Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

What did you do last weekend? I watched TV. The sun was shining outside but the sports offerings on the box were simply too good to pass up. There was Wimbledon tennis on Saturday, which segued nicely into the Tour de France prologue and that was followed by a lengthy Euro 2004 retrospective, and then to bed. On Sunday, there was more tennis, more cycling and then, the crowning of the day, the Greece-Portugal game, and then to bed. A lost weekend? Well, not for me. You see, along with sports, I was watching something very interesting happening. Here's what I saw.

On Saturday, the gorgeous 17-year-old Russian Maria Sharapova won the women's final at Wimbledon, becoming the first Russian to do so. Those of you who have been following tennis this year will know that the French Open final three weeks ago featured two Russian women, Elena Dementieva and Anastasia Myskina. "The Russians are coming!" was the dread cry of yore, but forget it; the Russians are here, and they're here to stay. The game that the comrades disapproved of because of its un-Soviet focus on the individual is ideal for an emerging nation, which hungers for new sports and new stars.

And it was a similar story on Sunday night. Greece and Portugal are two rapidly developing countries that have benefited enormously from globalization during the past decade. More investment has meant significant economic growth, better infrastructure and the emergence of a prosperous, football-mad middle class. The kids are playing the game, the local leagues are nurturing the talent, the domestic clubs are investing in coaching competence and the national teams are turning into the sum of their parts.

Remember who won the Champions League this year? Porto, one of the smallest of the top-class European clubs. The money spilling out of the Champions League TV rights is now spreading to the periphery and this allows Portuguese, Greek and Czech stars to play their football at home with Porto, Panathinaikos and Sparta Prague. While this is good news for the domestic game in these countries, it is bad news for Europe's football aristocrats — England, Germany, Italy, Spain, France. See, economic and population growth will drive football success in the future and these are distinctly lacking in Old Europe, to use a Rumsfeldian term. The debate that too many foreigners are playing in the Bundesliga or the Serie A cannot obscure the fact that the domestic talent isn't there. The old powers are in decline.

If the theory that the rising tide of globalization is lifting the football boats (boots?) is correct, then which team should you put a tenner on for the 2006 World Cup? That's easy. The country has a handful of decent clubs, the people love the game, the middle class is expanding, the birth rate is high, inward investment is on the up and, this is critical, the national team has quality but hardly one recognisable player. A hint? It was third in the World Cup in 2002. That's right. Turkey. One of the problems with this theory, though, is that Turkey is in the same qualifying group as Greece. Oh, oh.