It’s been fun so far, except of course if you are Italian or French (with apologies to our North Korean Reader). More ramblings below the fold.
* The South American Cup There has been a lot of talk about the European teams performing poorly and this being the South American World Cup. Not just Brazil and Argentina but also Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay are doing very well. Steve Levitt even suggested that FIFA world rankings may be biased in favor of European teams and against the South Americans. We should remember, though, that the current cup is very much an anomaly. We have to go all the way back to 1978 to find a South American team other than Argentina or Brazil that made the final eight of the tournament (Peru, and they didn’t do well). Methinks it is still too early to talk about a shift in the balance of global soccer.
* Not the African World Cup. There is plenty of analysis going into the reasons why African teams have not performed as well as some had hoped. Much of this takes the form that “Africans” lack discipline, creativity, or some such thing that would supposedly be the trigger to greater World Cup success. I am going to put most of it down to bad luck. The two best teams (Ivory Coast and Ghana) were drawn into the two strongest groups. Ghana qualified despite missing its star player through injury (Essien). Ivory Coast went out on goal difference. Nigeria is the only team that really self-destructed. Cameroon probably should have done better while South Africa and Algeria did about as well as could be expected given their talent levels.
* American Interest. Every World Cup we get the navel-gazing about why Americans are just not that much into soccer. All the usual candidates are mentioned: the sport is just too low-scoring, Americans don’t understand it, blablabla. From across the pond, my European friends worryingly inquire whether I am able to watch the games. Of course, every game is on the telly and the Cup is everywhere. My intended strategy of taping games and watching them in the evenings has been rendered impossible by the overload of ways in which results are communicated: radio, internet, conversations in the office/streets, not to mention the flatscreen in the common space near my office where people gather to watch the games. The U.S.- England first round match-up attracted 14,5 million viewers in the U.S., much more than the 8 million who watched game 7 of the NHL play-offs. Yes, life doesn’t stop here as it does in some places and our President would likely not interfere if team USA underperformed. Still, the US is hardly as disconnected from this as is sometimes claimed.
* My Cinderella picks I correctly picked Paraguay to upset Italy and top the group but I did not foresee Italy missing out altogether. I wasn’t wrong to guess that Serbia would upset Germany but I did not count on them flaming out against Australia. My other two dark horse picks (Nigeria and USA) split the difference. I have no more picks, just rooting for Oranje to prevail!
ps. Note that I cannot beat The Vreelander’s prediction success.