Should we take England on just their group position and where they finished at the end of the group stage on points, goal difference and goals scored etc, we would have finished 26th out of 32. I think that sums up fairly how we rank against those other teams, and I agree that the likes of Costa Rica, Algeria and Nigeria are now better than us.
I don't buy any shit about our group being one of the hardest, because I genuinely feel we wouldn't have made a dent in many of the teams who got who finished above us.
Full table
1. Holland +7 (9)
2. Columbia +7 (9)
3. Argentina +3 (9)
4. Belgium +3 (9)
5. France +6 (7)
6. Brazil +5 (7)
7. Germany +5 (7)
8. Costa Rica +3 (7)
9. Mexico +3 (7)
10. Chile +2 (6)
11. Switzerland + 1 (6)
12. Uruguay 0 (6)
13. Algeria +1 (4)
14. Ecuador 0 (4)
15. Nigeria 0 (4)
16. USA 0 (4)
17. Greece -2 (4)
18. Portugal - 3 (4)
19. Croatia 0 3)
20. Bosnia 0 (3)
21. Italy -1 (3)
22. Ivory Coast -1 (3)
23. Spain -3 (3)
24. Russia -1 (2)
25. Ghana - 2 (1)
26. England - 2 (1)
27. Iran - 3 (1)
28. Korea - 3 (1)
29. Japan - 4 (1)
30. Austrailia - 6 (0)
31. Honduras -7 (0)
32. Cameroon -8 (0)
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Comments
I guess in the same way I've used the league table to explain how shit we are, I can't then exempt Spain.......
I'll go with Viewfinder's comment, put Honduras bottom and us 31st.
Looks like they are investigating match fixing in the squad. Failing at cheating aswell, even worse.
I don't think so!
Costa Rica did well, but they were helped massively by the two awful performances by Italy and Uruguay.
If you compare both teams level of performance and effort to their games against us, the difference would be huge.
No doubt i'll be accused of making excuses but i don't think our performances were that bad against two teams with good players and a couple of world class players. The Costa Rica game was a write-off.. I would still fancy us to beat a few teams above us in that table.
Weren't England rank overall in the WC?
Whilst I don't think that the table is entirely accurate, I think the days of us assuming we are better than the likes of USA, Algeria etc are long gone.
He wasn't saying it in a condescending way. He genuinely can't believe how shit we are and how irrelevant we have become in tournaments. He reckons that if they're drawn against England, he knows we'll be tough to break down, but in the end we haven't got the talent to worry them. We might have some decent young players coming through, but ultimately, I'm willing to state that's the limit, decent. I reckon our youngsters are so far behind the top top teams (bar maybe Barkley). Then teams like Costa Rica play for the shirt the way Ireland use to, and that pride pushes them on.
That is why I'm so scathing of England. It really is up to them now to prove me wrong. The meekness of the performances in the last few years really do not justify any defence. But no doubt we'll all be lauding Wayne Rooney when he's back scoring hat tricks at the King Power stadium next season.
Therefore we must be pretty good, then?
I honestly think the most thrilling moment in my life (and I have just had a grandchild...) was as a 19 year old standing in Bilbao when Bryan Robson put us one up against France in the 82 WC. That is what supporting England abroad is all about. I shall remember that moment, that game till the end of my days and I didn't even have a ticket to the game, was watching in a local bar.
This lot and anyone else coming up into the team just do not do it for me. The English game is dead or near to it. Killed by greed, unfairness and lack of will due to self interest and insanity.
People have been banging on about Algeria suddenly being this great emerging team - have they looked at their actual results?
Lost to the Belgians, drew with the dire Russians and got through thanks to a spanking of the dire South Koreans - they then met Germany and could and should have lost comfortably in 90 mins.
You could say exactly the same about Nigeria who progressed thanks to a 1-0 win against the mighty Bosnia and then got dealt with by the French.
I make no excuses for the state of English football at all but the group was clearly a very difficult one - probably only Groups B and G were as hard.
The two difficult teams have been knocked out by Colombia and Costa Rica. I suppose you reckon they will play each other in the final.
The other team took penalties to get past Greece.
'dire Russians', 'mighty Bosnia'... time to accept England failed to get through a group that looked tougher on paper than it actually was.
Does English football have problems? Yes, it surely does and none of them are easy to fix, some may even be impossible.
However, the knee-jerk, reactionary "England are so crap" argument takes things way too far in the other direction.
England's group, despite your extraordinary protestations to the contrary, WAS a bloody hard one....
Italy - World Cup Winners in 2006 and European Championship Runners-Up in 2012.
Uruguay - Reigning Copa America Champions (you might have heard of that tournament, Brazil, Argentina and Chile play in it)
Costa Rica - Unbeaten in four games now and playing on their own continent in familiar conditions.
Still, don't let the facts get in the way of thinking that England must be somewhere on a footballing par with the Pitcairn Islands.
I still stand by the opinion that Italy and Uruguay turned in good performances against us and were extremely shit against Costa Rica, so from England's perspective it was a difficult group.
Uruguay went out to a very good Colombia side and were missing their World Class player.
Italy were disappointing at this tournament, as they were four years ago. I have heard of the Copa America, thanks, doesn't mean Uruguay were world beaters. And Costa Rica beat these teams, as you said.
Think Hodgson could be moving in the right direction, but this was not a good tournament.
But, my observations were what was missing in terms of us getting to a quarter final - which is doable because accepeting what is wrong with our football, teams have done better than us with Championship players FFS. If we had addressed those issues better, we still had no chance. Amazed Hodgson has not been sacked though!
For what its worth England are then located very much in the next group below that along with the mid-tier European and LATAM teams and the better African nations.
The best we can hope for in the medium term is to be snapping at the heels of that top group and being competitive with them, we certainly can't expect to be in that group unless we radically change our structure and put more focus on the national teams.