WHEN Zambia won the Africa Cup of Nations last month it was deemed a major surprise. The odds against a nation from the southern region of the continent, a team containing few globally recognised players, had been long at the start of the tournament. They were still against the Zambians when the final against the Ivory Coast entered extra time.
Should we have been surprised? International football is full of fresh, novel champions. Spain had never won a World Cup before their celebrated July night at Soccer City. The Spanish are also the European champions for only the second time in their history and, frankly, the first - a triumph in 1964 - came to them on the basis of a watered-down version of the championship. Who held the title European champions before Spain took it in 2008? It was Greece, for the only time.
Look across the elite echelons of the game and you can make a case that traditional hierarchies have seldom looked so vulnerable. Last week threw up one or two eyebrow-raising results in international friendlies, which are not always the best barometer of who's thriving and who's failing, but gave Germany, widely tipped to snatch Spain's title at Euro 2012, something to think about. The Germans lost at home to France, so dishevelled at the World Cup. The French coach, Laurent Blanc, is warming to the idea of an upstart summer. "Maybe we can do a Greece," he speculated.
Blanc, in common with many younger coaches, would rather his team played more stylish football than the Greeks, who ground their way to the Euro 2004 title. He would like Les Bleus to play like Barcelona, the European club and Spanish domestic champions and, at their best, the most captivating side in the world. But there is one thing few teams would envy about Barca at the moment.
They went into last night's Spanish league match against Sporting Gijon trailing Liga leaders Real Madrid by 10 points in the domestic table. Across the major leagues of Europe, nowhere does the gap between first and second yawn so wide. Indeed, in many of the others, tight races are distinguished by the presence of teams looking to provide a novel name on championship rosters, like Montpellier in France, Borussia Monchengladbach in Germany and Manchester City in England.
If Montpellier were to win Ligue 1, they could be said to have "done a Greece"; if City win the Premier League, they will have done a Croesus. Money to outbid others in recruitment and salaries has made a club who last seized the English title in 1968 a force again.
What it has not so far done is make City strong enough in pan-European competition. They had the bad luck to encounter formidable sides Bayern Munich and Napoli in the group stage of the Champions League and were eliminated before the last-16 phase.
That is a rarity for an English club. The Premier League has a habit of sending four teams into the new year in club football's principal competition. This season, the English contingent have been doubly careless. Manchester United also failed to make the cut, felled by unsung Basel, who took four points off them. Both City and United may well, in the next 10 days, see Napoli - who effectively dumped City out the Champions League - and Basel progress to the quarterfinals, the Italians for the first time in 20 years, the Swiss for the first time since 1974.
The Champions League fixtures in the coming week will almost certainly bring about the elimination of yet another English team - Arsenal trail Milan 4-0 after their first leg - and could well propel Russians, Zenit Saint Petersburg, into the last eight. Stranger than all, it might just put a club from Cyprus there too. Apoel Nicosia are at home to Olympique Lyonnais, a mere 1-0 down from their first leg. Barcelona should go through, well ahead in their tie against Bayer Leverkusen.
The last English club, Chelsea, may fall out unless they can overcome a 3-1 deficit against Napoli; Bayern Munich are 1-0 down against Basel and though Real Madrid took a beneficial enough 1-1 draw from the first 90 minutes of their tie against CSKA Moscow, Barcelona know they regularly have the beating of their rivals in duels, even if they cannot keep up with them in La Liga.
Beyond Madrid and Barcelona, the tournament looks genuinely open, set up perhaps for something as freakish as 2004, when Porto beat Monaco in the Champions League final. That was a good year for the underdog. Africa had new, virgin champions - Tunisia - and, by July, Greece set the marker that Blanc eagerly recalled.
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