The Quarter Finals: Continental Drift

Now we're up to the final eight teams in the competition. They come from three continents, but how does this compare to previous competitions? We were only ever going to get three European teams through, as a twist of fate meant they ended up playing each other instead of nations from other continents.

Continent	1998	2002	2006	2010
Africa	0	1	0	1
Asia	0	1	0	0
Australasia	0	0	0	0
Europe	6	4	6	3
North/Central America0		1	0	0
South America	2	1	2	4

The perceived European dominance of football has been severely dented this year – only three sides made it from here, and most of the teams come from South America. In previous years, there was a European dominance, with maybe a couple of teams from South America. Even in 2002, Europe had more representation, and the other teams came from a wide spread of continents.
There has never been a World Cup winner outside of Europe or South America, and it looks like that will continue this year. Only Paraguay of the South American teams remaining has not won a cup, but only Germany from the European sides has done so. So it is possible that we may get a new World Cup winner this year – I'm supporting Spain.