With the group stages of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil now firmly down in the annals of history, let’s take a look at players who featured but failed to star – in other words, players of who there was much expected but due to various circumstances inexplicably failed to delivery as many fantasy football points as our managers may have hoped!
There were a few surprise exits from the groups, with reigning world champions Spain one of the most shocking casualties having won the past three major international competitions (Euros in 2008 and 2012 with a World Cup title win sandwiched in between in 2010), so there will surely be plenty to go over there. England and Italy both failed to qualify from an admittedly hard group which also included former two-time world champions Uruguay and Costa Rica, who were initially thought to be sure-fire fourth before actually going on to win the group with an impressive seven points from a possible nine against three former world champions.
Make no mistake, these weren’t the only high-profile exits either. Portugal failed to advance, and neither did the Ivory Coast. In this piece we won’t be taking players into consideration who weren’t able to feature through injury – that would just be unfair after all! We are talking about faces who turned out in their respective shirts but for one reason or another just couldn’t turn things up to the next level and deliver the goods.
With that, let’s look at those big names who, by and large, are either back at home or will be heading that way imminently following their respective nation’s exit from the tournament.
Arguably the biggest name from these exits could be Portugal’s Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo – he is rated at a whopping €21.00m in our fantasy game, with a points return of only 30 – there are players with less out there, but he appears to be easily the biggest name to fall short of expectations. He started all three of the Iberians’ games, scoring once and providing one assist – and his points-to-value ratio is only 1.4 – not what you would expect from the joint-most expensive player in our wonderful game, that’s for sure. Argentinian Lionel Messi has the same value, and has already returned 80 points to those who had faith, and he still has games to add to that tally as well.
England striker Wayne Rooney, former team-mate of Ronaldo’s at Man Utd, also had a disappointing campaign which saw his home country exit at the first time of asking, and he matched the Portuguese’s tally of 30, though his value was a bit lower at €14.00m, giving him a slightly less shocking (but still uninspiring) points to value ratio of 2.1.
Looking at players with a €14.00m value, though, Italy’s former Man City striker Mario Balotelli fared even worse than Rooney with a tally of only 10 points to the good – he did score a goal, but two yellow cards all but cancelled that out. Italy’s early exit means they won’t be adding a fifth title to their trophy room either, so all in all not the best of summers for these two European outfits.
Nor so for Spain either, who having won three major titles on the trot went on to defend their World championship for three games before hopping on the plane back home. Then again, taking Andres Iniesta as an example, a value of €9.50m and a return of 20 points may be setting the world alight but it looks better than that of Rooney (again, for example) – he has the same points to value ratio of 2.1.
Honourable mention should go out to Luis Suarez as well – despite a controversial tournament, he managed to nab 40 points from a value of €16.00m – a points to ratio value not too far ahead of Rooney’s at 2.5. He seemed to do well when he played apart from partaking in the obvious controversies, but just didn’t seem to do enough to garner as many points as some may have expected. 40 points from two games isn’t too bad at all, but for that value it could have been hoped he may have had a bit more time to grab more points and he could potentially have made a difference when the country exited the world cup at the hands of Colombia on Saturday night. It wasn’t to be, however, and so while our fantasy managers may have reaped some benefits from having the Liverpool star in their ranks while he was there, it’s a shame he wasn’t able to take part a bit more and potentially add to that tally.
