Komit said:
DRAGONZ - The Serbs are very strong. Awesome defence and will be difficult to break down. How I wish Yugoslavia never broke up. We would have had the strongest football team in the world until today - not even Brazil would have matched it.
I was arguing a similar point on here when the Groups were drawn.
Most on here saw Group C (Argentina, Ivory Coast, Serbia, Holland) as the Group of Death, but then quickly said Argentina and Holland will progress anyway.
Personally, I think that Serbia & Montenegro are almost a shoe-in for one of the top two spots.
In qualifying, they only conceded ONE goal in TEN games, and that was against Spain in Spain. After going down a goal early, they showed a lot of heart and clawed their way back into the match, with Kezman scoring a cracker to equalise. Their group included Spain, obviously, but also Bosnia (everyone knows how crazy those matches were) and Belgium. They looked to be just about the most impressive team in European qualifying.
They have an all-round strong squad, with absolute world class players in Kezman and Stankovic.
And you are definitely correct .. the former Yugoslavia were the Brazilians of Europe, and even above their South American counterparts.
The only thing which held back Yugoslavia (and still holds back the separate countries now) was attitude and discipline. Too often they didn't treat opposition with the respect they deserved, and too often they would get mixed up with in-fighting and stupid plays on the field.