Was Japan/Korea 2002 the strangest World cup in history?

FootballHQ

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20 years on let's look at what happened:

Senegal 1-0 France. Opening game. Nothing unusual in holders suffering a bad result early on given Argentina lost in identical manner in 1990 to Cameroon. However Argentina still made the final in 90, France took one point from three games and didn't score a single goal.

The last four in euro 2000 was France, Italy, Holland and Portugal and that's widely regarded as one of the highest level continental tournaments of all time. None made it to the last 8, Holland didn't even qualify....

Argentina were justifiably one of the favourites going into the tournament given how they've played in Commebol and their squad was similar standard to what France have now, ridiculous strength in all positions but Bielsa made some odd selection calls, they were in the toughest group and went out before the postcards aswell.

England beat Argentina in that group pool. Twenty years on that probably remains England's best result v top level opposition at world cup despite the strong run in 2018. I actually think in "golden generation" era that was England's best chance of winning a tournament compared to the next two but probably in minority of that.

USA, South Korea and Turkey all made last 8/4. USA really should've beaten Germany, nice team with Donovan upfront. Robbed with that Frings handball on the line. Korea played well but some of those calls for them v Italy and Spain were ridiculous, didn't Portugal also end up with 9 men v them in the final group game?

South Korea never really hit the heights since despite Son being a world class player in europe, Japan at least have established themselves as a solid last 16 team at world cups and could've easily made quarters in 2010 and 18.

Added to the randomness was europe experiencing what many of the world has for other world cups e.g watching games at 6-10am, fond memories of watching the England-Brazil quarter final in the School assembly hall. John Motson on comms was making so many references to Tupperware it was ridiculous. :lol:

A perfect storm of events then. Brazil were worth winners and had a great team when you look at the names starting. They nearly didn't qualify for that world cup either which adds to the mystique of it and ending up with Scolari.
 
FootballHQ said:
Added to the randomness was europe experiencing what many of the world has for other world cups e.g watching games at 6-10am, fond memories of watching the England-Brazil quarter final in the School assembly hall. John Motson on comms was making so many references to Tupperware it was ridiculous. :lol:
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Yeah, I remember buying a newspaper at some early morning time, discussing the England v Brazil game that was on soon, with some surly newsagent. 2-1 I said. Right score, wrong way!

Cowardly exit from us. Leading early ( I was pissing about on my computer in a different room when Owen scored), then facing 10 men, Seaman being beaten from miles out, and we couldn't muster any sort of decent possession or chances after. Limp.
 
No, many big teams had some sort of internal drama going on, but personnel wise it was indeed incredible.
Quality wise I think the likes of 82,94 and perhaps 1966 and 1970 were better.
 
One of my favourite world cups. France didn’t have Zidane for the first two games but France had 3 of Europe's top goal scorers in the side.

Uruguay missed an open goal (header I believe) that would have knocked Senegal out in the groups.

I wasn’t overly amazed by Turkey. Think they had a solid Euro’s prior and had some real good talent. Hasan Sas, Nihat and the mercurial Ilhan Mansiz who was doing rainbow flicks over Roberto Carlos. I think he lamented the fact he was found too late for a big move. Think injuries were the main reason he never had a great career.

Argentina, Portugal and France were poor. Spain weren’t that great either and I had hoped Ireland knocked them out.
 
I was teaching in Japan at the time and my mates came over from UK to watch. I had to work so could only attend one game. But they had an absolute blast for a month (and spent the next year or so paying off their credit cards).

I told my bosses to block out the England games since I refused to teach during them and even got special dispensation to go and watch England V Nigeria (which ended up being a boring game but man the atmosphere in Osaka was incredible. World Cup Frenzy was massive amongst the Japanese and especially England and Beckham mania. The girls would run after the England coach screaming hysterically like Beatlemania. We ended up getting stopped by a BBC crew who asked if they could film us for a few hours. They ended up taking us to a restaurant and paying for Okonomiyaki and beers all courtesy of the BEEB. We ended up on the 1o'clock news :D

I remember Japan and S Korea doing really well and France less so. Thought we could have gone all the way but then got Braziled. England's customary exit aside. It was a truly memorable world cup for me.

Ah happy days!
 
The Senegal-Uruguay game in 2002 was incredible, the best match of the tournament IMO. Senegal looked to be cruising towards the knockout stages when they were 3-0 up at half-time (one of the goals a penalty following a big dive by Diouf), but Uruguay made a couple of substitutions at the break which paid off (including bringing Forlan on), as they fought back to level it up at 3-3 (the 2nd goal was a golazo by Forlan, after Dario Rodriguez scored probably the goal of the tournament against Denmark in their opening game / defeat). In injury time, Chengue Morales had the opportunity to score the winner to send Uruguay through and Senegal home, but headed wide from very close range with the goal at his mercy.

Re Argentina, Bielsa definitely made a mess of it, playing Batistuta as a lone striker instead of Crespo, not taking Riquelme was controversial, and even more so not taking Saviola who had had a strong season individually for a poor Barcelona team instead of a 35 year old Canigga.

The Italy-Croatia group game was crazy as Italy looked to have 2 perfectly good goals disallowed, so Graham Poll refereed contentious matches involving Croatia at 2 consecutive World Cups. With that and then later on the contentious match against South Korea notably Damiano Tommasi's golden goal being 'controversially' disallowed, it's no surprise that they were angry about their exit from that tournament.

That World Cup was a catalogue of high profile errors from officials, another one being John O'Brien's blatant handball in the box vs. Mexico.
 
Red the Bear said:
No, many big teams had some sort of internal drama going on, but personnel wise it was indeed incredible.
Quality wise I think the likes of 82,94 and perhaps 1966 and 1970 were better.
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Quality it was miles off 1998. I kind of feel those two tournaments spanned the generations of football a bit (probably because they were sandwiched between the Millenium of course).

France 98 was a brilliant world cup from start to finish but it had a really retro feel to it given it was last time we had likes of Scotland, Bulgaria and Romania playing in one and it was the final tournaments for guys like Schmiechel, Laudrup brothers, Hagi, Stoichkov, Bergkamp. Some classic kits in there aswell.

Japan/Korea simply wasn't as good but had a futuristic air about the way football was changing in terms of styles and technology. Can still remember all those camera lens going off whenever Beckham went over to take a corner, didn't England-Argentina take place in an indoors stadium aswell?

Would've actually been the perfect tournament to introduce VAR if anyone had actually thought of it.
 
noelyman said:
I was teaching in Japan at the time and my mates came over from UK to watch. I had to work so could only attend one game. But they had an absolute blast for a month (and spent the next year or so paying off their credit cards).

I told my bosses to block out the England games since I refused to teach during them and even got special dispensation to go and watch England V Nigeria (which ended up being a boring game but man the atmosphere in Osaka was incredible. World Cup Frenzy was massive amongst the Japanese and especially England and Beckham mania. The girls would run after the England coach screaming hysterically like Beatlemania. We ended up getting stopped by a BBC crew who asked if they could film us for a few hours. They ended up taking us to a restaurant and paying for Okonomiyaki and beers all courtesy of the BEEB. We ended up on the 1o'clock news :D

I remember Japan and S Korea doing really well and France less so. Thought we could have gone all the way but then got Braziled. England's customary exit aside. It was a truly memorable world cup for me.

Ah happy days!
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That's a fantastic story :D
 
Rivaldo getting hit by a ball and going down was classic, too.
 
Frasbul said:
Germany was so so so bad and still made it the final. Easiest route ever: A group with Saudi Arabia, Ireland and Cameroon and then Paraguay, USA and South Korea.
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True. I think the 2002 and the Euro 2004 teams are by far the worst squads Germany ever had for a major tournament
 
GuybrushThreepwood said:
The Senegal-Uruguay game in 2002 was incredible, the best match of the tournament IMO. Senegal looked to be cruising towards the knockout stages when they were 3-0 up at half-time (one of the goals a penalty following a big dive by Diouf), but Uruguay made a couple of substitutions at the break which paid off (including bringing Forlan on), as they fought back to level it up at 3-3 (the 2nd goal was a golazo by Forlan, after Dario Rodriguez scored probably the goal of the tournament against Denmark in their opening game / defeat). In injury time, Chengue Morales had the opportunity to score the winner to send Uruguay through and Senegal home, but headed wide from very close range with the goal at his mercy.

Re Argentina, Bielsa definitely made a mess of it, playing Batistuta as a lone striker instead of Crespo, not taking Riquelme was controversial, and even more so not taking Saviola who had had a strong season individually for a poor Barcelona team instead of a 35 year old Canigga.

The Italy-Croatia group game was crazy as Italy looked to have 2 perfectly good goals disallowed, so Graham Poll refereed contentious matches involving Croatia at 2 consecutive World Cups. With that and then later on the contentious match against South Korea notably Damiano Tommasi's golden goal being 'controversially' disallowed, it's no surprise that they were angry about their exit from that tournament.

That World Cup was a catalogue of high profile errors from officials, another one being John O'Brien's blatant handball in the box vs. Mexico.
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rigged not errors.
Everyone know what happened.
Koreans cheated Spain and Italy pushed by Fifa that wanted asian countries to develope local interest about football.
 
Lay said:
One of my favourite world cups. France didn’t have Zidane for the first two games but France had 3 of Europe's top goal scorers in the side.

Uruguay missed an open goal (header I believe) that would have knocked Senegal out in the groups.

I wasn’t overly amazed by Turkey. Think they had a solid Euro’s prior and had some real good talent. Hasan Sas, Nihat and the mercurial Ilhan Mansiz who was doing rainbow flicks over Roberto Carlos. I think he lamented the fact he was found too late for a big move. Think injuries were the main reason he never had a great career.

Argentina, Portugal and France were poor. Spain weren’t that great either and I had hoped Ireland knocked them out.
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Galatasaray were very strong in that period, winning Uefa cup in 2000 and then I think making quarters in CL the next season so think it was a mini case of Spain in having that core all together for national team and peaking at right time. They were in a weak group which helped them and then had Japan in last 16.

Managed I assume by either Fatih Terim or Senol Gunes, usually one or the other when they make a tournament. :lol:
 
Arios said:
rigged not errors.
Everyone know what happened.
Koreans cheated Spain and Italy pushed by Fifa that wanted asian countries to develope local interest about football.
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Surely Japan would've been the more obvious beneficiaries of that given their football culture only started to developed in early 90s whereas South Korea had played in world cups for a while. Japan played a solid group stage but then Turkey did a good job in last 16 on them, can't recall any dodgy ref calls in their games.

There was so many ridiculous decisions in their favour but at same time having Hiddink as coach was huge for key moments in games. In the end I was glad Germany knocked them out as South Korea in world cup final would've seemed pretty ridiculous especially with the dodgy circumstances to it.

Edit; One perception that did change after 2002 world up (at least in UK) was that Asian players were much more than just shirt sellers. Remember Inamoto at Arsenal and think Bolton signed a guy just to flog some merch in far east, now it's never mentioned when an Asian player is signed by a premier league club.
 
I remember watching the games in primary school. It is a world cup I remember very fondly
 
Joao Pinto punching the referee after getting sent off against South Korea was pretty crazy. Portugal certainly didn't take their eliminations in 2000 (still the best / most cohesive Portuguese team I've seen at an international tournament) or 2002 well or in good grace ! Some Portuguese friends of mine think that many of their players were pretty cocky going into that World Cup, and thought that qualifying for the knockout stages was a foregone conclusion.

I was happy that Brazil won. I enjoyed watching the Ronaldo-Rivaldo-Ronaldinho attacking trio. Their captain Emerson got injured and missed the whole tournament, picked up when he played in goal during a training session. That must have really stung.

Canizares, on a high from winning La Liga with Valencia, and Spain's 1st choice goal-keeper, also missed out through injury after dropping a bottle of aftershave on his foot.

For Sweden, I remember this training bust-up between Ljungberg and Mellberg:

 
FootballHQ said:
Quality it was miles off 1998. I kind of feel those two tournaments spanned the generations of football a bit (probably because they were sandwiched between the Millenium of course).

France 98 was a brilliant world cup from start to finish but it had a really retro feel to it given it was last time we had likes of Scotland, Bulgaria and Romania playing in one and it was the final tournaments for guys like Schmiechel, Laudrup brothers, Hagi, Stoichkov, Bergkamp. Some classic kits in there aswell.

Japan/Korea simply wasn't as good but had a futuristic air about the way football was changing in terms of styles and technology. Can still remember all those camera lens going off whenever Beckham went over to take a corner, didn't England-Argentina take place in an indoors stadium aswell?

Would've actually been the perfect tournament to introduce VAR if anyone had actually thought of it.
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I don't know of if necessarily agree with that, aside from it being the first world cup to be held in Asia and with a double combo as well(which i thought was a farce, either give it japan or korea) i don't see how significant it was, technology wise the quality of the cameras definitely had gone up a notch or two but aside from that nothing too ground breaking took place, the commercialization had already started with 1990 italy (the Nike campaign for Ronaldo in 1998 was something else) so it didn't really break any grounds on that front.

The quality as you said was turgid as well something which i place a lot more importance on and compared to say France 98 which was electrifying it definitely came short .
the controversies regarding the officiating didn't leave a nice taste either, introducing var would have certainly helped as we already had the technology I reckon .
It's a nice one to look back at it for nostalgia's sake and looking at all the great names but to be honest I think I preferred 2006 to that one.
 
Had a ton on Brazil @ 7-1 before the off.R9 & Rivaldo making the squad on the eve of the tournament after missing the qualifiers was a cert for me.
 
Ireland qualifying is what got me into football, pretty good timing considering we've rarely looked like coming back since.
 
When does Asia get to host the World Cup again?
 
GuybrushThreepwood said:
Joao Pinto punching the referee after getting sent off against South Korea was pretty crazy. Portugal certainly didn't take their eliminations in 2000 (still the best / most cohesive Portuguese team I've seen at an international tournament) or 2002 well or in good grace ! Some Portuguese friends of mine think that many of their players were pretty cocky going into that World Cup, and thought that qualifying for the knockout stages was a foregone conclusion.

I was happy that Brazil won. I enjoyed watching the Ronaldo-Rivaldo-Ronaldinho attacking trio. Their captain Emerson got injured and missed the whole tournament, picked up when he played in goal during a training session. That must have really stung.

Canizares, on a high from winning La Liga with Valencia, and Spain's 1st choice goal-keeper, also missed out through injury after dropping a bottle of aftershave on his foot.

For Sweden, I remember this training bust-up between Ljungberg and Mellberg:

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Is it just me or that world cup had an unusual amount of bust ups and internal drama going on?
 
Nobody has mentioned that Ronaldo haircut. I remember lads coming into school the next week having asked their parents to replicate it.

2002 was my first real memory of football. Sat in the school at 7am watching a television on wheels. Brilliant.
 
Lay said:
When does Asia get to host the World Cup again?
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China inevitably. Or if India ever look qualifying so sometime in next 20 years. Qatar's in Asia zone btw......

Australia also counts in football sense these days, that would be a logic world cup one day to keep on growing the game albeit last game of the day would kick off 8am-10am in european countries so that's the obvious issue.
 
uqZ9UPr.jpg
 
FootballHQ said:
China inevitably. Or if India ever look qualifying so sometime in next 20 years. Qatar's in Asia zone btw......

Australia also counts in football sense these days, that would be a logic world cup one day to keep on growing the game albeit last game of the day would kick off 8am-10am in european countries so that's the obvious issue.
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:lol: total brain fart. Forgot about the 2022 World Cup and thought the next one was 2026
 
I've read "the strongest" initially and felt like you were taking the piss for a moment. The strangest though? It very well may have been.

Although it remains the most questionable modern tournament refereeing-wise, not much there between it, 1978 and 1934.

I remember that we have developed a system of predicting games by the amount of bald players in each team for that one although it had surprisingly stopped working at some point.
 
The best tournament for balls, boots and kits though.

Predator Mania and Mercurial Vapor to go with the Fevernova and great looking shirts all around.
 
2010 in South Africa was stranger, but for a bunch of other reasons

* First World Cup in Africa
* The vuvuzelas
* Some of the night games being so cold that you needed a jacket
* The Jabulani football that moved like a balloon through the air
* Paul the Octopus :lol:
* That bonkers Nike commercial with Homer Simpson and Kobe Bryant
* The Suarez handball incident
* Spain winning the whole tournament and scoring only 8 goals(and conceding only 2)
 
Have I really been lurking around here for 20 years… It was a very entertaining world cup and north-east Asian football’s coming of age party.
 
Other than the horrific and obvious corruption I remember the group stages being far more entertaining than the knock outs.
Even the final was meh, I was happy for Ronaldo but that was an average German side.
1998 was far superior and I would rate 2014 and 2006 higher as well.
As a matter of fact 2002 was the worst international tournament given the corruption and how rigged it was, next level shite, all these random referees, gross.
 
FootballHQ said:
didn't Portugal also end up with 9 men v them in the final group game?
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Yes, the first red card was more than fair, the second looked more suspicious, but that Portugal team had a terrible preparation for that tournament in Macao, they were in a bad physical condition. Also it didn't helped in the first game Antonio Oliveira the coach against the United States decided to use a very unbalanced formation and with 30 minutes we were already losing 3:0, they only beat easily Poland 4:0.

But you're right, Holland were knocked out from that WC in the qualifiers under Van Gaal by Portugal and Ireland, Argentina and France were the strong favourites for that competition and were knocked out on the group stage, England after that win in Germany came with more optimism around them, while Brazil and Germany were looked with a lot of suspicion at home coming under a lot of pressure and both reached the finals, must be said the level of Brazil players was much better than Germany.
 
It was the only time I’ve watched football on that level and was sure that there were multiple games fixed.
 
Motson was past it then
Absolutely obsessed with the idea that everyone was eating lunch at the same time as watching the game
"You can smash your plates now, Beckham has scored" :lol:
 
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One of my friends, a hardcore Germany fan, he had huge afro, like Axel Witsel.

During the lead up to the world cup, if I remember correctly, Germany played some friendlies in preparation to the WC, they drew or lost some of them, while Saudi Arabia won some friendlies or something.

That led to some Arab Pundits sports channels to say that Saudi had a chance to get something out of their opening game Vs Germany.

Back to my friend, hearing what those Pundits said, we started to mock his Germany team and said that Saudi Arabia will spank his beloved Germany, he got so offended that he bet us he would shave his afro if Germany do not beat Saudi by 8 nil!!!! Yes the decker predicted 8-0 win to Germany. We laughed at him, and then it happened, Germany smashed Saudi 8-0.

We hid from him for days, because he was chasing us with a shaver :lol: :lol: :lol:
 
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