Four European teams secured their places in the 1/8 finals on the final day of the group stage: Ukraine (beat Tunisia 1-0), Spain (beat Saudi Arabia 1-0 with a reserve team), Switzerland (beat South Korea 2-0) and France (beat Togo 2-0). Of the 16 teams in the 1/8 finals, 10 are from Europe, 3 are from South America, and then there is Australia, Mexico and Ghana. The shift in the balance of power towards Africa that people have been talking about for years is still at least four years off: of the 5 African teams in the World Cup, only one made it to this stage. In 2010 the World Cup is in South Africa, so one can expect African teams to do better. Home advantage is incredibly important, as shown by South Korea’s performance in 2002, when they made it all the way to the semi-final on home soil–this time around they are going home after the group stage. Or another statistic: the World Cup has always been won by European or South American teams; usually a team from South America wins when the tournament is held on that continent, and a European team wins when the World Cup is in Europe. Only once in the history of the World Cup has this pattern been broken, in 1958 when Brazil won the World Cup in Sweden (that was Pele’s first World Cup).
Coming back to this World Cup, for me the clearest trend seen in the group stage is the globalization of football, or rather, the concentration of the best players on European club teams. As examples, let us take the best two South American teams, Argentina (the best team of the tournament so far) and Brazil. This is where the 23 members of the Argentina squad play their club football:
- Spain: 10
- Italy: 4
- England: 3
The remaining 6 play for Argentine and Brazilian clubs. Of Brazil’s 23 players, the numbers are as follows:
- Italy: 6
- Spain: 5
- Germany: 4
- France: 3
- Brazil: 3
- England, Portugal: 1 each
The picture is the same for all the African teams, and indeed for most of the non-European countries.
This internationalization of football has a couple of consequences. The most obvious is that the players in question make much more money than they ever could make in their own countries. Players like Ronaldinho (Barcelona), Ronaldo or Robinho (Real Madrid), Crespo (Chelsea) or Kaka (AC Milan) are superstars on the European scene. Even the top South American clubs like Sao Paolo or Boca Juniors simply cannot compete with clubs in Italy, Spain or England. The contrast is even more stark for African players–even the richest club in Africa cannot pay the salary offered by a mediocre club in, say, France.
Is this good? It is certainly good for the players and for the European clubs. But I think it is also good for the countries that supply the players, and this is especially true for emerging football countries like the African countries or Australia or USA. Until about 20 years ago, most players played in their home countries, and the results at the World Cup reflected this. Players from Africa, North America or Asia simply did not have the skills or the experience to be on the same pitch as Brazilians, Argentines or Europeans. While occasionally one of the football minnows would score an upset (for example, USA’s 1-0 win over England in the 1950 World Cup), it was far more common for these countries to serve as cannon fodder, and results like Yugoslavia’s 9-0 defeat of Zaire in 1974 were more typical. Nowadays this does not happen. Even though 4 of the 5 African teams in this World Cup are going home after the 1st round, they certainly did not embarass themselves. Ivory Coast did lose 6-0 to Argentina, but this says something about the quality of the Argentine team (which also beat Ukraine 4-0 before drawing 0-0 with the Dutch, but that was a team with many reserves). Most of the other losses by African teams were by 1 or 2 goals, and Ghana has in fact made it to the second round. Australia has been one of the big positive surprises of the tournament and is in the 1/8 final. The small countries now have a chance because their players compete in the top European leagues week in and week out, and there they get the experience and training needed to compete on the global stage. The goal that sent Australia into the second round was scored by Harry Kewell who plays for Liverpool in England. In the Premiership, Kewell has played many times against stars like Crespo (Argentina/Chelsea), and in the European Champions League he has played against the likes of Kaka (Brazil/AC Milan). And of course he plays against top English players all the time. So it is no surprise that when he plays for Australia in a World Cup, he performs well against those players–he is used to playing against them and with them. I have used Kewell as an example, but exactly the same is true for most other players from Australia. This is good for football.
There is only one negative as I see it: the homogenization of football. Until this internalization of the game set in, football had a distinct flavour in various countries. The English were physically strong but not that good technically; they relied on the long ball into the box, to be headed in. The Brazilians (and to a lesser extent other South Americans) played technically excellent football but were often lacking in defense or organization; the Dutch played their brand of “total football” which almost earned them a World Cup in 1974 (they lost 2-1 to Germany in the final); the Germans played a slightly boring style but were always extremely effective, physically strong, and tended to win. These differences are now somewhat blurred. The national character is still there, but now that the best English players (who still play mostly in England) have club teammates from all over the world, the English game has become much more similar to the game as played in Spain, Italy or South America.
To finish this long entry, here are my personal picks and pans based on the group stage:
- Biggest flops: USA and the Czech Republic. Two teams that were ranked 4th and 2nd on the FIFA ranking before the World Cup are both going home early.
- Biggest positive surprises: Australia (see above) and Ghana (impressive performances against the Czechs and the Americans after initial loss to Italy).
- Other positive surprises: Italy (I thought they were poor going into the tournament, but in the end they got the results in the group stage) and France (I had predicted that they would not make it out of the group stage but must now eat my words).
- Most impressive team: Argentina. Won its group with 2 wins and a tie and a goal score of 10-0. My current favourite to win the World Cup.
- Worst performance so far: English referee Graham Poll and his assistants in the Croatia-Australia game. Their accomplishments include: missing two clear penalties by Croatia (one was a rugby style tackle by a Croat defender on Australia’s Mark Viduka and the other a blatant handball by Croatia’s Tomas); overlooking the fact that Kewell was offside before scoring the equaliser; failing to show Croatia’s Simunic the red card after giving him the second yellow card of the game–apparently Poll had forgotten that he had already given Simunic one yellow, and neither his two assistants nor the fourth official saw it as their task to remind him. It is a safe assumption that this refereeing crew will be going home early as well.
And now we all put the beer in the fridge, get chores out of the way during the morning, and lean back and enjoy glorious football all afternoon and evening. YES!