By grazorblade - 20 Jun 2024 11:51 PM
A while ago I showed that the number of countries who had at least 1 player starting in the big 5 in a given weekend is now over 80, which shows just how strong the competition has become (and how crazy it is we managed a fifa ranking of 25 without a single big 5 regular)
At least some of that extra competition seems to be coming from many more players from Europe's 2nd teir getting positions in the big leagues. Here is the number of minutes for big 5 clubs leading up to the 2004 euro
| greece | 7351 | | portrugal | 15120 | | Russia | 3589 | | croatia | 18704 | | Switzerland | 15623 | | Bulgaria | 10527 | | Denmark | 29663 | | sweden | 14046 | | czech | 27150 | | Netherlands | 32688 | | latvia | 584 |
Average: 15193
Interestingly, our 2006 golden generation got 23232 minutes in the lead up to the world cup, which would make us the 9th best side in europe at the time. Insane how good that generation was by our standards
This is the minutes in the big leagues for the 2024 euro squads
| scotland | 12877 | | Switzerland | 41545 | | croatia | 24290 | | Albania | 17864 | | Hungary | 10295 | | Turkey | 7153 | | Georgia | 8165 | | Austria | 34386 | | Romania | 3054 | | Ukraine | 19730 | | Belgium | 33405 | | Slovakia | 11918 | | Denmark | 32425 | | Slovenia | 11407 | | Serbia | 29488 | | Poland | 25884 | | Netherlands | 39747 | | Czechia | 11270 | | Portrugal | 38220 |
Average: 21743. So despite having 8 more teams the average has gone up nearly 50%! It wouldn't surprise me if we see a new world cup winner in the next 20 years
Nearly every country in europe has multiple professional, national level leagues with p and r and plays a modern technical style. The ladder has gotten steeper!
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By Monoethnic Social Club - 25 Jun 2024 9:50 AM
+x+x+xnot sure how else you can gauge a NT any other way - sure you can go back from Euro to Euro or WC to WC's but the players picked are from their Club form more than anything else and thats what provides the NTeam its form guide, well yes and no when you consider 3Lions games to date, or even Germany now who came out like a bat out of hell first game to struggle against the Switz. Sure, Swiss, Croatian, Belgium, Portugal, Dutch and Czech leagues would most certainly be "second tier" but can you say the same about the NTs of these countries? Hey mono does south’s play lakeside by Australian crawl at their games?
Nope sorry, never heard it at Lakeside... its mainly the Greek national anthem at a really high volume played back to back to back.... hope it comes out clearly in the broadcasts.
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