The flop thread

[EL Patron]

Who flopped the hardest ? England, Italy or Spain   

[arabprince]

Spain without question. Italy/England group was one of the two groups of death. Spain was in an easy group, especially considering they are the world champs for quite some time now.

[Curtinho]

Oh, I thought you meant the diving thread. Didn't even read the OP...lol

[EL Patron]

Spain without question. Italy/England group was one of the two groups of death. Spain was in an easy group, especially considering they are the world champs for quite some time now.

I agree, Spain easily the flop of the tournament. Don't think England's group was that hard, more to do with England and Italy being crap.

[Madvillain]

Spain without question. Italy/England group was one of the two groups of death. Spain was in an easy group, especially considering they are the world champs for quite some time now.

Easy group?  

[Tomwin Lannister]

This shouldn't even be a question lol

Spain - World Champions. Got dicked on by a Holland team who everybody was laughing at the day before 5-1. Lost 2-0 to Chile. Scored 1 goal from a Pen and conceded 7 in the 2 games that mattered.

England - Nobody rates them, they underachieved but hardly flopped tbh. Mediocre squad with an average manager. The player they always look to before tournaments is Rooney which says it all.

Italy - Hadn't won a friendly in 9 months before this World Cup. Manager was experimenting with 2 different formations per game, using around 10 in total. Team was clueless. The only striker worth talking about wasn't taken to the World Cup. They also couldn't hope with the humidity in one of the games and barely ran. Team lacked ideas and were never close to being favourites


How, exactly, are the other flops even close to reaching the levels of shit that Spain reached?

[izzy]

Italy.

Zero progression from Euro 2012.

[EL Patron]

They are all big footballing nations with good players, No one expected England or Italy to win it. They were not favourite to win the tournament but they should have at least made it out of their group. I mean Italy have a far better squad than Costa Rica and Uruguay yet they somehow managed to loose against both teams  

[Zealous]

It has to end badly otherwise it would never end lol

Spain have won more international trophies in a short span than 99% of other teams. I think their status as flops isn't as heavy as say England who imo really disappointed and haven't won in ages.

[EL Patron]

Can Ivory coast be considered as flop as well, they are basically the England of Africa. Golden generation yet they can't win anything in Africa or progress out of a group stage in a world cup   

[urbaNRoots]

They all underachieved for two positions so it's a hard one. I give Spain a pass because they were in group of death and had harder games compared to Italy and England.

It's between Italy and England for me. Italy atleast managed 3 points unlike England who couldn't beat Costa Rica who had already qualified. England definitely for me then Italy and Spain in that order.

[juventus101]

Italy was a biased referee away from advancing, like it or not. And despite not making it through, we still played the best football in our group besides our game against Costa Rica.

England have always had big players but low expectations. Theyre like the opposite of a tournament team.

Spain are easily the biggest flops. Got absolutely embarassed by Robben & co, then thoroughly outplayed by Chile, and then won a consolation game against Australia. For the former World and European champions, that is an incredible failure.

[futbol]

lel How is this even a discussion? Spain walzed through the last 3 tournaments. Their old guard is allowed to get their asses kicked once in a while.

England didn't have many expectations. Irrelevant.

Italy, 4 times World Cup winners, going out in the group stages 2 World Cups in a row? Now that is flopping hard. Although kinda expected as the Juventus core are specialists in exiting in group stages.

[CBarca]

This shouldn't even be a question lol

Spain - World Champions. Got dicked on by a Holland team who everybody was laughing at the day before 5-1. Lost 2-0 to Chile. Scored 1 goal from a Pen and conceded 7 in the 2 games that mattered.

England - Nobody rates them, they underachieved but hardly flopped tbh. Mediocre squad with an average manager. The player they always look to before tournaments is Rooney which says it all.

Italy - Hadn't won a friendly in 9 months before this World Cup. Manager was experimenting with 2 different formations per game, using around 10 in total. Team was clueless. The only striker worth talking about wasn't taken to the World Cup. They also couldn't hope with the humidity in one of the games and barely ran. Team lacked ideas and were never close to being favourites


How, exactly, are the other flops even close to reaching the levels of shit that Spain reached?

How about the difficulty of their respective groups...

Italy had England
Costa Rica-did well, earned my respect but they're not Chile...
and Uruguay-absolute scrub team without Suarez, who is playing on one leg

Spain had to face the Netherlands-who have been really impressive
Chile- a team on another level from every team in Italy's group
and Australia- fair enough


Italy for me. Had a much easier group and probably created less than Spain. Were outclassed by Costa Rica creating hardly anything, and then lost to Uruguay in much of the same fashion- they never looked like they were capable of winning either game. The only game they did well in was against England, who finished the group with 1 point

Spain's embarrassment in the Netherlands game is definitely flopping at it's greatest, but at least they had a decent first half where they did create chances and were majorly let down by a goalkeeper who was at fault for at least 2 goals in that game and then 1 in the Chile game (another game where they had a couple great opportunities to score).

[teamanarchy]

Portugal

Don't see them progressing, despite having the best player in the world up front

[El Gunner]

Spain sadly

[farfan]

france .

their failure to meet the expectations of 90% of GL's members by not exiting in the first round like most people here predicted , could be considered a flop in a way .

[Tomwin Lannister]

Italy flopped, sure. But we're talking about World Cups here so they slightly improved from 4 years ago which is depressing in itself but by no means worse than going from dominating the World for 6 years to getting dumped out at the group stages with an embarrassing defeat alongside it.

[BORUSSIA!!]

Spain without question. Italy/England group was one of the two groups of death. Spain was in an easy group, especially considering they are the world champs for quite some time now.

lol what

[McAgger]

Can we include individual play flops in this thread as well?

CR is the biggest without a doubt. A fraud

[Gil]

Easily Italy. Spain players lost motivation and were in a tough group.

[EL Patron]

Can we include individual play flops in this thread as well?

CR is the biggest without a doubt. A fraud

Feel free mate

Costa as well, surely the biggest Fraud. Had one of the best midfield in the competition in his team but fired blanks   

[Cruijf]

For individuals Costa has been the biggest one by far IMO.

Teams Italy takes it, Spain had a very tough group and a squad that was known to be past it, Italy was supposed to build off of Euro 2012 and do some damage, I was absolutely shocked to see them exit.

[The Franchise]

It has to end badly otherwise it would never end lol

Ive heard this a few times, im not sure this is true however. If they went out and lost in the finals to Brazil, is that really ending badly?

And nothing changes, Spain still need to make to have a re-tooling of sorts.

[Peccadillo]

England doesn't come into it - Everyone was well aware that England may not qualify to R16.. and they didn't.

Italy was a surprise for me though, I thought they would ease past this group. They have such a strong midfield, and typically solid defence (although not much depth). With that squad Italy really should have progressed. Prandelli was right to stand down.

Spain were in a genuinely tough group, tougher than Group D. As much as Australia gained global respect, ultimately they lost all 3 games as they were expected to. Leaving it between Chile (nuff said, they've been immense) and Netherlands who have surprised everybody and frankly if Robben repeats the performance he put on for the 5-1 for every knock out stage, they are a top four team.

At the same time, for the champions to lose 5-1, then lose so definitively to Chile.. The convincing manner in which Spain flopped means they take the cake for me.

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