The French soccer site Football 365 had an interesting article entitled L'Europe perd ses repères (Europe loses its bearings). After Greece's stunning win in the recent European Championships, Saturday's World Cup qualifying matches had several surprises. France was held to a scoreless draw at home by the Republic of Ireland. But that was nothing compared to Portugal's 2-2 draw at minnows Liechtenstein. That was after the European vice-champions held a 2-0 advantage at halftime. Italy lost 1-0 in Slovenia and the Netherlands could only manage a 2-2 result in Macedonia.
But this is not limited to Europe. North American champions Mexico could only manage a 1-0 away victory at St. Vincent and the Grenadines, despite the hosts playing with 10 men for the entire second half (the reverse fixture, last week, went 7-0 to Mexico). Though CONCACAF is certainly going more to form than other regions.
The biggest turmoil is certainly in Africa, where nearly every group favorite is struggling. Senegal is top of their group on tiebreakers, but are even on points with minnows Togo and surprising Zambia. Co-favorites Mali, African semifinalists earlier this year, have only 2 points from 5 qualifiers. South Africa are top of their group, but only a point ahead of Ghana and the DR Congo and merely 2 ahead of... Cape Verde! Even Burkina Faso are only one win behind the leaders. Bafana Bafana have lost 2 of their 5 matches.
Cameroon and Egypt were the fancied teams from Group 3 but they are both behind undefeated Côte d'Ivoire and surprising Libya! Cameroon needed a late equalizer this weekend to scrape a draw away to bottom-feeders Sudan. Angola moved to the top of Group 4 with a win against Zimbabwe. They are a point ahead of continental power Nigeria.
Group 5 contains 2004 African champions Tunisia and runners-up Morocco. But the group is headed by my adopted country Guinea, who have 8 points after their home draw against Morocco (6 pts); though Guinea typically struggles in away from home, they haven't lost a competitive match at home in some 10 years. Tunisia are a further point behind after their draw away to Malawi.
1 comment:
LA SOIREE DES SURPRISES! Of all of the games, France drawing with Eire nil-nil just does not seem like that big of a surprise to me. For me the surprise is Scotland, I really thought they were going to rally.
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