We need to talk. The world has changed around you and I'm not sure you've noticed.
You see, it's just not your World Cup anymore. While the top seeded teams faired very well whether they hailed from Europe or South America, the unseeded teams from the Continent just weren't anything special. Here's the average number of points scored per game
- 2.25 -- CONMEBOL (South America) -- 2.25
- 1.16 -- AFC (Asia)
- 1.13 -- UEFA
- 1.11 -- CONCACAF (North America, Central America, & Carribean)
- 1.00 -- OFC (Oceania, aka New Zealand)
- 0.67 -- CAF (Africa)
Going strictly by group play results, FIFA ought reduce the number of teams coming from Europe and Africa and plus up the number from South America an Asia. Had this happened this year, that would have replaced Algeria and Portugal with Bahrain and Ecuador. Now, Portugal did make it to the knockout round, but they haven't managed to score a goal against anyone other than North Korea. Color me unimpressed.
2 comments:
Speaking again as a temporary Egyptian, Algeria is sort of a fluke and Egypt would have been a much more competitive replacement.
As you can see here: http://www.fifa.com/associations/association=egy/ranking/gender=m/index.html
Egypt is considered the 12th best team in the world (although frankly this is too high) and is the clear number 1 team in Africa. They just got unlucky against Algeria in the qualifiers.
...which explains why the remaining teams are, without exception, European. Clearly, decadent 'old Europe' has once again bullied its way to the top. (And they won't even give in to demands to run up even higher deficits! How dare they!)
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