September 2024 International Window: Hot and Not
The September international window has concluded and what a window it was! Every confederation’s lowest-ranked team, except for Africa’s Somalia, secured at least one win (Sri Lanka, San Marino, Anguilla, Tonga, and Bolivia). San Marino broke the world’s longest winless streak, there were impactful debuts galore, presidential helicopters delaying kickoffs, monsoon weather interference, and much more!
Here are 13 teams that trended either up or down this window.
Hot
Georgia
This team is flying. They’ve won six of their last nine matches, only losing to Turkey and Spain in that span. With an inter-European World Cup play-off spot as a huge carrot during this Nations League campaign and given that we don’t yet know the draw for UEFA World Cup Qualifying, Georgia convincingly defeated the Czech Republic at home and is coming back from a trip to Albania with all three points, gathering a full six points in the window against nations that were both at EURO 2024. If you haven’t seen Giorgi Kochorashvili’s winner against Albania, make sure you check that out.
We liked where Georgia was going coming into this window, and now we’re even more enthused about them. The team has come together well under Willy Sagnol and the talent pool has grown considerably in recent years, with quite a few starters now playing in the top five leagues across Europe – and plenty of others who could be there soon. They attack well, they defend well, and are slowly starting to rise up through the ranks of UEFA.
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan, known as the White Wolves (we love that), could not have asked for a better start to qualifying. With wins at home to North Korea and away to Kyrgyzstan, they come away with a full six points and sit tied atop Group A with Iran. The top two spots in the group will qualify directly for 2026 and there is already a three point gap between the top two and third place – and a five point gap to fourth.
Given Uzbekistan’s history of being nearly-men, it’s far too early to even think about having secured a place, with plenty of tough places to go still (Qatar, UAE, Iran, and North Korea) – but they have started well and will be encouraged that they could find a way to win a shootout away from home against Kyrgyzstan, 3-2. Oston Uranov (Persepolis/IRN) riffled the magnificent winner into the back of the net on 72’ – another goal worth checking out.
Sri Lanka
While Uzbekistan soared, Sri Lanka also surprised many by advancing to the third round of Asian Cup Qualifying. As Asia’s lowest ranked side in the FIFA rankings (205), they made significant progress on Tuesday by knocking out Cambodia (ranked 180th) on penalties.
Two legionnaires made a big impact in the second leg; Oliver Kelaart, who plays in Iceland with second division side Haukar, scored in the 38’ to put Sri Lanka up 1-0. Cambodia would tie the match at 1-1 through Sosidan Nhean (Svay Rieng/CAM) and it would head to overtime. In the 99’, Souhana Sos (NagaWorld/CAM) would score what looked like might be the winner until Claudio Kammerknecht (Dynamo Dresden/GER), in only his third ever match for his country, scored his first ever goal for them with basically the final kick of the match to send it to penalty kicks. Cambodia would miss their first two (one saved, one wide), Sri Lanka scored all four, and that was it – Sri Lanka advanced to their furthest qualification round ever.
The draw for the next round is on December 19.
Angola
Another team that is hot at the moment is Angola, who sent shockwaves around Africa and much of the globe by beating Ghana 1-0 in Kumasi (Ghana). This is only the second time ever in their history that they have beaten Ghana, having played nine times. Milson, the Red Star Belgrade midfielder, was at the right place at the right time to score his second senior international goal from a missed clearance by Abdul Mumin (Rayo Vallecano/ESP).
Angola would go on to beat Sudan 2-1 at home to secure a full six points from the window and sit comfortably atop Group F heading into October. We won’t lie – we’d love to see Angola reach AFCON again. They were one of the funnest teams to watch in the most recent edition this year and based on the way they are playing right now, they could try to make some noise in the next one. They are undefeated in their last 10 matches, which is tied with Ivory Coast for the longest unbeaten streak of any African country right now (we counted Senegal’s penalty shootout loss at AFCON as a loss).
San Marino
When you end your 140-game, 20-year winless run, you deserve to be on the hot list. That’s exactly what San Marino did against Liechtenstein this month. Nicko Sensoli (San Marino Academy/SMR) scored his first ever goal for his country and what a time to do it, ending the longest winless streak in international football history.
Funny enough, the longest winless streak now falls to Liechtenstein (41).
Immaculate vibes coming out of Serravalle this month.
Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia had been on a poor run of form, not having won a game since last October. They had a dismal start to World Cup Qualification in June, losing to Haiti and only drawing with Aruba.
That would not be the case in this window. Since football is such a team sport we don’t always want to single out one player, however Arkell Jude-Boyd (Cheltenham Town/ENG) received his first callup to Saint Lucia and boy, did he deliver! Electric in the attack and able to recover in defense, the 21-year old midfielder has already made a big splash in the Caribbean with his performances against Curaçao and Grenada, where he scored a goal on his debut and started in both victories.
Saint Lucia sits alone atop League B, Group B in CONCACAF Nations League ahead of Curaçao, Grenada, and Saint Martin.
Bolivia
There is still a long way to go in South American World Cup Qualification. They reach the halfway point next month. Coming into this window, Bolivia had lost 21 of their last 25 matches across all competitions and decided to put faith in the hire of 54-year old Óscar Villegas, a manager who is versed in Bolivian football.
It’s well known that Bolivia likes to suffocate their opponents (literally), so they decided to face Venezuela at El Alto – located 4,000 m (13,123 ft) above sea level.
The plan worked. They rolled out 4-0 winners over a Vinotinto team we’ve been pretty high on, but who completely fell apart. The last time Bolivia scored four or more goals was in 2022, in a friendly with Trinidad & Tobago (5-0). Coincidently, that was also the last time Bolivia strung two wins in a row together.
However, it’s one thing to win at home in altitude with one of the few advantages you have, but completely different to try and win away. They went to Chile and accomplished exactly that. Carmelo Algarañaz (Kalamata/GRE) and Miguel Terceros, aka Miguelito (Santos/BRA), both replicated what they did against Venezuela by scoring again in Santiago, and Bolivia would hold on to gather six points in this window. They now sit in eighth place in the table, tied on points with Venezuela (who sits in the playoff spot) and a higher negative goal difference. They face Colombia at home and Argentina away next month – the top two nations in the table at the moment.
More Hot
- Indonesia
- Wales
- Greece
- Egypt
- Jordan
- Uganda
- Romania
- Anguilla
- Japan
Not
Guinea
We are struggling to get a read on the Syli National.
In June, Guinea went to Algiers and kicked off their World Cup Qualifying campaign with a massive 2-1 away win against Algeria. Since then, they have lost to Mozambique (WCQ), DR Congo (AFCON), and Tanzania (AFCON). This kind of fluctuation is what has prevented Guinea from becoming one of the bigger teams in Africa, despite it having an incredibly talented squad on paper. They’ve now lost twice this year to DR Congo, although this month it was a lot closer than at AFCON.
Mohamed Bayo (Lille/FRA) got on the scoresheet against Tanzania for the lead, but then Guinea let in two unanswered (61’ and 88’) to give it away. Not being able to play at home doesn’t help – which they haven’t been able to do for a few years now. Perhaps it’s also the fact that the back line, at least against Tanzania, was composed of players who were either returning to full fitness or seemingly in and out of their club side and not necessarily in the best form. They were also missing their best striker in Serhou Guirassy, who is recovering from injury.
Guinea has a double header against Ethiopia next month, against whom they will look to rebound.
Australia
The Socceroos faced two of the lower ranked teams in the group and came away with just a single point. They struggled to break down a very organized and deep lying Bahrain side at home despite having 11 goal attempts, and ended up going down to 10 men when Kusini Yengi (Portsmouth/ENG) was sent off for a high boot to the face. The pain wouldn’t end there. Twelve minutes later an unfortunate Harry Souttar (Sheffield United/ENG) own goal would result in the win for Bahrain, who would then go on to lose heavily to Japan in their next match.
Australia then traveled to Indonesia and completely dominated their hosts, but couldn’t find a goal, even after 19 attempts. Just five of those were on target. Perhaps on another night the ending would have been different, but it wasn’t, and Australia may be in a spot of trouble early on. They host China but travel to Japan in October. They will probably have to make some magic against both Japan and Saudi Arabia in some fashion, along with steady results against everyone else, if they are going to qualify from this round. According to our projections put together by Brandon (@we_global), Australia currently has a 45% chance of finishing in second place this round.
Chile
There’s no way around it anymore. Chile is in trouble and not even Ricardo Gareca may be able to dig them out of this one. Losing at home to Bolivia is a major sting, especially when you had over a 3/1 ratio of goal attempts in the match, yet the visitors still sunk two past you to take the win. They say never say never, but Chile pretty much was never going to win against Argentina in Buenos Aires (3-0 L).
We think it’s fair to say that Chile offers very little up front and we’re not seeing a ton of new talent waiting in the wings yet either. Eduardo Vargas is now 34 and not starting regularly at Atletico Mineiro, Alexis Sánchez (Udinese/ITA) is not his old self any longer and was injured this month, and we have struggled to get aboard the Ben Brereton Diaz (Southampton/ENG) train since it left the station. Dario Osorio (Midtjylland/DEN) is full of promise but has only scored once for Chile so far.
Our projections currently have them at 5.24% to qualify directly and 12.12% to reach the playoff spot. They host Brazil and then travel to Colombia next month.
United States
In the mixed zone after the match on Tuesday, it was very apparent that the players all knew that “the culture has to change” and they “lacked intensity”. It hasn’t been the summer that everyone – including the players – had hoped for, with an early exit in the Copa América and two results in this window that left a bit of a strange taste in the mouth.
For the first time since 1957, Canada beat the United States in their own backyard. It was the kind of result that you could almost feel coming, given the appointment of Jesse Marsch and the blunt intentions he frequently mentioned coming into the match. You knew he was going to have his team fired up for this one.
Similarly, it almost felt like the United States underestimated a tricky New Zealand team that begins their World Cup Qualification next month and who wanted to prove themselves better than they did against Mexico (3-0 L). Interim USA coach Mikey Varas made several changes to the starting lineup, opting to sit a few players in order to give other guys a chance.
New Zealand kept fighting the entire match, and after Christian Pulisic (AC Milan/ITA) scored the go ahead goal in the 69’, the All Whites kept going and got a lucky but perhaps deserved equalizer after a missed clearance fell to Ben Waine (Mansfield Town/ENG) – a personal favorite of the show after his outstanding OFC Nations Cup – and was looped over a flatfooted Matt Turner (Crystal Palace/ENG) caught out of goal.
Shortly before the match, the U.S. Soccer Federation officially announced Mauricio Pochettino as the new manager of the team. Surely he’ll have some ideas of what “cultural changes” to make with the United States when he takes over next month and they face Panama and Mexico in friendlies.
Brazil
The vibe around Brazil is really odd right now. Their win against Ecuador (1-0) last week is perhaps the only thing that has helped relieve a little bit of the pressure, but it was back last night.
Since they started World Cup Qualifying, they have gone 6W-5D-5L across all competitions (friendlies included) – still a winning record but it feels like a major slump. They have now lost four of their last five Qualifiers, including three in a row for the first time ever last year, a loss to Paraguay for the first time in 16 years last night, a loss to bitter rivals Argentina in a result that snapped an all-time unbeaten record at home, a loss to Uruguay for the first time in 22 years, and a loss to Colombia for the first time ever.
Yet, Brazil’s manager Dorival Júnior stated Monday in the pre-match press conference that he is confident they will be World Cup finalists in 2026. We think Brazil will be there and a lot can change in the next two years, but the fact is that Brazil is struggling right now on the field.
With more than double the possession as Paraguay (67/33), the stats show that Brazil is finding difficulty turning it into the giant attacking threat we tend to associate with the Seleção. They registered 7 total goal attempts with only 3 on target in the entire match. Granted, Gustavo Alfaro and Paraguay were more than happy to cede possession and sit deep, but a la Spain in the 2010’s, possession without bite doesn’t always end well. The problem is that Brazil has the bite in more ways than Spain did, and yet they aren’t getting the goals. The front three of Endrick, Rodrygo, and Vini Jr. is world class but has only accounted for 3 goals so far in Qualifying – all of them from Rodrygo.
Dorival Júnior hasn’t lasted longer than two years in any managerial role he’s had. The clock is ticking.
BONUS: Ghana
We couldn’t not stick Ghana in here, who after a pretty good June window reverted back to their past form by losing to (an in-form) Angola and drawing with Niger to kick off their AFCON 2025 Qualifying campaign.
Ghana has now lost six of their last fifteen matches, drawing five of those. Of their four wins, only the Mali victory in June really sticks out.
We can perhaps forgive the Angola loss, because they are hot right now, but the draw with Niger – a team ranked 125th (61 places behind Ghana in 64th) – is both a credit to Niger for sticking with it but also a discredit to Ghana for giving up another late goal (81’). As much as we love Niger for causing a ruckus, it’s mind-boggling that a team with Mohammed Kudus (West Ham/ENG), Thomas Partey (Arsenal/ENG), Inaki Williams (Athletic Bilbao/ESP), Tariq Lamptey (Brighton/ENG), and a host of other talents let that happen.
Ghana and Niger sit at the bottom of Group F, tied on points, tied on goal difference, but with two very different outlooks on their September. They are both five points back from Angola and two points back from Sudan. There is still room for course correction and we’d anticipate that to happen, but if they have another ‘September’ in October, it could start to look pretty grim for Otto Addo’s boys. They can’t sleep on Sudan, who they play back-to-back, and with their ‘home’ match now moved out of the country because CAF withdrew approval of the Baba Yara Stadium it won’t be easy.
More Not
- China
- Qatar
- Ukraine
- Faroe Islands
- Cambodia
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