What is considered to be your nation's biggest upset in sporting history?For Sweden the general consensus would say when we lost against Belarus in ice hockey in the 2002 Olympic quarter final. Our team back then was full of super stars in their prime era and they had previously won all their matches, including against Canada who would later win gold. And for those of you who don't know, Belarus is not exactly a top contender in hockey.
England lost to America in a football match in the 1950s. We also lost to Hungary, but Hungary were good then. Both of those upsets caused probably more panic than any other before or since, although /sp/ wasn't around then so there were fewer memes than Iceland.
has to be usa-argentina basketball, 2004 olympics. On paper we should ~never lose but I understand why with those expectations it's probably a shitty environment to play for the national team. They also lost games in the prelims against Lithuania and Puerto Rico (the fuck?) so it was straight up dysfunctionalhttps://www.basketball-reference.com/international/boxscores/2004-08-27-argentina.html
>>153526775
>>153525898probably the last second failure to qualify for the football world cup in 93we had a few decent players including some that'd become world champions 5 years later like deschamps, blanc, petit, cantona, papin or ginola
Probably Switzerland beating is in 2006. Truly the worst Canada team ever in best of best tournament. Although Gerber made 48 saves
>>153525898Losing to Kosovo is worse imo
>>153525898Not quite sure, but the World Cups of 2018 and 2022 obviously are massive disappointmentsGermany also failed to qualify for the handball World Cup in 2015, which is extremely embarrassing, but they were then given a wildcard
>>153527072you also lost against Italy and needed a mid-court buzzer beater to beat Germany in preparation games
>>153525898mexico 86 jp/wk 02 and hue 14 are notorious embarrassments, the 1st 2 especially
we should have won
>>153525898The time I bottled the weird 7/10 Swiss girl who liked me first>>153529235Also this. I remember tears streaming down after Son's goal
Oh boy, we kinda have a wide choice here.This century, Euro 2024 qualifiers. Losing 2-3 to Moldova, despite being 2-0 up at halftime. Also, losing 1-2 to Slovakia in 2010 WC qualifiers, conceding two idiotic goals. And 0-6 friendly against Spain in 2010, since it could easily end in double digits if Alvaros played seriously.Also, volleyball quaterfinals of Tokyo Olympics, losing 2-3 to France despite coming 1st in the groupstage right beforehand. In general, 5 Olympics volleyball quaterfinal eliminations in a row (2004-2021) was considered a national curse.But the most iconic "upset" in our history is actually... a win against San Marino in WC 1994 qualifiers. We won 1-0, but our goal was scored by Furtok with his hand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW0y1RgiB8Q
>>1535270722006 women's hockey was another good one because there is absolutely zero parity in that sport. The gold medal game has been US-Canada in every single other cycle (I think people have even tried to kick it out of the Olympics over this), but this year they lost the semifinal to Sweden and had to settle for bronze. The talent differential might be even more stark than that USA basketball team against Manu Ginobili And Friends, and the psychology of expecting to win and being kind of miserable when you have to actually compete was probably the same, but '04 basketball was so dramatic and fucked up. I'm not sure too much happened here besides getting a lot of shots on a good goalie and not scoring enough.https://web.archive.org/web/20061021204124/http://www.iihf.com/Hydra/OG06/data/iihf/output/xml/10/IHW400201_74_5_0.PDF
>>153525898Reminder that Tommy Salo cried like a bitch in an arbitration hearing.
Sean Avery still hasn't been deported from the US.
>>153525898Yeah... The hype around that lasted through for a decade. It even made me think that Belarus is pretty good at hockey and set a high expectations until recent times.Well, maybe Levshunov will turn his career around and will carry us with Protas brothers, but I doubt it.
>>153525898Losing to Argentina in 04 at the Olympics in basketball. Another one is losing to the Soviets in 72 on a massive controversy also in basketball at the Olympics
