World Cup Scorecard after the Group Stage
There have been plenty of stories so far but I wanted to quickly breakdown the winners and losers among the teams who have gone home already and the different confederations.
Winners
South Africa – Opened with a strong match against Mexico…stuttered against a good Uruguay team and then put the final nail in France. In all a better than expected performance from the hosts
Slovenia – Beat Algeria, then put the US on the ropes and just couldn’t get it together against England. Would be playing Germany today if Landon Donovan hadn’t scored the late winner against Algeria.
Australia – Losing 4-0 to Germany in their opener put their backs against the wall. However, they managed to respond with a tie against Ghana and beat Serbia. A couple more bounces going their way could have seen them through to the next round.
New Zealand – How can you not love what the All-Whites did? They managed to draw all three of their matches (against Slovakia, Italy and Paraguay), which make them the only team going home already to have not lost a match. No, they weren’t one of the better teams but they did produce good performances….much better than anyone expected.
North Korea – This was a tough call. I could have just as easily put them in the loser’s column. Yes, they lost 7-0 to Portugal and 3-0 to Ivory Coast. But isn’t that what everyone expected? However, holding Brazil to only two goals which scoring one themselves was enough of a win for me to put them in the Winners column.
South America – Every one of the COMNEBOL teams reached the round of 16. 6 out of 6. You can’t do any better.
North America – Only Honduras failed to move to the next round from the CONCACAF region. 2 outta 3 ain’t bad.
Asia – A split decision, 2 of 4, here. I’ll give them a win cuz no one expected much.
Note: Of the eight teams from the Americans (North and South) only one team, Honduras, failed to move on to the Round of 16.
Losers
France – Actually, not just because they were crap on the field…but their meltdown off the field was about as dysfunctional as a team can get.
Greece – For a team who one the Euro Championships a few years ago, this was a poor performance. No, they were not at the Italy/France level of poor, but poor anyway.
Nigeria – For a team with as much talent as the Nigerians have, those three performances were about as dull and disappointing as it gets.
Algeria – For a team who went all out to get past a very strong Egypt in order to make it to South Africa, all they could manage as far as game plan was to play bunker ball for 90 minutes and hope to catch teams on a counter. They actually ended up with more than they deserved thanks to an England’s lack of finishing. In the three matches they played, they lost 2, tied 1 giving up 2 goals and scoring 1.
Serbia – I almost put them in the win column based on their performance against Germany but that’s all they did and maybe I gave them too much credit but I figured they had more to offer in their other two matches.
Denmark – For all the talent Scandinavian counties produce, why any of these countries can produce a decent national team.
Cameroon – Perhaps we still expect too much from them.
Italy – Ties against Paraguay and New Zealand and a lost to Slovakia is nowhere near good enough for the Azzuri.
Ivory Coast – Granted, they were in what was labeled the “Group of Death” but I’m not sure they were as good as they should have been.
Switzerland – I didn’t expect much from them going in…but they opened by beating Spain which should have put them in charge of their group, the followed up by losing to Chile and only managing a dreadful tie with Honduras…they should have done better.
Honduras – What did they do? About as uninspired as they could get.
Europe – You’d expect teams who qualify through UEFA to be stronger than this yet only 6 of the 13 who came through their qualification are still in South Africa.
Africa – For all that was made of the fact that it was the first World Cup hosted on the African Continent, having only 1 of the 6 teams from the region qualify is pretty poor.
What do you think? How far off am I?
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