A too logical World Championship (Yahoo)

“Football has paired up”, it is a sentence that the last years was heard a lot, though always by the same protagonists, those that by this reason that seems scientific but never has been proved, take defensive precautions in their teams and every time carry football to be played with less forwards and more midfielders and defenders and if we take into account the final result of the eliminatory groups in Europe and South America we once again find with few surprises and that they are related more with the temporary crisis than with the fundamental changes.

Perhaps from the most flamboyant matters of these eliminatory that now enter into the phase of the playoff to define the last places for the next World Championship in South Africa, we can count in South America with the great production in Chile, that obtains a historical second place behind Brazil in a group of ten teams that defined by the system “ all against all” in two rounds, totalizing eighteen dates and remained in front of the historical teams such as Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay, leaving completely out of the World Championship Equator, animator of the last two contests.

Chile, that will return to the World championship appointment after a very good experience in France 1998 with the forward composed by Marcelo Salas and Ivan Zamorano, now counts with a generation of very good players, as the goaler Humberto Suazo, and the assistant Matías Fernández, and the forwarder Alexis Sánchez, with the experienced group that has many of its components in European or Mexican teams but if there was a fundamental factor it was the Institutional order and the correct registering of the serious and expert coach as the Argentine Marcelo Bielsa that has transformed himself in a model of behavior in the country.

Brazil obtained an easy classification this time, same as the Paraguayan team guided by the Argentine Gerardo Martino (of the same school as Bielsa), meanwhile that the counter-face was the Argentinean team, that suffered too much to get the passage to the World Championship in the last match in Montevideo vs Uruguay, in which both were arriving with chances, though now the Light blues must play a playoff vs Costa Rica, coming out from a Group of Central America to be in the fifth place of the Continent.

Argentina, first with Alfio Basile as coach, and then with Diego Maradona, dropped and never found their way arriving finally to a desperate situation with permanent changes of players in spite of the stars they have, it is difficult to foresee if all will turn out right in the World Championship.

On the Concacaf side, the classifications of the United States and Mexico were expected, dominators in the zone and only Honduras was a certain surprise, though everything always within the logic.

On the side of the European teams neither there can we speak about many surprises, continuing with the idea that in football there are powerful and second and third line teams, and so it is that Spain, with all gained points in a historical eliminatory ratified their excellent moment with a total supremacy, meanwhile also got the passage as it was expected, England of Fabio Capello, Germany, though in a hard fight with the growing Russia of Guus Hiddink (that at any rate will play the playoff), Italy with the return of Marcello Lippi as coach, Holland and in any case, they had more dispute in their groups, Denmark that had to confront Portugal of Cristiano Ronaldo, Serbia that had to have as rival nothing less but France and Slovakia that left on way the Czech Republic..

From the eliminated teams among the powerful, at present only Swede may be cited that had no luck with the Group that they received and we will have no pleasure in the World Championship to see the star of Barcelona, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and on the other side, precisely the Czechs that lost force since the withdrawal of Pavel Nedved.

The rest of the important teams have classified directly or have to dispute a playoff with few surprises, thought it should be cleared up that in future FIFA will have to revise the ways of dispute of the European classificatory groups and the distribution of the teams as to the heads of series and the requirements to occupy that place, due to the unbalances that have generated.

It is not the same a Group with a potency, Germany, and another ascending, Russia that one where had to dispute two places, the Danish, Swedish and Portuguese and another that has not team of that level, as the composed by the Czechs, Slovakian and Slovenian. The balance seems too much inclined toward one side and very little towards the other, and this subject has already appeared even in the last compositions of groups in the World Championships.

As to the African Continent, neither there seems to have many surprises. The single strong one, up to the moment, is that of the Continental bi-champion, Egypt that is losing its place on hand of Algeria, but in the rest of cases, Cameroon and Tunis are obtaining the passage to the World Championship, meanwhile Ghana and Ivory Coast have already entered adding to the local South Africa.

Taking into account all the cases and adding to the Asiatic Continent, in which only the North Koreans gave a surprise, it may be said that the idea that football has paired up seems to follow only an illusion to justify defensive tactics by a supposed and unverifiable fear of the adversaries.