Do You See An African/Asian Team Ever Winning The World Cup?

PhlegmyMoses

irishman86 wrote: »

Wouldnt Jay Jay fit the bill
A superstar during his time, Mikel for Nigeria now is very underrated tbh
I disagree with you about Yaya, you mentioned the best in Weah

Yeah JayJay is closer to what I'm talking about, especially as his career went on and he became a deeper playmaker.

Weah was great but it feels like he had a shorter time at the top than Yaya. He was nearly 30 when he joined Milan and just seemed to wane pretty quickly. Yaya was consistently excellent at the highest level for around 8-10 years.

charolais0153

irishman86 wrote: »

Even rugby the biggest guys arent always the best
Look at ROG, BOD for Ireland
Carter for NZ
People over rate the impact size has in every sport

Shane williams is the example you want

FCIM

Height isn't so much the issue in my opinion, but strength is even in strength orientated sports. Shane Williams was fantastic but very small in comparison. A lot of great soccer players have been small, Pirlo I imagine isn't very tall, but I do think physical strength is important. It is eminently possible to be small but strong, Tommy Walsh of Kilkenny would be an example. Giovinco is an example of a greatly talented player who never made a significant impact in the big time because of a lack of strength, not a lack of height.

764dak

There seems so much bollocks about size in this thread. At the last World Cup, Korea had the 12th heaviest team. They weighed more than Nigeria, Brazil, the Netherlands, Australia, France, Italy, Ghana, Russia, Ivory Coast, etc. They also had the 7th tallest team. They stood taller than every African, Asian, and North & South American team, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Russia, etc. http://ejoh.se/worldcup2014/weight

Your stereotypes only work for Japan.

764dak

764dak wrote: »

There seems so much bollocks about size in this thread. At the last World Cup, Korea had the 12th heaviest team. They weighed more than Nigeria, Brazil, the Netherlands, Australia, France, Italy, Ghana, Russia, Ivory Coast, etc. They also had the 7th tallest team. They stood taller than every African, Asian, and North & South American team, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Russia, etc. http://ejoh.se/worldcup2014/weight

Your stereotypes only work for Japan.

There's two different things, one is height and one is potential height.
Nigerians on average are shorter but I would put that down to nutrition issues. I always use the example of Ireland's average height exploding once we had enough food. I don't remember seeing too many short lads of African origin in my town. The young lads are generally pretty tall.
So if the Koreans are on average 2-3 inches shorter than Europeans (which they are) but their soccer team is the same height it would make me wonder if they have to select for height to some extent. Or that the pool of players they choose from is more likely to have tall-for-them players in it, meaning the potential pool of players is much reduced.
So from your link the average SK player was 2cm shorter than the average German player. But in reality there's a 5cm difference on average.

There are always plenty of exceptions with these things. Sometimes a team will gel in a way that height/build matter very little. Mostly though trends lead somewhere. If you're forced to choose from one end of a normal distribution while others can choose all the way from below their mean it great cuts the potential number of players.

retalivity

I was at the korea - norn iron match on saturday. They were the better team (marginally) but still lost. I kmow its only a friendly and you can only read so much into it, but having a limited team like NI cause you problems, they would be destroyed by a higher calibre team. I see they lost to poland last night as well too.

That said, Son was a cut above everyone else one the pitch. If they had a team of 11 players close to his level, theyd be last 8 contenders easily.

Mr.H

It would be stupid to say they never will. At some stage throughout time yes it is very very possible someone from either continent will win.

Who knows what football will be like in 100 years time? Maybe the Qatar world cup might spurn a lot of locals to plough money into football locally rather than buy the next man city or PSG? Maybe the owners of those clubs will move those clubs to the Arab world? If the richest people in the world invested in training pitches equipment and started luring world class coaching, it would be very possible to have a future world cup winning side. Maybe they cold even loan players between PSG/city and clubs in Dubai?

The money is there. The investors interest is there. It's almost the perfect storm and once one shiek does it you will have a load doing it