It is a surprise that Uruguay always seem to finish about 5th in South American WC qualifying campaigns.

They always seem to be the team playing off to get into the WC, against Asian , North American, or Oceanian opposition. Yet after Brazil and Argentina, they are usually the best South American performed team at World Cups.

I think Ecuador, Paraguay and Bolivia have venues with high altitude that makes it very difficult for any opposition teams to even draw games when they play at home. So they win a higher proportion of home games, enjoying an altitude advantage, as visiting teams don't have time to adapt.

Asuncion is 43 metres above sea level- just as well you don't teach geography!

Incredible how Uruguay punch above their weight for a country with such a small population.

Substitute Colombia with Paraguay and you're spot on.

Speaking of Colombia, they've been amazing in this world cup! They're my favourite under dog team.

Edited by axelv: 22/6/2014 09:21:16 PM

And that's without falcao to boot as well

This says it all really

[youtube]XlfUpC7yh74[/youtube]

It never fails to astound me how often Uruguay punch above their weight. Everyone always goes on about Holland in a similar way, but Uruguay 1/5th of their population and have actually won numerous major tournaments.

I travelled to Peru in 2012 and actually shared a flight with the Peruvian national team who were on their way to Bolivia to get some serious high-altitude training in for their game with Bolivia coming up.

By the sounds of it from what some locals were saying, it seems that South American teams with large amounts of non-domestic-based players usually struggle more in qualifiers because they've become too accustomed to their Euro lifestyle etc, whereas the guys who are regularly living and playing in South America, particularly at high altitude, have a real home advantage.

So it seems when the likes of Suarez, Cavani, etc etc all come home for their qualifiers, they take some time and effort to get used to the conditions and some times fail because of this.

I know the local Peruvians were saying Argentina were the next team to play in Peru, and that it should be a pretty even match. It astounded me to think that Peru, who I can't even remember making the World Cup last, would be "pretty even" with Argentina. But apparently the home games really do wonders over there.

And if memory serves correctly, that Peru-Argentina game ended up a draw.

well the thing is that lesser sth american sides often have at least one genius no matter how mediocre the rest of the team, such as marcelo moreno for bolivia and claudio pizarro for peru. Home advantage plus a striker like moreno plus altitude is quite a mixture

Interesting post.

Colombia play some amazingly good football. FC Porto have been pumping out some very good Colombian talent like Martinez, Rodriguez, Quintero and Falcao and it's such a shame the latter is injured because that team is good enough to go far into the tournament.