OSH;1548996 wrote:That's all relative. Confederation strength and weakness is all dependent upon the makeup of your own team. Of course qualifying for the World Cup is "tough" for Jamaica, Canada, and the like in the CONCACAF. So, would anyone really expect them to qualify and they would consider the CONCACAF to be tough to qualify in. Every confederation is tough in its own regard to the competition within.
Portugal drew against Israel and Northern Ireland in their qualifying stages. Not saying they are bad by any means, but anything can happen in qualifying AND teams can struggle in any confederation. A team like Portugal should not struggle against Israel and Northern Ireland.
Russia is no slouch team. There is little wiggle room in the UEFA qualifying. You have a 6 team group, and you have to finish on top to gain automatic qualification. Even 2nd place doesn't get you into the playoff if you are in the worst group. Typically each group has two teams that are going to compete for that top spot, and since they are competing to win the group, there is little wiggle room to fuck up (even a tie could fuck you over). In soccer we see it all the time where a team slips up and loses 1-0 or ties to a team that had no business being competitive with them. Look at the US for fucks sake, they lost 2 games and still finished on top of their group. In europe if you lose once (and especially twice) you are looking at being in the playoff.
The main point of all this is don't down play Portugal because they "barely" (i use that term loosely, because portugal whooped sweden's ass in the 2 game playoff) qualified. They are still better than the US and any of the teams the US played during qualification.
If you want to talk about a team that barely qualified, then mention France. It took them a 3-0 victory on the 2nd leg to get in the tournament. I'm not sure if the US qualifies for the WC if they play in Portugal's or France's qualification group.
