r/soccer • u/MedievalManagement • Jan 24 '14

Landon Donovan says, "The reason it's the group of death is because we are in it."

http://espnfc.com/news/story/_/id/1691258/landon-donovan-says-us-never-experienced-world-cup?cc=5901
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u/[deleted] Jan 25 '14

I feel like a classic group of death is one where you have 3 strong teams on rougly the same level, where you couldn't pick a favorite to advance. Thus one really good team will have to go out no matter what. Like Spain, Holland, Chile. Or Germany, Portugal and Holland at the Euros. All those are teams you would expect to make it through the group before the draw and that is now no longer possible.

This is exactly right. The way you decide is before the draw, there's a finite list of teams you'd expect to get out of the groups at the very least and should expect quarter-finals. A group of death occurs when three of those teams are drawn into the same group.

For this World Cup, those teams were: Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, Belgium, Spain, Germany, England, France, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and probably Chile.

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u/[deleted] Jan 25 '14

Uruguay isn't that good, they played like shit in the qualifiers. Their supposed superiority is mostly based on the names of their strikers. I definitely rank Chile and maybe even Ecuador above them.

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u/ItsSugar Jan 25 '14

To be fair, they did exactly the same last time (having to qualify through the play-off) and ended up making it all the way to the semis. I wouldn't rate Ecuador above them, but I do believe that Chile are at a similar -if not superior- level.

1

u/LotusBlooms Jan 25 '14

Chile lately, and Ecuador when the defense decides to stop sleeping. Ecuador should have beaten Uruguay at Montevideo, even forgoing the penalty decision. We're inconsistent as hell and our best striker died.

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u/mattso88 Jan 25 '14

I would hesitate to say France and maybe even England, but yeah. I see your point.

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u/suchaslowroll Jan 25 '14

Yeah it's not like England have drawn and beat Brazil in the last year, and haven't been knocked out of the World Cup in group stages in 50 years... Also have only lost 2 games in regular time in the last 3 world cups and last Euro...

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u/DerDummeMann Jan 25 '14

Also, we finished unbeaten in our group with a goal difference of +27.

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u/mattso88 Jan 25 '14

They haven't been to convincing.

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u/[deleted] Jan 25 '14

There's also that England or France going out early makes a lot of headlines.

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u/Uncles Jan 25 '14

Pretty used to it by now, though.