FIFA U-20 Shocker: World Champions Argentina Will Not Defend Their Title

The current and six times Under 20 world champions, Argentina, are out.

The FIFA Under 20 World Cup is a tournament traditionally dominated by South America.

Just Argentina and Brazil alone have won on 10 occasions, with the rest of the world together pulling off six titles.

Argentina had won the last two editions and were considered frank favourites not just to qualify from South American but to go on to possibly win their third straight title in Egypt.

Unable to count on many European based players except for Liverpool midfielder Emiliano Insua, coach Sergio Batista could argue that key players were missing for the South American part of the tournament.

However, the only team in the competition without any foreign based players, Brazil, ended up winning for the second time in a row, with a round to spare.

Coach Batista will have to find some other excuse for the press back home as European based players seemed to have little or no influence whatsoever on the outcome of the tournament.

Other qualifiers for Egypt are Uruguay, who surprised with some wonderful attacking football, and Paraguay, who beat Brazil 1-0 in their final match to secure a place.

Paraguayan football has greatly improved over the years.

It must be noted that apart from finishing second in the Under-20 qualifiers they also lead the qualifiers for 2010 South Africa ahead of Messi's Argentina and Kaka's Brazil.

The big tournament surprise were hosts Venezuela who managed a shocking 3-1 victory against an also already qualified Uruguay, in their final match.

The Venezuelans celebrated the classification as if they had won a World Cup with an invasion of the pitch by cheering fans.

FIFA frowns on this kind of behavior nowadays but somehow it was fabulously nostalgic to watch and completely violence free.