By Tim Vickery

Colombia forgot that to get the best out of Juan Pablo Angel the Aston Villa striker needs to be surrounded with quick players

South America's World Cup qualification campaign has reached the half-way stage.

The 10 teams have all played each other once, and a glance at the table reveals an interesting fact.

The top four places - the automatic qualifying slots - are filled by the same countries that took them in the 2002 campaign.

This is hardly a surprise in the case of Brazil and Argentina.

With their tradition and sheer quantity of wonderful players they would have to be very incompetent - as Brazil were last time - to flirt with disaster.