Although the barb belt before the end was a lot of chance, or that it would be difficult for Venezuela to retreat from the home stadium of Brazil for another 10 matches, this 1-1 still showed Venezuela's progress. As the weakest team in South America as we traditionally know, Venezuela have played three matches in this World Qualifier, one win and one draw, and most importantly, they have not experienced a major rout. Although the World Preliminary Tournament has just begun, and there are more than a dozen games to come, Venezuela should probably be the most confident, because they have long been in the lowest depression in South American football and cannot regress.
The next World Cup will be expanded, South America currently has 6.5 places, it can be said that this situation is very delicate, if after the World Qualifiers, Venezuela gets a ticket to the World Cup and realizes its dream of participating in the World Cup for the first time.
The reason for the hope for Venezuela, in addition to their own true strengthening, is also related to the collective sinking of several other opponents. It can be said that the current South American football pattern has undergone certain changes. Brazil and Argentina are unshakable, but Uruguay's third place is clearly unstable, and the 2-2 draw between Colombia and Uruguay is a true reflection of the equal strength of the two teams. Chile and Paraguay, which were bullish years ago, now have a significant decline in strength. In this atmosphere, Venezuela has every chance of securing a place in the World Cup, or at least, a place in the play-offs.
As things stand, Venezuela is indeed not the weakest team in South America. So, who is this hat given to today?
Perhaps, a 2:1 match in the third round of the South American World Qualifiers, gave us the answer.
The winner is Ecuador. Although Ecuador currently does not rank well, it is because they have been deducted points for violations, in fact, if you look at points, Ecuador is even in third place, behind Argentina and Brazil. This round they beat their opponents 2-1 away and maintained a good competitive form, and it may not be long before they will eliminate the impact of the deduction and return to the first group.
The team they beat is perhaps the weakest team in South America at the moment - Bolivia.
I say this because Bolivia currently has two embarrassing statistics that are too conspicuous in South American football. The first is the ranking, and Bolivia has a record of three consecutive defeats after three rounds. They are also the only team to have not scored a single point. The second is the number of goals conceded, Bolivia conceded 10 goals in three games, almost on a level with the national football team in the 02 World Cup. And after 3 rounds of matches, the score of most games is not large, which shows that the gap between the strength and state of each team is not very large. Only Bolivia, who lost the first two games by big scores, lost 5:5 to Brazil and 0:3 to Argentina. Looking at the first three rounds alone, Bolivia is the best bully team in South America.
Also away to Brazil, you look at the gap between Bolivia and Venezuela. Venezuela can not only take 1 point, but also play barbs in style. Bolivia, on the other hand, can only stupidly send points and send goal difference.
In fact, the current international ranking also reflects this. Don't look at Venezuela has never reached the World Cup, but their results in recent years have not been too bad, and they are now ranked 53rd. Bolivia is in 83rd place, a full 30th place left by Venezuela, not to mention other South American teams. And this ranking closely corresponds to Bolivia's current ranking in the South American World Qualifiers.
Bolivia's despair lies in the fact that in the first three games, they lost exactly to the top three teams (Ecuador is actually third), which shows that they are really weak now. Bolivia's deterrent has been declining since FIFA's high limit, and perhaps they have reached their lowest point over the years. I just don't know, what will happen to them now when they are weak? Next against Paraguay, Chile and other teams, maybe there will be an answer. Of course, the two most delicate matches may be home and away legs between Bolivia and Venezuela.