Good guys finish last. Belgium got the Cup’s equivalent of ‘A for effort’ by winning FIFA’s fair play award. If only we’d taken out Ronaldo properly when we had the chance–a red card would have been a small price to pay for a trip to the quarter finals.

And here is a piece where Kim argues that the old powerhouse teams like Italy and France should have won even when they lost against upstarts Korea and Senegal. Complaining about “underdog overload” is like a butler lamenting the demise of old money because the nouveau riche have no class. But then, arguing for the maintenance of the status quo is, after all, the job of the WSJ editorial team.

But Kim does bring up an important question:

“What was a poor fan to do when the underdogs were playing each other? Senegal-Turkey? (Poor, African recipient of World Bank loans? Or poor, Muslim recipient of IMF loans?) I considered flipping a coin.”

The correct answer is to support whatever country threw in its lot with the kindler, gentler, poverty fighting World Bank, and to oppose all evil manifestations of austerity inducing IMF policies. That, at least, is what Joe Stiglitz would have done and he tells you why in Globalization and its Discontents, reviewed here by Felix. I’m reading it now and will report back. PS: Senegal is Muslim too.

[Tue, Jul 02 2002 – 19:03] John Gaffney (email) Well, as for Turkey, it has a long history of soccer, not only of sending players to European teams, but with its own Leagues, which attract the rabid attention of sports fans all over the country for such teams as Fenerbahce. So it’s not really such a “newbie” in the larger scheme of things. Senegal has lots of players who play on great European teams.

It goes without saying that a lot of the European teams were tired, and didn’t have much time to recoup from a season just ended, as the tournament was played 2 weeks earlier than usual to beat the monsoons.

There was some terrific play by some of the newcomers, so why carp about how bad the traditional favorites did? Take the matches on their own merits.