It's European (soccer) Championship time again. And with it comes the traditional claims that it's just as important as the World Cup. Usually that's done simply by pointing out that many of the world's soccer powers are in Europe, and conveniently forgetting that Brazil isn't. But this year the boosters have doubled-down and claimed that the Euro is actually harder to win than the World Cup. This is justified by the idea that there are no weak teams in Europe, as opposed to the World Cup and their insistence on having three North American teams.
But when I think of your average World Cup, I don't really remember it as European teams dominating everyone else. I remember it as Germany and one or two other European countries doing well, while the rest of Europe chokes against African and Asian teams. So I looked up the 2010 World Cup results, and a quick sum of the records shows that the European teams had a record of 13 wins, 10 ties and 10 losses against non-European teams. A winning record to be sure, but it hardly indicates that the European teams get a "break" when facing non-European opposition.
So it's pretty clear that this attitude of Europe being head-and-shoulders above the rest of the world in soccer is out-of-date, and no amount of upsets against South Korea or Mexico is going to convince them otherwise. Suddenly the continent's inability to face it's financial problems makes a little more sense.
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