Why are Portugal bad and Argentina great?

Because most football related people are nonsensical and biased. Portugal has more overall quality and it's miles more complete team than Argentina. Portugal is FIFA #4 and not because of Fakenaldo, he was awful in the qualifiers. Argentina is FIFA #5 and mostly because of Messi, best player in qualifiers.

Which itself makes Messi's performance even better, compared Fakenaldo here.

Harmonica wrote:Because most football related people are nonsensical and biased. Portugal has more overall quality and it's miles more complete team than Argentina. Portugal is FIFA #4 and not because of Fakenaldo, he was awful in the qualifiers. Argentina is FIFA #5 and mostly because of Messi, best player in qualifiers.

Which itself makes Messi's performance even better, compared Fakenaldo here.

The irony.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:Neither Argentina is great nor Portugal sucks.

meh....both teams are alright, if neither team succeeds at this world cup, it will still be considered a dent on cristiano and messi's national team performance, especially if they offer little assistance themselves in terms of goals, assists, and overall play....true, one man cannot build a team, but with the debates and discussions regarding how great they are, (some even go as far as to consider them greatest of all time, which i disagree with, but that's another debate) then they surely must do more than get knocked out at the early stage of the competition as well as not flop in the latter stages, if they make it there.
This whole argentina portugal team strength debate just strikes me as means by which fans are trying to excuse failure. if uruguay (granted, have history in the tournament, but failed to qualify in 94,98,06 and lost in first round in 02) could get to the semis 4 years ago, if turkey could finish 3rd in 02, and croatia in 98, it isn't too much to expect two of the best footballers right now to have the ability to inspire their team either mentally or on the pitch.
Another problem I have with this debate is, both teams/players haven't even met in the competition (yet), and already excuses are being thrown around. When zidane and figo were kings in the late 90s, whether one national team was better than the other wasn't even a question that was raised, despite france being better on paper, they played each other and both teams and players gave their all on the pitch, and few fans before or after such clashes said "this one had a better team". True its a team game, but you still expect your top guy to shine at such moments. Better team on paper does not necessarily mean they'll win..
Neither team is on an elite level yet, but they are sort of dark horses that can challenge, i liken them to spain before their success. Not to mention they have two of the worlds best at present in their ranks...lets just enjoy football and quit these excuses. Fans put players on such a high pedestal that when things don't go their way, all of a sudden they want to analyze and change the rules. when a player is performing, they undervalue the rest of his teammate's contributions, and say "he did it on his own". when a player under-performs or can't inspire his team as he would have liked, it becomes "he is playing with scrubs"....its too early for fans to start creating excuses

None of these long excuses or over and underrating certain players make up for the fact that there have been handfuls of forwards who play on straight up worse teams then Portugal who produce when it comes tournament time.

This thinking that Portugal are some charity case is just nonsense. Are they great? No. Are they average? No. They are a very decent side.

Other players do a lot more with less than Ronaldo does with his national team. It's really not an argument. There are tons of great players on bad national teams like I said in the other thread.

Take Landon Donovan for example or Larsson for Sweden in 2002, Hell Eto'o produces for a shit team and has for years.

The excuses need to stop. The difference between Messi and Ronaldo is if Ronaldo doesn't score he can turn into straight up negative force for his own team, he pouts, wastes A LOT of free kicks and stays out on the wing without much of a desire to get in the game. If he scores a goal early the guy is a freaking nightmare (see Sweden games).

Messi can do more even if he doesn't score, it's really that simple. Yes Argentina's team is better but you can't go around for 364 days of the year and say teams need a good defense and midfield to win a world cup and then when it comes to Portugal just totally reverse that around and start complaining about forwards. Remember there forward line is weak but they do have the best layer in the world up there, it's not like the team doesn't have him in it.

bunch of cheats, fully behind the U.S

people who use the FIFA rankings as an argument need to be shot .
morocco was ranked number 10 in april 1998 despite coming off a shitty african cup of nations and not doing anything that merited a top 10 spot.

your learn something new everyday on GL , turns out that the all time leading goal scorer for the portuguese national team is actually terrible with portugal