Outsiders on the rise, bloc by bloc

IT was not until ten full minutes after the referee had called time on their game against Portugal that the huddle of South Korean players started celebrating at the Education City Stadium in AlRayyan on Friday.

- VISHNU PRASAD

That was when confirmation came in that Uruguay had only beaten Ghana by two goals, one shy of what they needed. It marked a memorable return to the knockout stages for South Korea after almost a decade, and for only the third time in their history. It also marked a watershed moment in football's history as well. South Korea had become the sixth team from outside Europe and South America to qualify for the knockout stages. At no other edition of the World Cup has this number been so high.

Six of the sixteen teams were from Asia, Africa and North America. Never before had three teams from Asia made the Round of 16 since the inception of the 32-team World Cup in 1998. Through Senegal and Morocco, Africa too equalled its best-ever tally of two representatives, that it had set in 2014.

"I could feel that the times have changed," Japan's coach Hajime Moriyasu said after his team qualified for the knockouts. "These players are playing in a new age of Japanese football." He could have been speaking for his continent as a whole.