I don't think there's any excuse. These teams had superior squads to many of the teams who displaced their position but failed to do the job expected of them. With more limited resources the likes of Uruguay (admittedly somewhat fortunate), Costa Rica, Algeria, Mexico, USA did what was required of them. The most reprehensible failure of those 6 teams you listed was England. While some would think Spain were, I can forgive them from suffering from a 'post imperial hangover' but with the vibrancy and youthful (and technical) talent that England had in numbers the fact that they conspired to do even worse than the England team in South Africa is unforgivable. It's not a failure of the seeding system. It's a failure of these countries and these countries alone. I have some sympathy for Italy. Debatable red card in their match against Uruguay which they were comfortably in control of and the winner coming from a man who should never have been playing (he should have been sent off against England) does make it unfortunate that Italy didn't make it out of the group with Costa Rica instead of Uruguay who, quite frankly, are very lucky to be there.
I agree mostly with what you say, some of the teams where the result was a small margin the refs had a bigger impact with things like the failure to send of Godin made a difference. However, we should have played better, we only seem to want to play football when we were already loosing. What happened to Russia in the unfortunate way they were eliminated is surely worse. How do FIFA act on the lazer thing? To me, the quality of refereeing has much room for improvement in this WC. Costa Rica played well and you have to admit the climate surely helped them. Uruguay isn't that much warmer than Italy and England is the coolest. I fancy Costa Rica to get further than Uruguay to be honest. We've seen that Uruguay without Suarez. Uruguay are lucky to be there you are right. If the referee did send off Godin I think Uruguay would have lost to England and Italy, then Costa Rica and Italy would have qualified. The fairness would have been.
Costa Rica 7
Italy 6
England 4
Uruguay 1
« Last Edit: Jun 28, 2014 04:10:48 pm by Ribapuru »
Logged
