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Originally Posted by Vaultboy
South America is a far smaller continent, in size and in time-zone span to Africa. Its cities are almost all in the Southern Hemisphere. Climatically it is also a lot less diverse than Africa.
Competition in CONMEBOL is tight rather because of the relative quality of the teams. Yes, there are a handful of teams where altitute is a factor, but it negated by the round-robin structure to qualifying. In Africa, you could be a coastal country playing all your away games at > 1000m.
You are correct in all respects w.r.t. Asia though.
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Well, size doesnt have a lot to do with climate variation. You have deserts and rain forests, valley and huge mountains. Argentina, Chile and Uruguay are further south than S. Africa, and then you can go play literally in the middle of the Amazon. And then there are the Andes: when FIFA banned games in high altitudes, it did so thinking of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Brazil had no problem beating Ecuado 5-0 and Peru 3-0 at home, but could only tie them away.
High Altitude Soccer Teams Have Significant Advantage Over Lowland Teams
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Not all of them playing in the top league of the world are starting regulars for their teams. Not all of those european teams are neccesarily that good either. So you cannot use the amount of players in Europe as any kind of measuring stick for playing in Africa.
Egypt, who have won the AFCON 6 times (vs the 2 of nigeria), have only twice qualified for the world cup. Gabon are like portugal: Ranked highly (30's) but never perform. They are in a tough group, and could once again not qualify. Senegal's WC qualification was quite the anomaly, and most of their players only made it into Europe after the world cup - and they're still there. Which shows another bias: European club scouts simply dont know enough about Africa, apart from perceptions about Nigeria, etc.
Also if you look at the CAF Champions League, the best African clubs come from supposed "weaker" national teams: Egypt, Tunisia, Maroc, Ghana and Sudan dominate the top 10 clubs - and only 1 club from cameroon and Nigeria respectively . Cameroon, who have all of their team playing in Europe have also become weaker over the last decade.
I'm hoping that the World Cup will give African teams a home advantage, and the teams I'd like to see are (in order) Ghana,
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Of course, all caveats apply to players playing internationally and etc. But that doesn't change the fact that most people will be surprised if Nigeria doesn't go through and Tunisia does. Even in the two African Nations cup Nigeria has done better.
It is not disrespect against Tunisia. But this generation of Nigerians has done pretty well in the youth tournaments leading up to this (2nd in u-20 WC in 2005, 2nd in the olympics in 2008, 2nd in the u-17 in 2001), and so to fail to qualify is unexpected.