FIFA 2010 World Cup | I lost the friendly match, and so what?

Portugal’s goalless draw with lowly Cape Verde in a recent friendly match has send scorching headlines across the footballing world, as the likes of Ronaldo and Nani were unable to score in 90 minutes. For a minute I never believed the upheaval had anything to do with the true strength of the Portuguese. Friendlies say very little about teams, but our response to these results may reflect our deeper opinions regarding the chances of the teams at the FIFA 2010 world cup. Preparing for the world cup is much simply in a technical sense than you would expect.

While it brings a lot of excitement, the depth of the intrigue is shallower. A lot of the teams that come out of the group stages are obvious with the exception of a few surprises and very few indeed. The seeding format and fixtures give the top teams an edge, which in financial terms is good for the game. With no room for a third place qualifier, the mathematics of qualifying is simplified, as the seeded team start against the lowly team, which is often a warm-up match across the groups.  

The semi-finalists are fairly predictable as well using the FIFA/Coca Cola ranking. It is always risky to bet against 4 of the top 8 teams reaching the last four i.e. 25% of the 32 teams have more than a 90% chance of reaching the last weekend, hardly any brain storming here. In a way, teams like Portugal already know what the need to do go far, a huge source of distraction for Ronaldo and co. With a final game against Brazil, getting the three points against a Drogba led Ivory Coast is daunting task for a team that is not balanced. Friendly matches for what they really are, is a test drive that hardly ever reproduce what we should expect when the competition keys off.

They can be used for various reasons. Dunga already has a good idea of the structure of the Brazilian team and has planned two soft games against African opposition in June. Maradona needed a morale boosting match in front of his home crowd, which Canada delivered by conceding 5 goals, but that does not mean they would not struggle when it matters. I can vividly remember the wave of amazing headline prior to USA 94, when Brazil draw with 1 – 1 with poorly fancied Canada, but they got to the finals and won. The general impression then was to dismiss the result. It still holds true.