It comes up every time they play the World Cup, will an African team win. Pele's prediction that an African team will win by the end of the 20th century fell flat and an analysis of the results shows them barely reaching the quarter finals. Will home field prove to be an advantage?

Personally, I see a lot of very talented African players who play in the European leagues. They have great flair and certainly posses great skill. Where I think they have problems is in forming a team. It often feels like they are making up the numbers and you get the prima donna European based players not really meshing well with the home based players. I would love to see the hosts South Africa have a good competition but I feel that the team has waned from their heights of a few years ago (would they even have qualified if they weren't hosts?). Maybe Bafana Bafana will shock us all and we will start wondering when Asia will have a winner?