FIFA World Cup 2014: The old masters getting few lessons from former subjects

Call them underdogs or usurpers, nations that struggled with their game in years gone by are surging in Brazil’s football World Cup 2014. So, a few hours before the knockout games begin among the last 16 survivors, we already have England — which claims to have invented the game — eliminated and sent back home.

But curse them not, for they have august company. The winners of the 2010 edition, Spain are also out, as are Portugal and four-time winner Italy. The number of teams in the last 16 is actually less than the number of teams from the Americas, and that includes a nation where football is called soccer, and is a relatively new sport.

But the US has ball-playing immigrants and a great coach in Jürgen Klinsmann. Thus, the top story of this Cup is unlikely to be Uruguayan Luis Suárez’s Hannibal Lecter ways to win the ball from defenders, but the fall of the old, European aristocracy of the game.

The Brits may have invented the game, but the colonies lapped it up. Cricket-crazy India hasn’t gone very far with the game at a global level, but South America and Africa are surging.

And now even the Yanks are set to join the new global elite of the game. Nobody discounts the Netherlands, Germany and France, but this Cup is surely about the colonies lobbing one back at you.