Originally Posted by Bosox:
“Lots of talk early on about how it was a disastrous WC for Europe. Well 4 Quarter finalists, guaranteed at least one Semi finalist and big favourites for at least one more is a pretty damn good return in a different continent.”
I disagree. Obviously there are still 3 rounds to go so we can reassess things at the end but so far it's been a pretty awful showing from Europe and Asia and a strong showing from Africa and South America with North America probably surprising everyone and achieving the best showing.
Europe started with 13 decent teams, yet only 6 of these made it through the group stages. Croatia lost out on qualification to Mexico, Spain to Chile, England and Italy to Uruguay and Costa Rica, Bosnia to Nigeria, Portugal to USA and Russia to Algeria. Only Greece ahead of both Ivory Coast and Japan and then Switzerland ahead of Ecuador achieved any European success in terms of winning immediate qualification battles with rivals from other continents.
Into the last 16 and Greece lost out to Costa Rica and Switzerland lost out to Argentina. The other four European teams, all big teams at that, all scraped through by the skin of their teeth against supposed lesser teams (all were drawing or losing with 10 minutes to go if I'm not mistaken.)
For the 20 years which I have been following World Cups, the 'big teams' and potential winners always consisted of Argentina, Brazil and six or eight strong European teams. That pecking order appears to have been ripped up here and the likes of Colombia, Chile, USA and Mexico in particular have all looked far stronger than many of the so-called big European teams.
I think there will be three European teams in the semis and an all European final which will in many ways gloss over the poor performance of Europe as a whole in this World Cup.
