 |
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xeneize for a Boca fan you are pretty intelligent! I think you have made an excellent post with your theory that there are just a few national teams which consistently are good, and you have named them. Just look at the World Cup finalists since 1970 and they are in that select group you have named. As for the rest, they come and go depending on their group of players and coaches' abilities. This runs in cycles, some nations are able to recover quicker than others, Hungary, the basis for this discussion, is one of those which is taking a long time to recover. Belgium are showing signs of becoming competitive again while Scotland, I think are victims of their small population base and the fact their players only play in England or Scotland. I do think small nations like Uruguay, Croacia, Czech Republic, benefit by having their players in a variety of leagues where they get exposure to different styles of play. Scotland's players do not get that benefit as they are all in either England or Scotland.
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| raconteur | Nov 18 2011, 03:09 PM Post #15 |
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That is a really interesting theory Lalo. I do not know if there is a way to really test that theory. Portugal is a relatively small nation population wise but they have often been a semifinalist or better in the past decade in international competitions. Most of their team now plays in Spain and England with some scattered to Germany and a few still home based. I suppose the fact they have the majority of their team playing in leagues as diverse as England's and Spain's supports your theory. I imagine this is a relatively new phenomenon which Lalo has identified, something which has happened post Bosman because in the 70s and 80s when Scotland, for example, were perhaps the best team from the British Isles, their team was entirely English or Scottish based. But look where Hungary's national team players play their club football. They are now spread across European leagues. But that experience they have gained has not been translated into national team success. That would seem to be an argument against Lalo's theory. |
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I think you have made an excellent post with your theory that there are just a few national teams which consistently are good, and you have named them. Just look at the World Cup finalists since 1970 and they are in that select group you have named. As for the rest, they come and go depending on their group of players and coaches' abilities. This runs in cycles, some nations are able to recover quicker than others, Hungary, the basis for this discussion, is one of those which is taking a long time to recover. Belgium are showing signs of becoming competitive again while Scotland, I think are victims of their small population base and the fact their players only play in England or Scotland. I do think small nations like Uruguay, Croacia, Czech Republic, benefit by having their players in a variety of leagues where they get exposure to different styles of play. Scotland's players do not get that benefit as they are all in either England or Scotland.
6:35 AM Jul 11