Originally Posted by Parthenon:
“I was just being consistent. I already thought ours would be the toughest group beforehand, and I'd be surprised if anyone tried to argue that Costa Rica playing out of their skins made it somehow easier.
I could have taken the approach of some others and decided that the weaker sides having good World Cups are suddenly much better teams than England, but I'd rather look at results over a longer period. Like Algeria finishing bottom of our group in 2010 and failing to qualify for the 5 World Cups before that. Are they suddenly better than England because they beat South Korea and took a point off Russia to progress from their group? I'm not sure...”
You say that you're using a time period going back over 20 years, but then asking if Algeria are 'suddenly' better than England.
No, they're not suddenly better, they've probably become better than England over a period of time.
I think people simply have to accept that England are no longer anywhere as good as their perception of them may lead them to believe.
Maybe we're around as good as teams like the USA or Costa Rica?
In the FIFA rankings I'd say that #20 would look just about right.
With so many football teams improving quite rapidly, other teams which we take for granted as being amongst the world elite due to their reputation can get left behind.