World Cup 2002 - Host Nations Korea and Japan - World Cup Winner Brazil
The World Cup in 2002 moved to Asia and with Japan and Korea hosting the biggest sports event of the present era they showed that they are no back number in the football World anymore.
Japan and Korea both did the World Cup tradition proud and in all there were 20 new stadiums built for the big occasion. 32 nations took part and it once again showed that there are no pushovers as debutants Senegal beat defending champions France 1-0 in the opening match in Seoul and that result pretty much symbolized what would happen during the following four weeks in the Far East.
The big teams like France, Portugal and Argentina all got knocked out in the first round. Trying to defend their title the French were a big disappointment and didn't score a single goal in any of the three games. Much was expected of Argentina but they too lost the all important match against England and failed to beat Sweden and so said farewell early.
The minnows performed with credit with the likes of Turkey, Senegal, USA, Costa Rica, and Japan and of course South Korea all performing above expectations.
Some of the stars of the 2002 World Cup finals included players like Ilhan Mansiz, El Hadji Diouf and Landon Donovan came from nowhere to steal headlines in media around the world, but the most unlikely hero was Ahn Jung-Hwan.
Asia had four representatives in the finals for the first time. Some of those that did not scale the heights required were Saudi Arabia, China, Nigeria and Cameroon in particular underachieved.
As they say the cream always rises to the top and Brazil came through to win their 5th title and see off Germany in the final with Ronaldo scoring twice to take his goal tally to eight and become the first man to break the six-goal-topscorer-spell existing since Grzegorz Lato's seven in 1974.
Brazil won all their seven World Cup matches and thereby set a new record and were deserving winners after Brazil had struggled in the build up to the tournament, but Ronaldinho, Rivaldo, Roberto Carlos and Ronaldo turned on the style when needed in the finals.
