Why are World Cup underdogs doing so well?

And lastly, if teams are going to get results against strong opposition, they ideally need to pose their own threat on the ball. South Africa took 14 shots to South Korea's seven in their match while only having 31% of the ball. Their ability to get the ball up the pitch, in a more deliberate manner, rather than simply playing long from the goalkeeper was central to this. Underdogs that have done well have often played short from goal-kicks, drawing pressure from the bigger nations who are more inclined to press high, before chipping it into clusters of players in space. We have seen the likes of Cape Verde, Iraq, and South Africa all use short goal-kicks, interestingly positioning players far from one another. The idea is that by creating large distances between players, opponents who want to press man-for-man have to run big distances to close the opponent down. In the time that this takes, defenders can look to find midfielders and attackers in space.