The World Cup of What The Fuck

Some of us may remember the 2002 World Cup. It was hosted by Korea and Japan, and it was the first World Cup hosted in Asia. For the record, the 2010 World Cup was the first time it was hosted in Africa. And both have similarities. Namely, once you leave Europe, shit gets weird.

How weird? Well, here's a list of teams that didn't advance to Stage 2: Uruguay, France, Portugal, Argentina, Russia, among others.
Here's who did: Japan, Belgium, Ireland, South Korea, Turkey, USA, Senegal, to name a few.

The US and Senegal made it to the quarterfinals
South Korea took 4th place
Turkey took 3rd place

A similar thing happened in the 1994 US World Cup. Bulgaria took fourth place, Sweden took 3rd, and Romania and Saudi Arabia advanced. Hell, Romania and Bulgaria both beat Argentina!

And in 2010, we have seen Italy and France fail, Switzerland beat Spain, but for the most part its not as crazy.

Is there such a thing as home continent advantage? Probably, though Africa seems to be failing. Home field advantage is a real thing in soccer. Maybe away continent disadvantage is more prevalent. I mean, Europe fails outside of Europe while South America is going strong. In fact, all but one country from the Western Hemisphere advantaged to stage 2. At the moment, the tally is 3 south america, 2 europe, and 1 africa. After tomorrows games, it will either be 4/3/1 or 3/3/1/1 (the last one being Asia). The 1998 and 2006 World Cups featured 6 europeans and 2 south americans in the quarterfinals. In fact this World Cup has the potential to be an all South-American semifinal round. Uruguay can beat Ghana (I want that, as vengeance), Brazil can beat The Netherlands (but I don't want that), Argentina can beat Germany (I really don't want that), and Paraguay may be able to beat Spain or Portugal (they're more likely to beat Portugal, but spain is more likely to win).

Personally, while I love being complacent in my whiteness, I see a diversity in soccer ability to be a good thing. I just hope its not just because of where one plays, as opposed to an increase in quality of the past couple decades. Maybe in a few Cups from now, the final will be a Nigeria-Japan match. I'm not sure if thats good for the business of international soccer as it stands today, but only time will tell.