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First, .

The players refused to train following Nicolas Anelka's expulsion from the squad for verbally abusing coach Raymond Domenech.

Domenech read out a statement from his squad which said:

"The French Football Federation did not at any time try to protect the group.

To show our opposition to the decision taken [on Anelka], all the players decided not to take part in training."

Managing director of the French Football Federation, Louis Valentin, quit his post, saying he was "disgusted."

The news of the French row began to break at half time in one of the most surprising matches so far - .

The All Whites gave a brilliant performance - this was no scraped draw, but a thoroughly deserved effort that, had Chris Wood been ever so slightly luckier, might even have been a win.

And there were also question marks about whether Italy's equaliser really was a penalty.

Indeed, between them, Italy, Germany, France and England have nine World Cups. And yet at the 2010 World Cup, that quartet collectively has one single win between them - Germany's admittedly .

The rest have not been matches against feared giants of world football. Instead, they have been against, repectively, , , , ,and .

None of the quartet mentioned above, however, are out of it by any means - and it may just be that they are taking their time to get into the tournament after a long season.

But as my colleague Jonathan Stevenson noted on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Sport's live commentary:

Is it just me, or is this African World Cup slowly turning into a South American World Cup before our very eyes? Paraguay have produced two accomplished performances, Chile eased past Honduras and Uruguay humbled the hosts. Oh, and there's Argentina and Brazil, too.

Do you agree - or are the traditional European giants just keeping something in reserve? If not, what's gone wrong with them?