Marvanelli
Well-known member
Largely made up of terrible opponents.Really? Portugal twice, Belgium, Switzerland, Netherlands, Spain twice, England. They're terrible teams? Without forensically checking I'd say about 25 of the teams they played were in FIFA's top 30 as well. Only about 6 of the teams in that run were actually terrible teams.
Ukraine - 1 draw
Poland - 2 wins, 1 draw
Portugal - 1 draw
USA - 1 win
Finland - 2 wins
Liechtenstein - 2 wins
Greece - 2 wins
Bosnia - 3 wins, 1 draw
Armenia - 2 wins
Netherlands - 1 win, 1 draw
Moldova - 1 win
Estonia - 1 win
Northern Ireland - 1 win
Bulgaria - 1 win, 1 draw
Lithuania - 2 wins
San Marino - 1 win
Czech - 1 win
Turkey - 1 win
Switzerland - 1 win, 1 draw
Wales - 1 win
Austria - 1 win (aet)
Belgium - 1 win
Spain - 1 win (pens)
England - 1 win (pens)
Of that list, I'd happily say
Finland, Liechenstein, Bosnia, Armenia, Moldova, Estonia, Northern Ireland, Bulgaria, Lithuania, San Marino, Czech are terrible teams - that's 19 of those games....more than half.
I'd then say the likes of Poland, Ukraine, USA, Greece, Turkey, Wales, Austria, are average at best...there's another 10 games. so 29 games are against opposition they shouldn't be losing to (albeit football isn't that easy of course).
Then the rest of the 8 games are made up Portugal, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, England, which are made up of 3 wins and 5 draws (in 90 minutes - with a couple of penalty shoot out wins).
Any 'unbeaten run' can seem impressive. But when you look into it, the batch of teams Italy played, were IMO largely made up of terrible opponents, with a few 'lucky' draws in the mix against good teams which makes their run look a lot lot better than it actually was.
They failed to qualify for back to back world cups. Any team doing that, aren't a great team....and certainly a team I would be expecting England to beat.