Well this year, there are plenty to pick from. But just to clarify what it is exactly that makes a 'dark horse', we need to understand that they need to be put into a different bracket from possible or probable favorites. And that can sometimes be a little debatable.
Take France for example. Some are saying that they could be the ones but personally, having won one World Cup, one European Championship and two Confederation Cup titles in the last 12 years, they must still be considered one of the contenders for it. And heck, any team that has Henry on the bench, can't be all that bad in my books.
If we consider that, then England could be the dark horses... But somehow, they never fall into that category either. Lord only knows why!
Two possible candidates from Africa could be South Africa - these competitions always give a little advantage to the hosts - or Cameroon and two from Europe could be The Netherlands and finally Portugal. There's a nice report on the Beeb website about them.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/world_cup_2010/8721754.stm)
Now here's an interesting one. Portugal's a team that has showed so much promise in the last 10 years or so but has yet failed to deliver on that. This time around they've done it all the hard way. Having to sweat it out in their group stages until late on, at one point there was a real chance they may not make it to South Africa at all.
The Portuguese people, for the first time in those 10 years, really don't give them much of a chance. They've got good individual players but just haven't managed to glue it all together into the kind of nice little pressie you'd wanna wrap up and give your kids for Christmas.
The manager has come under some serious fire recently. Labeled my many in his home nation as a man only good enough to assist managers, coach Carlos Queiroz is hardly the type of guy they reckon will bring them any.
And then there's the selfishness of the individuals on the team too. The world's most expensive player, Cristiano Ronaldo has undoubtedly got truck loads of talent but he hasn't even scored for Portugal in over 2 years of competitive matches.
His understudy at Manchester United, Nani, has failed to deliver in the Premiership - save a couple of weirdly stunning cameos - but still thinks he's bigger than he actually is when playing for his home country, rarely passing the ball and wanting to do it all himself. And the rest of the team seems to be made up of a kind of haphazardly amassed collage, done in a hurry at the end of school so that you can head home early.
In fact... it's got all the ingredients of team, perfectly fitted to a 'dark horse' label. They'll be underdogs in most games - maybe all past the last 16 - and maybe that’s what will work in their favour.
The only problem I've got with all of this is one thing. The draw! If they qualify 2nd to Brazil in their qualifying group, they'll most likely play Spain next. Then, if all the favorites go through as planned, they'll play Italy in the quarters, Argentina in the Semi's and finally (my prediction), The Netherlands in the final - although that could easily be England, France or Brazil too.
So, dark horses? Maybe so after all :)
No comments:
Post a Comment