- Joined
- Jun 13, 2005
- Messages
- 61,626
- Reaction score
- 25,723
Which World Cup Team Should You Root For?
With the U.S. out of the running, take our quiz to find the best team for you.
I apologize for not getting this up sooner. Every question has a mathematical basis for scoring teams.
I drew Iceland. Not looking good for me.
Probably the most controversial assessment is for the question ranking a team's physicality. It bases this on whether or not a team draws a lot of fouls. Yet according to this metric Panama ranks as the most physical team in the World Cup. Meanwhile, Germany ranks as the least physical.
Of course, it doesn't make sense. This metric for determining a team's physicality tells you more about the referees of those matches than it does whether or not the players are playing with toughness. We don't immediately assume the guy with the most fouls is the toughest or most physical player. It just tells you that he fouls a lot.
As an American, whenever I've tuned into German games, I see the guys out there play like men. They aren't big on diving and rolling around in the grass and all that. The Brits, Dutch, Scandinavians, and the French play likewise. So do my Americans. No matter how much shit I've always had to eat about our men's soccer...I've never had to endure meaningful attacks on our players' masculinity. Always kept me proud.
Perhaps the only tougher cultures of soccer I've seen have come from East Europe.
The opposite of this? First team that comes to mind is Portugal. Not this year, but in years past. I thought they should have been banned from 2014 for the diving in 2006 and 2010.
Similarly, most other teams with the hispanic or "machismo" cultures tend to play the least macho, frankly. Portugal. Italy. Spain. Then over to the Western Hemisphere. Many of the South American countries, including the powerhouses like Brazil, are notorious for diving. To the north, Mexico is among them. I was under the impression that most Central American nations were the same way: El Salvador and Honduras in particular. It's impossible not to notice the correlation.
This article from a San Antonio newspaper built a ranking for the 2014 world cup with the worst diving nations based on the total number of dives, and the cumulative time wasted on them throughout the tournament. This challenges some of my prejudices, but one should also keep in mind that this is 10 teams in a tournament of 32, and generally it conforms to my biases:
https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/l...am-at-the-World-Cup-5582682.php#photo-6439459
A lot of blabber. I created this thread because I thought the quiz was cool.
With the U.S. out of the running, take our quiz to find the best team for you.
I apologize for not getting this up sooner. Every question has a mathematical basis for scoring teams.
I drew Iceland. Not looking good for me.
Probably the most controversial assessment is for the question ranking a team's physicality. It bases this on whether or not a team draws a lot of fouls. Yet according to this metric Panama ranks as the most physical team in the World Cup. Meanwhile, Germany ranks as the least physical.
Of course, it doesn't make sense. This metric for determining a team's physicality tells you more about the referees of those matches than it does whether or not the players are playing with toughness. We don't immediately assume the guy with the most fouls is the toughest or most physical player. It just tells you that he fouls a lot.
As an American, whenever I've tuned into German games, I see the guys out there play like men. They aren't big on diving and rolling around in the grass and all that. The Brits, Dutch, Scandinavians, and the French play likewise. So do my Americans. No matter how much shit I've always had to eat about our men's soccer...I've never had to endure meaningful attacks on our players' masculinity. Always kept me proud.
Perhaps the only tougher cultures of soccer I've seen have come from East Europe.
The opposite of this? First team that comes to mind is Portugal. Not this year, but in years past. I thought they should have been banned from 2014 for the diving in 2006 and 2010.
Similarly, most other teams with the hispanic or "machismo" cultures tend to play the least macho, frankly. Portugal. Italy. Spain. Then over to the Western Hemisphere. Many of the South American countries, including the powerhouses like Brazil, are notorious for diving. To the north, Mexico is among them. I was under the impression that most Central American nations were the same way: El Salvador and Honduras in particular. It's impossible not to notice the correlation.
This article from a San Antonio newspaper built a ranking for the 2014 world cup with the worst diving nations based on the total number of dives, and the cumulative time wasted on them throughout the tournament. This challenges some of my prejudices, but one should also keep in mind that this is 10 teams in a tournament of 32, and generally it conforms to my biases:
https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/l...am-at-the-World-Cup-5582682.php#photo-6439459
- Brazil
- Chile
- Honduras
- Nigeria
- Mexico
- Costa Rica
- USA
- Ecuador
- France
- South Korea
A lot of blabber. I created this thread because I thought the quiz was cool.