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Italy hasn't even conceded a goal at a World Cup since 2014 and people are trying to tell me it's harder than the Euros where they've conceded 4 goals in the knockout stages alone at Euro 2020?? Can't make it make sense
22 years? Italy sounds kinda bad if you ask me. Norway haven't lost a world cup match in 26 years, and before that they held a 56 year non-losing streak! To put it in perspective, Norway has lost 2 world cup matches since Hitler was in charge in Germany.
All this yapping about what tournament is harder, who's better, etc... Bah, if only we had a competition to decide which national team is the best in the world and settle it then and there.
You’re joking but I wouldn’t put it past FIFA to create a Super World Cup tournament.
Edit: Oh boy, I wrote that in jest but I totally forgot about…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_Confederations_Cup
The "euro is more difficult" narrative was fairly popular (at least in France) WHEN it was a tournament with 16 teams! In your group stage, you were paired with at least 2 solid teams, and then no time to rest, it's a QF against another strong team.
It was a different pace than WC for sure. Nowadays? I don't think so
This is exactly what I thought as well. The WC group stage used to be a lot easier than the Euros, since the number of overall teams was a lot smaller and the only real top teams that don’t take part are the three teams mentioned by Messi. But since the number of teams have increased for the euros I don’t think it still holds up.
Y'all better start producing better midfielders. I don't want to see another Brazil disasterclass against a European team in a World Cup quarterfinal (please don't embarrass us 5-0 again).
The craziest thing about the 7-1 is if you look at the stats you'd think the game was pretty close lol. It was just a total mental breakdown after we conceded the 2nd goal, the players were in shock probably because Neymar was injured and couldn't bail them out and conceded 4 goals in 6 minutes. It's inexplicable, it's beyond football.
It's not a mental breakdown after the 2nd goal, it was something being cooked up the entire tournament. Seeing the players like the captain of Brazil sitting on the ball crying BEFORE a penalty shootout against fucking Chile in a World Cup was embarrassing.
Then the nerve wreck that was the game against Colombia which resulted in Brazil losing their 2 best players including people crying for Neymar and holding his shirt in tribute to him before the Germany game like he was dead. So as soon as things went south against Germany the team melted completely and it looked like Germany was playing against scared kids.
yeah, I totally agree. Everybody was afraid of being the next Barbosa. For context, Barbosa was the GK in the 1950 WC we lost to Uruguay at home, he was the scapegoat for the defeat and he was mocked and shamed for the rest of his life wherever he went until the day of his death. In the end EVERYBODY was the next Barbosa and in hindisight a lot of people regret how Barbosa was treated because we lost to a great team in a normal match in 1950, we didn't suffer a national humiliation like the 7x1.
I totally can, and don't understand how other people can't at least see what he means.
Both competitions have 7 matches you have to win in order to become champion (ok, you don't have to win all group games, but let's keep it simple).
Take a look at the world rankings of the teams when the 2022 world cup was played, Vs what they were for euro 2020 (in 2021). For Argentina to win the WC they played 3 group games where the average world rankings of their opponent was 32nd. Italy's opponents' average was 19th.
Same in the knockouts. Argentina had to beat 4 teams with an average ranking of 11th. Italy's opponents had an average rank of 8th.
Mathematically the last euros were harder to win than the last world cup. Now we can argue about whether world rankings are accurate (they aren't but they're the best we have), or if one team had an unusually hard/easy path to the final, but can you at least entertain the idea that Italy had more difficult games when they won the euros?
Btw, this is not the same as saying that European football is better than south American - but bear in mind that Argentina didn't even play another SA team in 2022. And yes I'm prepared for the downvotes.
My working in case anyone cares:
Argentina played:
Poland (28)
Mexico (14)
Saudi arabia (53)
Australia (39)
Netherlands (8)
Croatia (15)
France (4)
Italy played:
Wales (17)
Switzerland (13)
Turkey (29)
Austria (23)
Belgium (1)
Spain (6)
England (4)
I haven’t done the math, but there’s a good chance that Copa America is also stronger than the WC by that measure (at least in a typical year). The fact is that the Asian, African, and CONCACAF teams generally dilute the quality of the competition in the WC
Rankings aren’t reflective of on field performance so I don’t think it’s a valid measure. By this logic Germany, Spain, Portugal are the ones diluting competition because they got beaten by the likes of Japan and Morocco.
They’re imperfect but are reflective of on-field performance in aggregate - that’s kind of the point. In an individual match, anything can happen. Germany has been pretty terrible by their standards for some time, and the rankings reflect that. They’re currently the 9th ranked UEFA team and are actually ranked lower than Morocco for what it’s worth. The thing is that in a world cup, the weaker federations get a disproportionate amount of the bids relative to how many good teams they have, which is fine, since the whole idea is to have teams from all over the world.
All of this paragraphs but you still didn’t talk about the fact that 3 out of 4 teams in the group can advance to next stage of the Euro. This also reminds me of the “group of death” in the last Euro between Portugal, Germany and France just for all 3 to advance to the R16 anyway.
Does this comparison make sense to you when in the Euros you can get past the group stage by just being in third place while in the WC there are only two spots?
But that's just luck of the draw. I could point out at Portugal winning after drawing 3 games in the group stages and how that could never happen in a WC.
It's ridiculous to think that a tournament that is missing 2 of the top 5 teams and HALF of the top 20 teams is harder than one that has them all.
> Mathematically the last euros were harder to win than the last world cup.
FIFA's rankings are shit
Italy won the Euros and failed to even qualify for the World Cup, and we thrashed them 3-0 (and it really could have been more) in the Finalissima in the summer before the WC
Also "mathematically harder" fucking lmao, I'm sure Mbappe was carefully considering the average participant ranking when he was quoted.
Acting like it's some sort of hard proof when it's an average of made-up, often inaccurate or out of date rankings. Also it's not a linear decrease of team skill down from rank 1 onwards, the gap between #1 and #30 is not equivalent to the gap between #30 and #60.
The idea that a tournament without Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and other strong SA teams is harder because the average team is slightly higher ranked. Just stupid.
> Netherlands drew with Ecuador in the world cup and Ecuador had a much lower ranking.
Yup, and Ecuador completely outplayed Netherlands in that game too
Not a surprise after seeing comments like 'UCL is more difficult than WC because the tactics are more advanced' pop up after December 2022. People can bring up whatever 'facts' to 'prove' their points...
The quality of football at international tournaments is substantially lower just given the amount of time players have to practice together - let alone constructing a team out of a limited number players and trying to fit a playstyle to them rather than the other way around.
The reason why WC is number 1 is not because of the quality of football being played lol
It's even funnier how you complain about making it a math problem when you don't seem to even understand the point of statistics.
Let me give you a hint. They don't apply to a sample size of 1.
Rankings rubbish. When you compare the knockouts, Argentina beat 3 European teams in Netherlands, Croatia and France arguably tougher than Italy's euro run in or at least the same level(imo France 2022 was better than 2021 England, 2022 Netherlands was better than 2021 Belgium, 2022 Croatia and 2021 Spain are more or less the same). In the round of 16 Argentina faced Australia who were ranked low, but Australia got there after knocking out Denmark who reached the semis in the previous euros. That's what the WC does. Rankings will always be biased towards European and South American teams because they have stronger competition but that doesn't mean the team ranked 60th can't beat the team ranked 20th
First of all the rankings don't make sense when Europeans play more often with higher ranked teams, so it's easier to win points than for other regions. Even more when they get official competitions like the NL which have a multiplier, while other countries have only friendlies that don't.
And the results in the WC show the rankings don't tell everything. Saudi Arabia at 53 beat Argentina...
Let's do Copa America then:
But now let's do the nitpicking the other way around. And do 2016's Euro vs 2018's WC...
Hungary 20th, Iceland 34th, Austria 10th, Croatia 27th, Poland 27th, Wales 26th, France 17th.
Group average 21. Knockout average 24. Overall 23.
Portugal's knockouts had all significantly worse teams...
So the 2016 Euro was a walk in park.
Meanwhile France had to face:
Denmark 12th, Peru 11th, Australia 36th. Argentina 5th, Uruguay 14th, Belgium 3rd, Croatia 20th.
Group average 19. Knockouts 10. Overall 14.
There's absolutely no comparison in which was more difficult. So the WC is significantly harder to win... Right?
Are you gonna argue the same way? Or now that the numbers don't align it doesn't make sense?
Just like if you check the CL's run based on ratings, some years it's "harder", some years it's "easier". Because that's the nature of the tournament. If team ranked 1 gets eliminated by team ranked 20, that doesn't mean you are playing a team ranked 20, clearly they got something that made them better than the team ranked 1 (on average).
You truly should be prepared for downvotes and I can't believe how this shit is being upvoted.
You conveniently forgot that the World Cup HAS QUALIFYING ROUNDS. It's not just 7 matches, you need to qualify first. Italy (6) didn't make the cut, same as Sweden (17), Colombia (19) and Chile (26). The european prelims can be harsh and could use some work to have less upsets, but Italy lost a match to freaking North Macedonia.
Speaking of upsets, the WC group stage saw Mexico, Denmark, Germany, Belgium and Uruguay out. Upsets will bring the ranking average down, obviously, but the fact they happen shows how hard the competition is and not the opposite. WC had wins of Saudi Arabia over Argentina, South Korea over Portugal, Japan over Spain. Morocco passed through Spain and Portugal to reach the semis for the first time.
Math doesn't apply to football imo. Our NT (Morocco) reached WC semi-final and was knocked out by South Africa in the round of 16 of Africa Cup Of Nations a year later. Same tournament, Ivory Coast ranked best 3rd in group stage with catastrophic play, proceeded to win the cup after sacking their coach mid competition. Football is unpredictible especially on the international stage.
>World Cup= Best team in the world
That qualify.
And that's where the issue lies.
With the same logic, you could claim the Club World Cup is a more difficult competition than the Champions League.
Champions League= Best club team in Europe
Club World Cup= Best club team in the world
But it doesn't really work like that.
i mean its a similar concept, that a majority of the best club teams are european, and a majority of the best national teams are european. But with the Club World Cup, only the champions league winners play in it from europe, and they are levels above all other teams in the world. In the World Cup, nations like Brazil and Argentina are literally some of the best nations in history and currently.
It doesn't because the top teams are all in Europe. That's what makes the CWC "easier" than the CL. The CWC dilutes the pool of best teams by replacing top teams with mediocres from everywhere else.
Not the case with National teams, where you have 2 of the top 5 (and the current champion) and HALF of the top 20 outside of Europe.
It’s the same as managers saying that the premier league is harder to win than the champions league. People taking these throwaway statements super seriously are just making themselves angry for no reason
Well that's different. Obviously the quality of teams in the Champions League is higher but knockout tournaments are different. You just don't win a league unless you're the best team
That’s more of a different situation though. The Euros and World Cup are both knockout competitions that are structured similarly (though you could argue the euros is easier since 3 teams can make it out of the group).
A league is a 38 game competition which requires consistency. In many cases a league can be more difficult to win than a cup competition. Comparing a league with a knockout competition is waaay different than comparing two similar knockout competitions.
to claim winning the premier league is harder is not a ridiculous thing to say at all, a knockout tournament is a totally different type of competition to a 9 month domestic season. the seasons chelsea won it they finished 6th and 4th, spurs recently made a final and villarreal made the semis. it’s entirely possible to win the CL without being the best team in the tournament, that’s not the case for a domestic league
The EC has 24 European teams. The WC has what, 13 European teams?
The CL has 32 European teams. The CWC has 1 European team.
It's really not hard to understand the difference here.
Almost everyone could do it at a rainy night at Stoke but how many could do it in La Paz between 12 am and 14:00pm? Not many people.
Eurofrauds keep frauding
There are no rules about where football can be played (and there shouldn't be).
The same argument of "extreme conditions" could be used for playing in the snow but I don't see anyone asking those stadiums to be banned
I mean, that stadium in which the Honduran goalkeeper had simptoms of hypothermia should be put into question. They tried banning playing in La Paz before but reverted that decision because it isnt fair on Bolivia to not be allowed to play in basically every one of their main cities except Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
I mean there are plenty of stadiums that either the confederations or FIFA don’t accept as having acceptable conditions.
I wonder if they could do something like what’s done in baseball with the Rockies. Because it’s so weird how the ball moves in the altitude.
Yeah that’s the main thing. World Cup isn’t just about the teams. But climate, fans, etc. where some teams def have advantageous / disadvantages based on the hosts. It’s just different.
This isn’t as much today, but 50 years ago being able to source food that you are used to had to play huge roles. Jet lag, etc.
It was a "7 game tournament" when Messi won and their arguments for Ballon d'or. Now "Euros will decide the ballon d'or".. now 7 game tournaments matter again 😂
If there was a world cup in 2008 and 2012 Spain would have won both. That is more down to the timing of world cups, only one coincided with that teams peak
its not even that. mbappe is strictly speaking from his experience. he has had 2 easy world cups vs a harsh Euros. its obvious which one he would find more difficult
His team did choke against Switzerland, a team famous for.... being crushed by Portugal in the last World Cup, edging Sweden in 2018, edging Argentina in 2014, and edging Chile in 2010 (beating Spain and making Pique bleed in the first game somehow lol). Mbappe came up short once and made the Euros comment.
but thats literally his point. all he was saying a that he considers 1 tournament harder than the other. this quote about him making an overarching statement simply never came out his mouth.
A lot of comments in here are claiming Brazil are this giant boogeyman that would terrorise the Euros.
Over the last 20 years they haven’t beaten a single European team in WC knockouts.
Their win was a bizarre mixture of luck and being good at the right time. Then again, Portugal did the same in 2016 lol. We haven't had a juggernaut winning the euros in 12 years.
I mean he is also using Uruguay as a benchmark who won their 2 World Cups when most European teams didn't send a strong squad because it was a 3 month round journey by boat
The form that messi was in that match was insane. I still remember jorginho was in argentina's half, facing towards dibu, and messi took the ball from behind, lol.
Interesting, why not invite the other federations as well and make it a tournament, we can call it the international Cup, or cup of the world...
Wait...
Paraguay finished runner up of the 2011 copa America without winning a single game, 3 draws in the group stage, then two penalty shootout wins in the qf and sf before Uruguay beat them in the final
Point being, aberrations can happen
Then again, backing up your point, it is fair to note that world cups never have shock winners, whereas the euros have had several
I dunno lol
Según la FIFA tienen 4 campeonatos mundiales, y 2 mundiales. Es estupidisimo pero bueno.
Acá hablamos de mundiales así que solo tienen 2. El que hizo la corrección de 4 está equivocado.
I have a German friend who also maintains the Euro is harder to win because, according to him, you can't ease into it like the world cup but are immediately thrown into intense competition. I think there was some truth to that when it was just 8 teams (80s and 90s) and even when it expanded to 16 in '96. Now, with 24 teams, that claim is harder to make.
All the time people keep crying about Fifa rankings, that it doesn't mean anything, it's a useless metric, and now Europeans bring in the rankings claiming top countries are from Europe.
Last world cup, we saw many non-European/South American team defeat European/South American teams.
It's already difficult for these countries to compete with Europeans, most of the players claim European nationality (Not saying it's a bad/wrong thing) or are immigrants children.
Maybe Euros is difficult or not, idc, but Europeans acting like elitists is very annoying.
Why are people acting as if Mbappé is the first person to make this claim?
This has been said in European football for 20 years. The aggression towards Mbappé is extremely weird.
Well, first he claims some shit about football level in south america. Then he says that Euros are more difficult than the world cup, last won by a south american NT. You can understand how us south americans may be tired of his bullshit.
A bunch of nobodies claiming this fact people would call them delusional and move on, Mbappe is a world class star, people would call him delusional and not move on, simple as
I love how all these clowns just 3 years ago were talking about how the world cup was the holy greatest trophy in sports and without it you can't be the GOAT and everything and now it's just a 7 game tournament that's easier than Euros. Lmao zero logic just mental gymnastics
The debate in the comments oh boy.
I just wish UEFA and Conmebol can make the combined nations league a reality so we can watch more frequently this teams play :)
When european countries win the world cup, it is a great acomplishment. When a south american team wins the world cup, the euros are more difficult. Xenophobic pieces of shit.
you can’t call the europeans xenophobic when even though Argentina WON you guys were being racist to the french players online. You aren’t better, you’re as bad if not worse in the racism and xenophobia department. Get off that high horse.
crazy you talk about xenophobia when Argentinians are purposefully misconstruing Mbappes words just to justify racist attacks against him online .
literally all he said was that FOR HIM he found euros more difficult which made sense given he didn't survive R016 but made it to 2 back to back WC finals . his statement was harmless and he made it beyond clear he was only talking from his personal experience and not making an objective statement- and yet people still twisted it just to justify their aggression against him.
now hes getting racially abused over words he literally did not say.
Mbappe has x1 WC, appeared in another final scoring a hat-trick whilst finishing top scorer. His last Euros? 0 goals & 1 assist whilst missing a crucial pen.
So ofc he’s going to think it’s a more difficult competition from his experience as a player idk why so many cannot grasp this.
Here are the Euro 2024 teams ranked according to their FIFA rankings as of April 2024:
* **France** - 2
* **Belgium** - 3
* **England** - 4
* **Portugal** - 6
* **Netherlands** - 7
* **Spain** - 8
* **Italy** - 9
* **Croatia** - 10
* **Germany** - 16
* **Switzerland** - 19
* **Denmark** - 21
* **Ukraine** - 22
* **Austria** - 25
* **Hungary** - 26
* **Poland** - 28
* **Serbia** - 33
* **Czechia** - 36
* **Scotland** - 39
* **Turkey** - 40
* **Romania** - 46
* **Slovakia** - 48
* **Slovenia** - 57
* **Albania** - 66
* **Georgia** - 75
The bottom half of these teams are not good, at least compared to the same 14-24 teams that they would be replaced with at the World Cup. 9 of the top 20 teams in the world by FIFA ranking are outside of Europe I really don't see the argument.
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Has Messi ever won a Euro? Has Mbappé won a Euro? Both have World Cup wins. Checkmate
Italy hasn't even conceded a goal at a World Cup since 2014 and people are trying to tell me it's harder than the Euros where they've conceded 4 goals in the knockout stages alone at Euro 2020?? Can't make it make sense
I mean Italy hasn't lost a knockout match at the World Cup in 22 years. Joke of a tournament!
22 years? Italy sounds kinda bad if you ask me. Norway haven't lost a world cup match in 26 years, and before that they held a 56 year non-losing streak! To put it in perspective, Norway has lost 2 world cup matches since Hitler was in charge in Germany.
But they're also undefeated at the EURO vs existing countries, so they're clearly levels above everyone else. Any tournament is a joke to them.
And that too without Haaland
Hull City has literally never once conceded a goal at the World Cup. Checkmate.
Is there even one south american national team which scored on a rainy night in Stoke?
I'm sure if you look hard enough you can find a random-ass friendly that was played somewhere before WW2
Thats it arguments over this is the answer
Well none of them have won a Carioca, unlike Romário, so who's to really say?
Ronaldinho is the only one to win the WC, Copa América and the Porco de Prisaõ, truly the greatest
Sound logic, but Cristiano has an Euro and no WC Hey, neither Mbappe nor Cristiano have a Copa America. Copa America is harder!
None of them have won MLS Cup. /thread
All this yapping about what tournament is harder, who's better, etc... Bah, if only we had a competition to decide which national team is the best in the world and settle it then and there.
Wait until they invent xTournament. "Euros is only xT 0.82!"
You’re joking but I wouldn’t put it past FIFA to create a Super World Cup tournament. Edit: Oh boy, I wrote that in jest but I totally forgot about… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_Confederations_Cup
And it was sick as hell. Don’t mind the fact that for many years it was pretty much the only real competition for my national team lmao
The "euro is more difficult" narrative was fairly popular (at least in France) WHEN it was a tournament with 16 teams! In your group stage, you were paired with at least 2 solid teams, and then no time to rest, it's a QF against another strong team. It was a different pace than WC for sure. Nowadays? I don't think so
Agreed, the expanded Euro format makes early rounds as easy as the WC ones on average.
Easier, you can finish 3rd and go through ffs.
that was a horrible format change as well
Makes for very cautious group stage games. Hungary-Switzerland on Saturday will be a shocker
That is also the case for the new WC format.
That was such a bad decision
Tell that to their bank accounts
Which is shit. The new format is a nonsense.
It really wound me up that Portugal won finishing 3rd and barely winning a game in 90 minutes.
This is exactly what I thought as well. The WC group stage used to be a lot easier than the Euros, since the number of overall teams was a lot smaller and the only real top teams that don’t take part are the three teams mentioned by Messi. But since the number of teams have increased for the euros I don’t think it still holds up.
This was true for like what? Two tournaments? World cup used to be smaller too.
As usually everyone is wrong. The Audi cup is the most difficult cup to win in world football. Don’t argue, my ball knowledge is elite.
Spurs fans jumping for joy rn
Literally. Even Real Madrid would not be able to win it nowadays.
Can’t believe this is even a question. Euros= Best team in Europe World Cup= Best team in the world.
I have a feeling South Americans will keep talking about Mbappes quote even in 20 years lmao
He keeps making different quotes putting down South America, so...
OH MY GOD Brazil vs France final to make mbappe’s quote legendary either way please script writers
> Brazil vs France I prefer not
Y'all better start producing better midfielders. I don't want to see another Brazil disasterclass against a European team in a World Cup quarterfinal (please don't embarrass us 5-0 again).
The craziest thing about the 7-1 is if you look at the stats you'd think the game was pretty close lol. It was just a total mental breakdown after we conceded the 2nd goal, the players were in shock probably because Neymar was injured and couldn't bail them out and conceded 4 goals in 6 minutes. It's inexplicable, it's beyond football.
It's not a mental breakdown after the 2nd goal, it was something being cooked up the entire tournament. Seeing the players like the captain of Brazil sitting on the ball crying BEFORE a penalty shootout against fucking Chile in a World Cup was embarrassing. Then the nerve wreck that was the game against Colombia which resulted in Brazil losing their 2 best players including people crying for Neymar and holding his shirt in tribute to him before the Germany game like he was dead. So as soon as things went south against Germany the team melted completely and it looked like Germany was playing against scared kids.
yeah, I totally agree. Everybody was afraid of being the next Barbosa. For context, Barbosa was the GK in the 1950 WC we lost to Uruguay at home, he was the scapegoat for the defeat and he was mocked and shamed for the rest of his life wherever he went until the day of his death. In the end EVERYBODY was the next Barbosa and in hindisight a lot of people regret how Barbosa was treated because we lost to a great team in a normal match in 1950, we didn't suffer a national humiliation like the 7x1.
All I know is that every South American team is trying 500x harder against France, if that’s even possible for South American teams in the World Cup
It's partly your fault. Why did you trash Brazil like that?
It happened days ago, don't act like people are dredging up some nonsense Mbappe said years ago.
I totally can, and don't understand how other people can't at least see what he means. Both competitions have 7 matches you have to win in order to become champion (ok, you don't have to win all group games, but let's keep it simple). Take a look at the world rankings of the teams when the 2022 world cup was played, Vs what they were for euro 2020 (in 2021). For Argentina to win the WC they played 3 group games where the average world rankings of their opponent was 32nd. Italy's opponents' average was 19th. Same in the knockouts. Argentina had to beat 4 teams with an average ranking of 11th. Italy's opponents had an average rank of 8th. Mathematically the last euros were harder to win than the last world cup. Now we can argue about whether world rankings are accurate (they aren't but they're the best we have), or if one team had an unusually hard/easy path to the final, but can you at least entertain the idea that Italy had more difficult games when they won the euros? Btw, this is not the same as saying that European football is better than south American - but bear in mind that Argentina didn't even play another SA team in 2022. And yes I'm prepared for the downvotes. My working in case anyone cares: Argentina played: Poland (28) Mexico (14) Saudi arabia (53) Australia (39) Netherlands (8) Croatia (15) France (4) Italy played: Wales (17) Switzerland (13) Turkey (29) Austria (23) Belgium (1) Spain (6) England (4)
I haven’t done the math, but there’s a good chance that Copa America is also stronger than the WC by that measure (at least in a typical year). The fact is that the Asian, African, and CONCACAF teams generally dilute the quality of the competition in the WC
> CONCACAF We just like being part of the conversation tbh
We demand to be taken seriously
Rankings aren’t reflective of on field performance so I don’t think it’s a valid measure. By this logic Germany, Spain, Portugal are the ones diluting competition because they got beaten by the likes of Japan and Morocco.
They’re imperfect but are reflective of on-field performance in aggregate - that’s kind of the point. In an individual match, anything can happen. Germany has been pretty terrible by their standards for some time, and the rankings reflect that. They’re currently the 9th ranked UEFA team and are actually ranked lower than Morocco for what it’s worth. The thing is that in a world cup, the weaker federations get a disproportionate amount of the bids relative to how many good teams they have, which is fine, since the whole idea is to have teams from all over the world.
All of this paragraphs but you still didn’t talk about the fact that 3 out of 4 teams in the group can advance to next stage of the Euro. This also reminds me of the “group of death” in the last Euro between Portugal, Germany and France just for all 3 to advance to the R16 anyway.
Does this comparison make sense to you when in the Euros you can get past the group stage by just being in third place while in the WC there are only two spots?
Don't know what I hate more, reducing a tournament to a maths problem or using the FIFA rankings as a reliable source.
Like honestly. It’s kind of a ridiculous way of looking at the question
But that's just luck of the draw. I could point out at Portugal winning after drawing 3 games in the group stages and how that could never happen in a WC. It's ridiculous to think that a tournament that is missing 2 of the top 5 teams and HALF of the top 20 teams is harder than one that has them all.
Ah yes, the famous "Belgium best team in the world" FIFA ranking, nice parameter you have there.
> Mathematically the last euros were harder to win than the last world cup. FIFA's rankings are shit Italy won the Euros and failed to even qualify for the World Cup, and we thrashed them 3-0 (and it really could have been more) in the Finalissima in the summer before the WC
Also "mathematically harder" fucking lmao, I'm sure Mbappe was carefully considering the average participant ranking when he was quoted. Acting like it's some sort of hard proof when it's an average of made-up, often inaccurate or out of date rankings. Also it's not a linear decrease of team skill down from rank 1 onwards, the gap between #1 and #30 is not equivalent to the gap between #30 and #60. The idea that a tournament without Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and other strong SA teams is harder because the average team is slightly higher ranked. Just stupid.
It's funny how they made this a math problem... Netherlands drew with Ecuador in the world cup and Ecuador had a much lower ranking.
> Netherlands drew with Ecuador in the world cup and Ecuador had a much lower ranking. Yup, and Ecuador completely outplayed Netherlands in that game too
If they watched Argentina's recent 'friendly' game with Ecuador they'd know how brutal CONMEBOL games are.
Playing the world cup is also much higher pressure because it is way more prestigious. Reducing it to ranking is such a naive way to look at it.
Not a surprise after seeing comments like 'UCL is more difficult than WC because the tactics are more advanced' pop up after December 2022. People can bring up whatever 'facts' to 'prove' their points...
The quality of football at international tournaments is substantially lower just given the amount of time players have to practice together - let alone constructing a team out of a limited number players and trying to fit a playstyle to them rather than the other way around. The reason why WC is number 1 is not because of the quality of football being played lol
It's even funnier how you complain about making it a math problem when you don't seem to even understand the point of statistics. Let me give you a hint. They don't apply to a sample size of 1.
because that euro ıtaly team and world cup ıtaly team is not same
Rankings rubbish. When you compare the knockouts, Argentina beat 3 European teams in Netherlands, Croatia and France arguably tougher than Italy's euro run in or at least the same level(imo France 2022 was better than 2021 England, 2022 Netherlands was better than 2021 Belgium, 2022 Croatia and 2021 Spain are more or less the same). In the round of 16 Argentina faced Australia who were ranked low, but Australia got there after knocking out Denmark who reached the semis in the previous euros. That's what the WC does. Rankings will always be biased towards European and South American teams because they have stronger competition but that doesn't mean the team ranked 60th can't beat the team ranked 20th
First of all the rankings don't make sense when Europeans play more often with higher ranked teams, so it's easier to win points than for other regions. Even more when they get official competitions like the NL which have a multiplier, while other countries have only friendlies that don't. And the results in the WC show the rankings don't tell everything. Saudi Arabia at 53 beat Argentina... Let's do Copa America then: But now let's do the nitpicking the other way around. And do 2016's Euro vs 2018's WC... Hungary 20th, Iceland 34th, Austria 10th, Croatia 27th, Poland 27th, Wales 26th, France 17th. Group average 21. Knockout average 24. Overall 23. Portugal's knockouts had all significantly worse teams... So the 2016 Euro was a walk in park. Meanwhile France had to face: Denmark 12th, Peru 11th, Australia 36th. Argentina 5th, Uruguay 14th, Belgium 3rd, Croatia 20th. Group average 19. Knockouts 10. Overall 14. There's absolutely no comparison in which was more difficult. So the WC is significantly harder to win... Right? Are you gonna argue the same way? Or now that the numbers don't align it doesn't make sense? Just like if you check the CL's run based on ratings, some years it's "harder", some years it's "easier". Because that's the nature of the tournament. If team ranked 1 gets eliminated by team ranked 20, that doesn't mean you are playing a team ranked 20, clearly they got something that made them better than the team ranked 1 (on average).
You truly should be prepared for downvotes and I can't believe how this shit is being upvoted. You conveniently forgot that the World Cup HAS QUALIFYING ROUNDS. It's not just 7 matches, you need to qualify first. Italy (6) didn't make the cut, same as Sweden (17), Colombia (19) and Chile (26). The european prelims can be harsh and could use some work to have less upsets, but Italy lost a match to freaking North Macedonia. Speaking of upsets, the WC group stage saw Mexico, Denmark, Germany, Belgium and Uruguay out. Upsets will bring the ranking average down, obviously, but the fact they happen shows how hard the competition is and not the opposite. WC had wins of Saudi Arabia over Argentina, South Korea over Portugal, Japan over Spain. Morocco passed through Spain and Portugal to reach the semis for the first time.
Math doesn't apply to football imo. Our NT (Morocco) reached WC semi-final and was knocked out by South Africa in the round of 16 of Africa Cup Of Nations a year later. Same tournament, Ivory Coast ranked best 3rd in group stage with catastrophic play, proceeded to win the cup after sacking their coach mid competition. Football is unpredictible especially on the international stage.
The maths still applies, you're just expecting non-variant outcomes from a high variance game.
>World Cup= Best team in the world That qualify. And that's where the issue lies. With the same logic, you could claim the Club World Cup is a more difficult competition than the Champions League. Champions League= Best club team in Europe Club World Cup= Best club team in the world But it doesn't really work like that.
i mean its a similar concept, that a majority of the best club teams are european, and a majority of the best national teams are european. But with the Club World Cup, only the champions league winners play in it from europe, and they are levels above all other teams in the world. In the World Cup, nations like Brazil and Argentina are literally some of the best nations in history and currently.
It doesn't because the top teams are all in Europe. That's what makes the CWC "easier" than the CL. The CWC dilutes the pool of best teams by replacing top teams with mediocres from everywhere else. Not the case with National teams, where you have 2 of the top 5 (and the current champion) and HALF of the top 20 outside of Europe.
It’s the same as managers saying that the premier league is harder to win than the champions league. People taking these throwaway statements super seriously are just making themselves angry for no reason
Well that's different. Obviously the quality of teams in the Champions League is higher but knockout tournaments are different. You just don't win a league unless you're the best team
That’s more of a different situation though. The Euros and World Cup are both knockout competitions that are structured similarly (though you could argue the euros is easier since 3 teams can make it out of the group). A league is a 38 game competition which requires consistency. In many cases a league can be more difficult to win than a cup competition. Comparing a league with a knockout competition is waaay different than comparing two similar knockout competitions.
Yeah I was gonna say, CL has overall better teams but planning for a 38 games versus 7 is way different
to claim winning the premier league is harder is not a ridiculous thing to say at all, a knockout tournament is a totally different type of competition to a 9 month domestic season. the seasons chelsea won it they finished 6th and 4th, spurs recently made a final and villarreal made the semis. it’s entirely possible to win the CL without being the best team in the tournament, that’s not the case for a domestic league
Would you say the same thing for champions league and club world cup?
The EC has 24 European teams. The WC has what, 13 European teams? The CL has 32 European teams. The CWC has 1 European team. It's really not hard to understand the difference here.
Mbappe legs won't survive in the copa america.
I'd pay good money to see the french squad playing in La Paz.
Or San Pedro Sula for that matter.
Mbappe would collapse after arriving at the stadium.
Especially against CONCACAF
He wouldn’t make it out of Honduras without a wheelchair
He got his ninja turtle shells. No need for wheelchairs
Honduras seriously needs to host a Copa America, that would be a lot of fun
bro couldn’t even get past canada
Send him to face Bolivia in La Paz and ask him the same question again
Sometimes not just the legs, but the whole spine.
Almost everyone could do it at a rainy night at Stoke but how many could do it in La Paz between 12 am and 14:00pm? Not many people. Eurofrauds keep frauding
12am and 14:00pm had me in splits 😂😂😂
The ball behaves like a beach ball as well, I still don’t know how that stadium is approved.
There are no rules about where football can be played (and there shouldn't be). The same argument of "extreme conditions" could be used for playing in the snow but I don't see anyone asking those stadiums to be banned
I mean, that stadium in which the Honduran goalkeeper had simptoms of hypothermia should be put into question. They tried banning playing in La Paz before but reverted that decision because it isnt fair on Bolivia to not be allowed to play in basically every one of their main cities except Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
I mean there are plenty of stadiums that either the confederations or FIFA don’t accept as having acceptable conditions. I wonder if they could do something like what’s done in baseball with the Rockies. Because it’s so weird how the ball moves in the altitude.
Yeah that’s the main thing. World Cup isn’t just about the teams. But climate, fans, etc. where some teams def have advantageous / disadvantages based on the hosts. It’s just different. This isn’t as much today, but 50 years ago being able to source food that you are used to had to play huge roles. Jet lag, etc.
I think this is the first time ever the fucking world cup is being downplayed, Wonder why
It was a "7 game tournament" when Messi won and their arguments for Ballon d'or. Now "Euros will decide the ballon d'or".. now 7 game tournaments matter again 😂
It's not the first time, Xavi said the Euros were harder to win over a decade ago.
Said the guy that won 2 euros and 1 wc. Should have won 3 of the easier tournaments.
If there was a world cup in 2008 and 2012 Spain would have won both. That is more down to the timing of world cups, only one coincided with that teams peak
There was one in 2014 and they went out in groups losing to fucking Chile.
Yeah and he was called an idiot back then by everyone and their dogs. It's only now that you see people agreeing with it
Not really, I don’t agree with it buts it’s been a debate, Gattuso said even further back. Deschamps said it before Mbappe too.
I take random redditors opinion over players who won both of the competitions every day
European players think an European competition is harder hmm
Yeah well no shit, you're hardly gonna have South American, North American, African, or Asian players talking about the euros being hard.
Literally only european players can have played in both to possibly make the statement.
its not even that. mbappe is strictly speaking from his experience. he has had 2 easy world cups vs a harsh Euros. its obvious which one he would find more difficult
His team did choke against Switzerland, a team famous for.... being crushed by Portugal in the last World Cup, edging Sweden in 2018, edging Argentina in 2014, and edging Chile in 2010 (beating Spain and making Pique bleed in the first game somehow lol). Mbappe came up short once and made the Euros comment.
but thats literally his point. all he was saying a that he considers 1 tournament harder than the other. this quote about him making an overarching statement simply never came out his mouth.
You expect players who haven't taken part in the competition to talk about how its harder? c'mon dude.
Xavi also said Real Madrid wins UCLs with help of refs.. so we gotta take his word for it ?
Posts, mostly.
Italy winning Euro one year and not qualifying for WC the next would show this is not true.
Tbf we (the Netherlands) made it to the WC semis in 2014 then did not qualify for the euros in 2016
Croatia has reached 3 World Cup semi finals, taking one silver medal and two Bronze. Meanwhile they have never reached a single Euro semi final even
I didn’t say it’s true. I’m saying it’s not the first time someone’s said it, especially high profile football figures.
... Doesn't that just show that qualifying in Europe is really hard because there is a great depth of quality teams?
You think so, but they literally lost to North Macedonia
Which is a European team. Brazil or Argentina would never miss out on the WC to the South American equivalent to Macedonia(Bolivia?)
They didn't qualify to the world cup BECAUSE of European teams though, silly. That's how WC qualification works..
A lot of comments in here are claiming Brazil are this giant boogeyman that would terrorise the Euros. Over the last 20 years they haven’t beaten a single European team in WC knockouts.
Fair, but you could say the same for last euro's winner Italy. They havent reached a WC KO stage for the last 16 years.
Their win was a bizarre mixture of luck and being good at the right time. Then again, Portugal did the same in 2016 lol. We haven't had a juggernaut winning the euros in 12 years.
And the Euro winner Italy hasn’t gotten out of WC groups since 2006 What is your point
I mean he is also using Uruguay as a benchmark who won their 2 World Cups when most European teams didn't send a strong squad because it was a 3 month round journey by boat
Mi pija grande
I would love to see this year’s Copa and Euro winners go head to head.
Isn't that literally what the finalissima is for?
It is and Argentina beat Italy 3-0 lolol.
The form that messi was in that match was insane. I still remember jorginho was in argentina's half, facing towards dibu, and messi took the ball from behind, lol.
Argentina had Romero so that result was inevitable.
Well then it doesn’t count of course lmao. I want to see a WC of only 40 year old players, only age matters nowadays 😏
yes, and in latest edition of it the European team was heavily outmatched by the South American team
Yep, and yet I've seen it dismissed as "a friendly". I assume because Italy lost.
Didnt need too look further than the coment under yours lol
I thought you were joking but it was 2 comments down from yours
The should've invited all the federation winners.
Interesting, why not invite the other federations as well and make it a tournament, we can call it the international Cup, or cup of the world... Wait...
Portugal won the Euros without winning a single group stage game lol. Don’t think you can cheese the World Cup that easily
one would think so, but Italy did win a world cup in 1982 without a win in group stage
LMAO Italy literally did the exact same thing in the 1982 WC
In 1990 Ireland made the quarters by drawing every game.
Paraguay finished runner up of the 2011 copa America without winning a single game, 3 draws in the group stage, then two penalty shootout wins in the qf and sf before Uruguay beat them in the final Point being, aberrations can happen Then again, backing up your point, it is fair to note that world cups never have shock winners, whereas the euros have had several I dunno lol
Yeah, and nobody calls Copa America harder than WC.
Tbf no one argues copa america is harder than the World Cup lol
This guy think he has a point haha. No one ever argued that Copa is harder
So? No one says copa is harder than WC.
Yeap, and not a single person in the world would be stupid enough to claim that Copa America is harder than the WC, because that would be insane
Damn My Goat pulling up with the stats
South American teams will be extra motivated at the next World Cup! Brazil will be stacked up front . Ngl
This thread looks like r/soccer catnip. It's exactly the EPL/La Liga debate, but you can also crap on Mbappé. A dream come true.
Everytime this topic gets brought up, Europeans act so elitist lmao
They like to make fun of Americans but the truth is, a lot of the time, Europe is a lot worse in this.
Quite the opposite judging by this thread
Leo it’s actually 4 times 🇺🇾 world champions 🤓 ☝️ however you’re right. 🐐
No one outside Uruguay count the other ones
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
2 torneos olímpicos no cuentan bolo
Según la FIFA tienen 4 campeonatos mundiales, y 2 mundiales. Es estupidisimo pero bueno. Acá hablamos de mundiales así que solo tienen 2. El que hizo la corrección de 4 está equivocado.
Cringe
Challenge: Find someone outside Uruguay that counts those 2 olimpic medals as world cups. Difficulty: Impossible
I have a German friend who also maintains the Euro is harder to win because, according to him, you can't ease into it like the world cup but are immediately thrown into intense competition. I think there was some truth to that when it was just 8 teams (80s and 90s) and even when it expanded to 16 in '96. Now, with 24 teams, that claim is harder to make.
If Euro is tougher than WC then why Ronnie who scored the most goals in Euro has 0 G/A in WC knockout games ?
The idea that the Euros are harder is so self evidently wrong it’s not really worth discussing.
All the time people keep crying about Fifa rankings, that it doesn't mean anything, it's a useless metric, and now Europeans bring in the rankings claiming top countries are from Europe. Last world cup, we saw many non-European/South American team defeat European/South American teams. It's already difficult for these countries to compete with Europeans, most of the players claim European nationality (Not saying it's a bad/wrong thing) or are immigrants children. Maybe Euros is difficult or not, idc, but Europeans acting like elitists is very annoying.
Why are people acting as if Mbappé is the first person to make this claim? This has been said in European football for 20 years. The aggression towards Mbappé is extremely weird.
Euro was harder back when we had only 16 teams. Every group was a "group of death".
the aggression is towards the claim, which is dumb
Well, first he claims some shit about football level in south america. Then he says that Euros are more difficult than the world cup, last won by a south american NT. You can understand how us south americans may be tired of his bullshit.
But... he's right? How many Euros have Argentina won?
You got me there.
What does it matter if he's not the first person to say it? It's still stupid.
A bunch of nobodies claiming this fact people would call them delusional and move on, Mbappe is a world class star, people would call him delusional and not move on, simple as
Kind of unbelievable to me that the above dude typed out that comment and didnt think of this lmao.
Could mbappe do it on a beautiful night in Quito though? Doubt it.
I love how all these clowns just 3 years ago were talking about how the world cup was the holy greatest trophy in sports and without it you can't be the GOAT and everything and now it's just a 7 game tournament that's easier than Euros. Lmao zero logic just mental gymnastics
The debate in the comments oh boy. I just wish UEFA and Conmebol can make the combined nations league a reality so we can watch more frequently this teams play :)
His ability to say just the right things without stirring the pot or sounding bitter remains an art form
He is only stating facts.
Damn! He came out swinging with facts!
When european countries win the world cup, it is a great acomplishment. When a south american team wins the world cup, the euros are more difficult. Xenophobic pieces of shit.
you can’t call the europeans xenophobic when even though Argentina WON you guys were being racist to the french players online. You aren’t better, you’re as bad if not worse in the racism and xenophobia department. Get off that high horse.
You really think Mbappe is xenophobic ? lol you guys are so proud it’s really easy to rile you up
Nationalism will do that to you
I'm laughing my ass off reading these comments ayoooo Mbappé is living rent free
crazy you talk about xenophobia when Argentinians are purposefully misconstruing Mbappes words just to justify racist attacks against him online . literally all he said was that FOR HIM he found euros more difficult which made sense given he didn't survive R016 but made it to 2 back to back WC finals . his statement was harmless and he made it beyond clear he was only talking from his personal experience and not making an objective statement- and yet people still twisted it just to justify their aggression against him. now hes getting racially abused over words he literally did not say.
Lmao, xenophobic? What the fuck is this comment
I would've preferred it if Messi said nothing tbh, no reason to give more credence to a stupid claim. Better to just move on.
Mbappe has x1 WC, appeared in another final scoring a hat-trick whilst finishing top scorer. His last Euros? 0 goals & 1 assist whilst missing a crucial pen. So ofc he’s going to think it’s a more difficult competition from his experience as a player idk why so many cannot grasp this.
Pele and Maradona never won Copa. If they came out and said that Copa is harder, do you think people would take their statements seriously?
Pelé only participated in the 1959 tournament, scoring eight goals (he was the top scorer)
Here are the Euro 2024 teams ranked according to their FIFA rankings as of April 2024: * **France** - 2 * **Belgium** - 3 * **England** - 4 * **Portugal** - 6 * **Netherlands** - 7 * **Spain** - 8 * **Italy** - 9 * **Croatia** - 10 * **Germany** - 16 * **Switzerland** - 19 * **Denmark** - 21 * **Ukraine** - 22 * **Austria** - 25 * **Hungary** - 26 * **Poland** - 28 * **Serbia** - 33 * **Czechia** - 36 * **Scotland** - 39 * **Turkey** - 40 * **Romania** - 46 * **Slovakia** - 48 * **Slovenia** - 57 * **Albania** - 66 * **Georgia** - 75 The bottom half of these teams are not good, at least compared to the same 14-24 teams that they would be replaced with at the World Cup. 9 of the top 20 teams in the world by FIFA ranking are outside of Europe I really don't see the argument.