For those of thought Japan-Korea signalled the start of a new new hierarchy in world football Germany 2006 will demand a rethink.

Four years ago Senegal shocked France in the opening game and went on to the quarter-finals. Meanwhile Turkey and South Korea found their way to the last four while Argentina and France went home early. For all that the final was contested by the powerhouses Germany and Brazil and this year football’s old world teams have been dismissive of their new world challengers.

There are often demands to give more spaces to teams from Indian satta Asia or Africa to make the World Cup a more global event but the results don’t back the argument up. All four Asian teams failed at the group stages, one of five Africans made it through and just Mexico from the four CONCAF teams squeaked out of their group only to run into the Argentineans.

The European and South American teams have been dominant each qualifying three-quarters of their entrants to the final sixteen. They weren’t especially troubled on the way as even the beleaguered French team managed a comfortable 2-0 victory over Togo when they had to. The Ivory Coast and South Korea offered some spirited resistance but only after they had fallen behind.

Each region must find their own solutions. Asia can take solace in their relative inexperience of their teams at this level, the progress their players have made in the past decade and the confidence players like Park Ji-Sung and Hideotoshi Nakata have shown playing with Europe’s best clubs. Iran, Japan and the Korea showed high standards of passing and organisation that gave them opportunities in every game they played while only the Saudis looked poor, unable to turn their wealth into results. But all teams from the Asian region struggled to cope with the physicality of the other nations and they need to come up with a system to negate more powerful opponents. The awesome levels of energy displayed by Korea in 2002 offer one answer but it is difficult to maintain this level over long periods.

The CONCAF region receives massive support from FIFA who are desperate to maintain strong markets in Mexico and the USA. FIFA give three and a half spots to CONCAF which all but guarantees qualification for Mexico and the US and their Byzantine ranking system rated these countries as the 4th and 5th best teams going into the World Cup. There’s nothing wrong with FIFA supporting football in the area but the extra spaces mean that the top teams are not challenged in qualifying while the high rankings breed false expectations and jealousy from other nations. Mexico gave Argentina a tough game but struggled through their group and team USA showed plenty of athleticism but little of the guile required at this level. The other teams, Costa Rica and Trinidad and Tobago added to the party but not much to the overall quality.

Africa will have the most hope for the future and can look forward to South Africa 2010 with some confidence. They qualified three new teams to the tournament this year, a good indicator of rising standards. Ghana came through a tough group with an all action style to become just the fifth African team to qualify for the final stages, and the absence of Essien from their last 16 clash with Brazil is a disappointment for neutrals everywhere. The Ivory Coast won plenty of admiration for their attacking intent and would surely have progressed from an easier group but some of their defending was suicidal against the quality of Argentina and Holland and they only turned it on after falling behind. Angola seemed overawed and Togo wrecked their chances by sacking the manager who saw them through to the finals, replacing him with an arrogant European and then fighting over how the spoils should be divvied up. The Tunisians met most expectations with their all-round dullness. Individually Africa can produce the players and the naivety seen in earlier tournaments is long gone as most top African players ply their trade across Europe but collectively the whole is less than the sum of the parts and we still await the African team that is not just dangerous but deadly.

The Europeans and South Americans have upped their standard this year. The worn-out adage that their are no easy games any more has finally been taken to heart with the top teams now more focused on and aware of their opponents than in the past. The new soccer nations need to match their effort and desire just to keep up but there is hope. Oceania’s one qualifier Australia have stormed the World Cup with little respect for reputation. The verve they have shown should be a beacon to emergent nations everywhere.

Who’d have thunk it – a million column inches, hundreds of hours of airtime, 45m anguished fans and all for one young man’s broken foot. No ordinary foot of course but a foot nonetheless. In the seven weeks since Wayne Rooney fractured his fourth metatarsal, collapsing in agony on the Stamford Bridge turf, World War III would not have remove Rooney from both the front and back pages of the nation’s newspapers.

The foot has healed, the machinations have finally come to an end (baring a refracture or related injury) and Rooney finally stepped out for his first start since the April 29th last night. His return to fitness so soon may be something of a surprise but the true miracle has nothing to do with physical rehabilitation at all. Indeed, the agonizing and debate over Rooney has been not just about any player but a Manchester United player no less. No, the real surprise in all this comes because of the traditionally strained relationship between United and England supporters in recent times.

In the not too distant past United players have been roundly jeered by England supporters, when playing for the national team – at Wembley in particular. In return Manchester United fans have held a long-standing antipathy towards England. The perceived unfair treatment of United players by the FA and the media has intensified this divide from Indian Matka Reds’ supporters point of view. Think about Cantona’s ban in 1995, when the FA went back on a promise to honour United‚’s self-imposed sanction. Then there was Keane’s suspension in 2004, when the FA punished the Irishman twice for his tackle on Leeds’ Alfe Inge Haarland . Think also of the length of Ferdinand’s sanction for missing a drug test when so many other players had simply been fined for the same offence. Then there was the treatment given to David Beckham by the England-supporting public in the wake of his red card against Argentina at the 1998 tournament.

Paranoia it may be, but United fans – led by the manager Sir Alex – have long held the governing body in contempt, with the England team as their principal puppets tarred with the same brush. Many England fans, in the meantime, would be happy to see a United-free national side.

Yet, last night Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea and many other traditionally anti-United fans cheered more loudly for a United player than any other on the pitch. A nation, United? Now that’s the real wonder of Roo!

Japan football team … not as great as its goalkeeper’s ego

“I made some saves but it didn’t appear to help us change the tide of the match and I don’t think we were able to get over giving up the equalizer at the end of the first half. On a personal level I feel I have done everything that has been asked of me but I can’t do everything on my own.”

So said Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi, Japan’s goalkeeper in the World Cup. This quote really bothered me. Kawaguchi really bothers me, and has done since he first set foot on the Japanese football scene.

In the early days he was all hair flicks and gel (anyone spot the jealousy of a bald man, here?). Always the last man off the pitch, so that he got significant camera time. His gestures were exaggerated. The trademark wince of pain to show just how much he cared. The concentrated stare to show just how much he … well, concentrated. Everything he did was designed for the cameras, like the ekiden relay runners who insist on falling over in exhaustion after they’ve run their leg, just to make sure everyone knows they have given their all. Kawaguchi made everyone know that he had given his all. Every wince. Every stare. Every flick of the hair. It was designed to tell a story. The story of a man with an incredible ego.

Unfortunately he hasn’t grown up in the intervening years.

“… I can’t do everything on my own.”

Now who would you normally hear saying that? A harried mother at the end of her tether berating a family of World Cup watching couch potatoes? A boss snarling at incompetent underlings in the office? Or a person with an inflated ego belittling his comrades?

What Kawaguchi is basically saying here is that he is wonderful and the rest of the Japan team are just not up to scratch. He might have something with the latter half of that assessment – Japan were clearly Indian satta outclassed in Germany. But he is by no means wonderful. A wonderful goalkeeper would not have been third choice for Portsmouth when they were a second-tier club. Nor would a wonderful goalkeeper have been released by them. A wonderful goalkeeper wouldn’t have flapped awfully at the cross that led to Australia’s equalizing goal, the goal that led directly to the change in Japan’s fortunes in this World Cup.

Yes, he did make some fine saves, including a penalty save against Croatia. But he also screwed up on a number of occasions. He, like the rest of his teammates, just weren’t up to the job. Simple as that. He was quite right about not being able to do everything on his own. He contributed significantly to Japan’s World Cup demise with help from the rest of his teammates.

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