Topic: ⚽ UEFA Euro 2024 in Germany ⚽ - Qualifiers - page 364. (Read 46401 times)

We will still watch Croatia's matches with the best line-up to date, with Modric and co, until Euro 2024, then only time will tell if it was only 3 or 4 players who were making all the difference, or if the country's soccer has really evolved and they will be able to continue with good results in the near future.
I can't give a clear opinion because Modric was an excellent reference for this team, even more with the Real Madrid / Champions League experience he had.


Only talking about Euro 2024 and the qualifiers:
I believe Belgium will get that qualification, because their group is not strong enough to consider a real treat
In my opinion Estonia and Azerbaijan will not make it, while Sweden and Austria will fight for second place, and Belgium will qualify first.

I think they will can be a great team for Euro 2024 and be competitive, but it is a good time to reformulate the team already thinking about the 2024 Euro and 2026 World Cup. I would be disappointed if they kept exactly the same players that played in the last World Cup and ruined a whole job because of internal fights
Another reason to believe in a good Belgian campaign is that the other teams are not that good either
I can only see France (ok, maybe England too) with an extremely strong and consistent team with the right mix of new and experienced players, who already have the foundation laid for several years
The rest are all at the end of their cycle or trying to get a new team right

The same questions were asked after Croatia was third at the 1998 World Cup, with a great generation in which Suker, Boban, Prosinecki and other great players played.
After them came a great generation with Modric, Mandjukic, Perisic and other great players.
Who will replace Modric, Perisic and Lovren? The Croatian national football team is currently very high-quality and has a lot of talented and young players that the best clubs in the world are looking for.
Livakovic is already one of the best goalkeepers in the world.
Guardiol and Stanisic can already replace Lovren.
There are also Juranovic and Sosa.
In midfield we have great players like Kovacic, Brozovic, Majer or Pasalic.
Croatia may be a little weaker in attack right now, but we have Kramaric, Petkovic, Orsic and Perisic will still play for a while.
Croatia currently has the right combination of youth and experience and I think they will be a very serious candidate to win the League of Nations in June and to win the EURO next year.

What do you think about Belgium? I think they wasted a really bright generation due to personal issues among the players. It was like there wasn't any player who doesn't have any issue with some other Belgian player. They couldn't go beyond the quarter finals of Euro 2020 and they couldn't even advanced from the group stage of the last World Cup due to poor performances.

Now they are trying to start off with a clean slate with the same players. They have made a solid start to the Euro 2024 Qualifiers by a 3-0 win over Sweden away. Lukaku even made a hat-trick back then. Their group isn't that hard either - Austria, Sweden, Estonia and Azerbaijan. They can join the main tournament by finishing this group as the leader. While they have great talents like De Bruyne I hope they can be competitive for a Euro title once again.

That win by Italy needs to be put in context, as that was the year in which there was a huge scandal as several teams, with the most notable being the Juventus, were accused and penalized by buying referees, and there are very credible rumors that state the Italian players were told that if they won the world cup then no legal repercussions will be pursued against them, so they had motivations which went way beyond soccer during that particular world cup.

I would agree partially. Croatia is one of the strongest teams within the UEFA confederation. And during the last one decade, they have made massive improvements. But what will be your take, if I take the last 4-year period instead of the last 10 years? Their performance in the FIFA World Cup suggests that the quality has remained as such. They were the runners-up in 2018, and finished at the 3rd place in 2022. However, they are dependent on players who are close to the retirement age, such as Ivan Perišić, Luka Modrić and Dejan Lovren. Will they be able to perform at the same level once these players retire?

What can you say about England? It seems that they are consistently getting stronger, but so far this is not reflected in the titles. But this is a separate conversation, since short tournaments and their small number introduce a large degree of randomness into the results of national teams' games. France is undeniably top, but England isn't much farther away plus there are always bad days for any team (like when France was knocked out by Switzerland on penalties).

May I add something to your post Sithara007?
Croatia also deserves to be mentioned as a team that has grown stronger in the last decade.
But unfortunately and curiously, they never had a good Euro campaign.
In 2012 they didn't get past the group stage, in 2016 they lost to Portugal in the round of 16 (but Portugal was unbeaten, they were champions that year), and in 2020/21 they lost to Spain (who were only eliminated by champions Italy).

It is also interesting to compare the World Cup with the Euro, because both have very different results.

Croatia can get to the Euro by the Nations League or the qualifiers, I strongly believe that in Euro 2024 they will have a great campaign and even their best one, and can reach the semi-finals for the goodbye of Modric's generation.
England also deserves a mention because they are improving in the last few years.

We are still in the qualifiers of course, but I see Euro 2024 having France and Croatia in the semifinals easily, while the other 2 teams could be Spain, Italy, and England, possibly Netherlands but I don't see Portugal, Belgium or Germany in the finals.

Maybe so, but maybe we need to remember that it depends on a single game as well. They might be better than everyone else, but in a single game they could end up losing and could be out of the tournament for good. Not during qualifiers of course but that doesn't mean that it should be like that at all times neither, it should be a lot better.

I personally believe that the best thing to do in this case is to keep it going as much as they possibly could and get a big win. If they can do that then it is great but if they can't then it will be a bigger disappointment than ever. I know that not many people will have a chance to win it, like if Spain loses nobody will care, but if France loses that will be even worse, and disappointing. So there is more pressure on France than any other team currently, and that could cause trouble.

You can't compare France to any of the other UEFA teams. During the last one decade or so, every other UEFA team has become weaker. Netherlands and Germany are prime examples. But France is probably the only UEFA team that has got stronger. They have a steady supply of young players and at this point their best player is the 24-year old Kylian Mbappé. Italy on the other hand is a relatively young team (despite the rapidly ageing population in that country), but their younger players are yet to prove their worth at the international level.

I feel like more than identity, it's more about getting younger players to show up. It's obvious that they built a good squad before this one, and they won and they were all happy about it. But then they ended up losing and not even going to world cup as well, because some of their good players retired.

I feel like they will do better during this euro cup compared to not even be in world cup, they will be at least in this, but they won't win it. They just need a whole new generation to grow up and be better as well. If they can do that then they could end up with a better result. How did France become this good? They found players that are great and close to each other at age, Italy needs the same thing, kids at young 20's to play and be good together.

I will not quote all 3 of you who are talking about Italy to not pollute the post and make it longer
The Italian team is very curious, but it is not the only one. We can mention Brazil, Germany and even Spain, as teams that win a world cup or other competition, play very well, and soon after have disastrous results.

My theory is something that can explain how a team can win a Euro in 2020 and not qualify for the 2022 world cup.
Italy's team won the Euro 2020, but not as a long-term project where they work to maintain a group and a way of playing for many years. Just note that in 2020 it worked out very well and in the qualifiers don't.
We can also mention the 2016 and 2017 team that did not qualify for 2018.

In 2006 when Italy was world champion, it was easy to know how Italy was going to play, with a very strong team defensively, well put together, look at that: Buffon, Cannavaro, Materazzi, Pirlo, Gattuso etc, and before that Italy got good results in cups.

Now, just talking about Euro 2024, Italy is fully capable of qualifying, England should qualify first in the group, but Italy can and should qualify second, because the teams from Ukraine, North Macedonia and Malta are not good enough.
A team like Italy is very bad for us bettors to try to get something right, it is much better not to bet on their games. It is better to rely on the results of France, England, and Croatia, which are much better at the moment.

On the particular case of Italy I think they are facing some sort of identity crisis, when I watch Italy I like the way they play and they are way more entertaining now than on their entire history, however they have failed to qualify to the world cup twice in a row, when on their entire history they only failed to qualify once, as during the very first world cup many European teams decided to not participate, so people are not happy with this as they preferred their national soccer team to play awfully and still win, a formula which gave them four world cup championships.

Success of the clubs doesn't automatically translate to good performance by the national teams. Because a majority of the players will be ineligible to represent the national team due to foreign citizenship. Germany is in crisis for sure, although I am not that sure about Italy. But then the very fact that Italy failed to qualify for the FIFA World Cup of 2022 tells a lot about the challenges they are facing. In case of Germany, they are simply unable to replace the star players who retired in the past few years. At this point they are heavily dependent on players like Thomas Müller and İlkay Gündoğan.

It is very difficult to say why such great soccer nations like Germany and Italy are in crisis. German and Italian clubs are very successful in European club competitions, but their national teams are not, with the exception of Italy at the last EURO.
For me, the main favorites at the EURO are France, England, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, but also Croatia as a hidden favorite.
The national team that has Modrić and won 2 medals at the last 2 world cups simply can't be underestimated.
However, in my opinion, France has the best chance.

germany is a big disaster, they don't have a big squad of players like in the past, that's why i don't see any reason to expect them to bring great results like winning the euro, i don't see italy as a strong team either, in my opinion england, france, portugal and belgium (begium is not going very far in this euro, honestly) are national teams that have great players in their squad, which is why they have a good quality of play, in the case of espenha and another team that fell a lot in terms of quality in recent years, I do not understand what happened to spain, italita and germany being that they are countries

that have very important leagues, maybe the fact that in the big teams of their leagues they don't have very important players that are from the country is being the problem, for example in the case of spain we have real madrid and barcelona that don't have spanish players like their players more important, in italy the same thing, in napoli, inter and milan and juventus doesn't have a player who is italian as the most important of the team, in germany the same thing, in bayern not a very important player who scores a lot of goals constantly that be german

in my opinion portugal, france and england should be the only teams as big favorites, portugal has great players in its squad and has all good conditions to win the euro

I agree, Italy has a quality national team that also plays in the final tournament of the League of Nations in June.
In fact, it is difficult to explain how they failed to qualify for the last 2 world cups but Italy didn't forget to play football and has a very high-quality national team.
After all, Italy is the current champion of Europe, they are an experienced team with a very good defense. Italy should never be underestimated.
Unlike Italy, the German national team is in a big decline after the 2014 world title in Brazil, and they were a big disappointment at the last world cup in Qatar.
I think that Germany is definitely not the favorite at this EURO.

It takes a lot of skill to win matches that are decided on the basis of penalty shootouts. If you look at the 2022 FIFA World Cup, out of a total of 16 knockout matches, 4 were decided on the basis of penalties. These matches were:

Round of 16:
Japan vs Croatia
Morocco vs Spain

Quarter-finals:
Croatia vs Brazil
Netherlands vs Argentina

And in 2 out of 4 matches, we had huge upsets (Brazil losing to Croatia, and before that Spain losing to Morocco). And it will be wrong to say that these two teams won just because of luck.

I agree that anything could happen but I disagree Croatia is an example to that, they weren't a small club in any means, they did it twice in a row now and that should be proof that they play very well, if they were just lucky with some games and beat some bigger clubs with luck, like red card or penalty whatever, they can do it once, but they did it twice in a row now.

Modric would probably be out for 2026 so I doubt they would be able to do it for a third time, but they really put a great team together there for these two competitions. However, what Morocco did could be considered as such, because nobody gave them a chance to be at semi finals and yet they were, that is as good as it gets for them if you ask me and a great achievement.

The European Championship or the World Cup are random seven-match tournaments and it is wrong to perceive their separate results as an indicator of strength or weakness. For example, do you remember the path of France at the previous Euro? But it doesn't affect the fact that they are the favorites now. The bookmakers estimate the chances of the teams in terms of global indicators as if it were a tournament of 1000 games, but in reality there is a lot of randomness (since there are not 1000 games) and they take it into account.

That's the problem and the beauty of football competitions. To win the title a team needs to have luck, not only quality. Because in knockout games one red card or one penalty can make all the difference and otherwise inferior team can win. That's why I actually don't like to say that some team will probably win a competition because you never know. Look at Croatia and how they played at the last two World Cups. They finished as second and third team and I honestly can't say (even though I'm from Croatia) that Croatia is one of the top three teams in the world.