AFCON - Parity or Big Teams Slacking

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Mr Shows
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Re: AFCON - Parity or Big Teams Slacking

Post by Mr Shows »

The ANC is a unique tournament. Physicality and Climate play a big role. Physicality in the sense that most players are fast, strong and skilful. Climate in the sense most of the Euro based players often have to acclimatise, switching from winter to the African Summer.

It is a knockout tournament, you slip up and there is often very little room for recovery.

Big reputations mean nothing, except to spurn unknown players to raise their game 110% when faced against stars they are only accustomed to seeing on tv. Eg the Omerou matchup against Drogba when we last won the ANC.

Big European based players often have one eye on their teams back in Europe, are psychologically mindful of picking up injuries and often have egos and reputations bigger than their national coaches.

Most of the small teams are driven by pure passion. Winning a game or scoring a goal means a great deal more to them. This can lift an average team to punch above its weight...
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Mr Shows
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Re: AFCON - Parity or Big Teams Slacking

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Like Eguaveon said in one of his interviews, it is not enough to show up with a big reputation, when you get on the pitch you have to show the opposition why you carry the tag..
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Re: AFCON - Parity or Big Teams Slacking

Post by Enugu II »

Odas wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 8:13 am
Damunk wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 7:26 am
Odas wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 7:10 am
charlie wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 5:23 pm I dont think Big teams are slacking or underestimating anyone.

I do think the lack of adequate preparation time has helped smaller nations that have been able to keep their players in camp for a much longer period, in a much better position to compete with the bigger nations.

I also think there is natural attrition that takes place in some teams that leads to declines. This has been the case for Algeria and Senegal.
... and speaking of Algeria, I am also surprised they are not faring well in this AFCON. They (Algeria) better be careful, else they will be heading home like Ghana.
If they fail to beat Ivory Coast, they are heading home.
Simple.
Speaking from their past two games I saw, I think Algeria is in HOT soup because I don't see them beating Ivory coast. However, any thing can happen, so let's wait and see.
One thing about such a game is that one clear chance e.g. a pk can decide the game. The players understand this and will seek such a pk in this game. That is all it might take for a win either way. Good thing for Algeria is they have an all important one point going in and they do not depend on anyone to get in. Win, they are in 90% or close to it. Right now that is better than one third placed team for sure.
The difficulties of statistical thinking describes a puzzling limitation of our mind: our excessive confidence in what we believe we know, and our apparent inability to acknowledge the full extent of our ignorance and the uncertainty of the world we live in. We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events -- Daniel Kahneman (2011), Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

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