[browna]

Given that there is so much "parity", who knows. Parity in the fact that there are a ton of terrible mistakes, misjudgements on ball flights and kicks stregths and fundamental mistakes made by every team, good and bad, all over the field, so it's the team, game by game, that either has the least mistakes, or least catastrophic ones, and to an opponent who can or can't take advantage of those...and lots of teams haven't taken advantage of other team breakdowns.

This US could easily be out and Brazil, German and Canadians in right now, but none of those teams have played great; other teams just haven't made the amount of mistakes on those situations to allow Canada and Germany in. Sinclair scores on the PK and Canada are through, playing no better than they have to this point and still could've been thrashed by Aus.

US and Dutch of teams left do have the most amount of skilled players less likely to make mistakes and more likely with the ability to capitalize on opponents mistakes, but the timing of mistakes has to line up to have that superiority show through...it didn't for Canada Germany and Brazil but better teams didnt advance in their place either.

The difference this year in the WC is that the 'lesser' teams now do have one or two decent players who are in the realm of capitalizing on a powerhouse teams (still far too common) mistakes, and are better organized, which is why there has been these apparent "upsets".