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So far, European teams are 10-3-3 against non-European teams in the Tournament.
I don't know that I disagree with your point, Clark, but I don't know if you've picked the right tournament to illustrate it.
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As I said in my OP though, the results are highly deceptive and not at all representative of just how close the matches have been - despite almost every non-Euro team not named Brazil or Argentina being between a 0.5 to 1.5 goal dog.
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I don't know. 2002 was a bad year for Europe. They went 12-10-9 versus World in the qualifying rounds (counting Turkey as European) and didn't perform well in the elimination rounds. But I think our European friends would argue that 2002 was more of a blip in the radar than anything else; 1994 and 1998 were strong tournaments for Europe.
Part of the problem, from what I can tell, is that the African squads seem to have gone backward. We saw a spirited performance from Ghana yesterday but that's the only win for an African squad thus far in the tournament. I suspect that South Korea will be a powerhouse within a decade or so, and that China will be very competitive, but we aren't there yet.
Per
these rankings, 14 of the 20 best squads in the world are European; the exceptions are Brazil (1), Argentina (5), Mexico (12), Australia (14), Uruguay (15), and USA (18).