Continental drift

Before the World Cup started, a time I can hardly imagine now, I did a post called The continental imbalance, in which I discussed the number of countries from the different continents. Now that 96 out of 104 games are in the record books, how have the different continents done?

Europe have done very well. 13 of the 16 European sides got through to the round of 32, and 6 of them are in the quarter finals. If France beat Morocco and Switzerland beat Argentina we'd have an entirely European last 4.

South America did well in the group stage, with 5 out of 6 going through. There's just Argentina left now, though, although it's worth remembering that something similar happened last time and they went on to win it.

The three North American teams all qualified for the round of 16, but then they all got knocked out. The USA ran into their own President, you all know what happened to Mexico and Canada lost 3-0 to Morocco.

Talking of Morocco, they're the only African team left now. 9 of the 10 African nations made it through to the knockout phase, but then they crashed and burned, although Egypt were unlucky against Argentina.

So who else crashed and burned? Well, 100% of the Oceania team went out in the group phase. New Zealand managed a point against Iran, but then lost badly to Belgium and Egypt. The other two continental failures were Central America and Asia.

No-one was surprised about Central America, even in Central America. If you separate out the North American hosts then CONCACAF were represented by Panama, Haiti and Curacao. It isn't much of a surprise that they got eliminated, considering they have a combined population of under 16 million and ELO rankings of 51, 81 and 91 respectively.

Asia was a shock.  7 of 9 went out in the group phase. No not the Borg woman, 7 Asian nations out of 9. That's Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Uzbekistan. Japan and Australia went out in the round of 32. How come?

Some of it is random chance. Iran and South Korea finished 9th and 10th of the third placed teams, just missing the cut. If you look at the 27 games played by all 9 Asian teams, though, you get 3 wins, 9 draws and 15 losses.

A part of their problem is the same problem that dogs any lesser team in a seeded contest. Uzbekistan had to play Congo, Colombia and Portugal, whereas Portugal only had to play Congo, Colombia and Uzbekistan. It means the impact of crapness is doubled. You may have thought England get a lot of easy games in tournament qualifiers, and you'd be right because England are always the difficult game in their group.

Beyond that, each nation has their own problems. Uzbekistan has limited facilities by European standards. Qatar has the money and the facilities, but only 300,000 citizens to select from. Iran's difficulties have been well documented.

When you compare countries like this with England, with all the resources at St George's Park and the massive wealth of the top English and European clubs behind the individual players, it's hardly surprising if they struggle to compete. Harry Kane is a remarkable player who would have excelled anywhere, but the millions of pounds that have been invested in him since he was little weren't spent for no reason. They were spent adding the extra few percentage points that turn an extremely good player into a galactico.

Harry Kane has no reason to feel anything other than proud, because he can reflect that he's the player you choose when you're Bayern Munich and money is no object. On the other hand, if there's an Uzbeki Harry Kane we'll never know what he might have achieved.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let's take a ride and see what's mine

I haven't done one of these for years, but apparently they're considered quite old-fashioned now so it feels like it's my time again. Here then is my fourth World Cup blog. I often used to take my blog titles from songs, and so it was for all the World Cup ones. In 2006 the World Cup was in Germany so I chose  First We Take Manhattan because the next line in the song is T hen we take Berlin . In the event England did not in fact take Berlin, which taught me a valuable lesson about hostages to fortune. In 2010 it was in South Africa so I went for Hope Joanna , the Joanna in the Eddie Grant song being Johannesburg. It was recorded when apartheid was still in place, and was about the hope that it could be defeated. Obviously by 2010 it had been, and the Iron Curtain was a thing of the past as well, but equally obviously a whole new crock of shit had sprung up to replace the old crock of shit that we'd grown up with and thought would last for ever. Looking back, I seem to r...
Read more

The continental imbalance

This World Cup will be the first with 48 countries. The number has slowly grown, from an inauspicious 13 in 1930 to 16, 24 then finally 32 in France in 1998. I say finally, and most of us probably thought 32 was peak bloat, but like Mister Creosote they've found room for another 16 wafer thin mints. Whether we can expect a similar outcome remains to be seen. The 48 will be made up of 16 countries from Europe, 10 from Africa, 6 from South America, 6 from the rest of America (that's North America, Central America and the Caribbean), 9 from Asia and 1 from Oceania. Oceania used to have a play off against a South American team, but FIFA have now given them an automatic place. This means in future New Zealand will always qualify, unless they manage to lose to Vanuatu or one of the other volcanoes. The continental balance might strike you as not in fact that well balanced. Europe may be the centre of our world, but the centre of the actual physical world is a superheated mass of iron...
Read more

Silly games

Have a look at the pool stage from the 2011 Rugby World Cup . In particular, have a look at Namibia in Pool D. Namibia had games against South Africa, Wales, Samoa and Fiji. They lost all four of them, scoring 44 points and conceding 266. They lost 87-0 to South Africa. I remember this game because I watched it. On telly, I didn't go to Auckland to watch Namibia play rugby. It was a silly game. A silly game is a game where one element is incongruous when juxtaposed with the others. In this case it was Namibia who were incongruously shit in comparison with South Africa. I've only ever been to one truly silly game. It was the 2004 League One playoff final. Bristol City played Brighton and Hove Albion, for the right to play the following season in the Championship. For those who aren't familiar with FA branding practices, neither League One nor the Championship are the highest division. If you get relegated from the Premiership, the division with the teams you've heard of ...
Read more