Wayne Rooney of England appeals a foul during the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Group C match between England and USA at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium on June 12, 2010 in Rustenburg, South Africa. Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images for Sony

A few choice words from the world’s leading newspapers these days: “Chaos”. “Crumble”. “Wreck”. No, we’re not talking about the euro, but another European institution that seems to be showing some cracks lately: football.

At this early stage of the quadrennial World Cup, the poor performances of European nations have dominated the world headlines: Journalists the world over are just about ready to hammer the last nail in the coffin of the long dominating hegemony of European football. Jonathan Clegg of The Wall Street Journal struck a merciless blow to Western Europe teams, “the supposed vanguard of international soccer”: “Here in South Africa, the most notable feature of the 2010 World Cup so far is the annihilation of the big European sides… The poor play by its teams is even giving credence to complaints that the 13 slots Europe is awarded for the World Cup are too many.”

The situation for the big European football powers is grave. Though Clegg found irony in the French team’s anarchy after Nicolas Anelka’s expulsion for insulting coach Raymond Domenech and the team director’s threat to resign, the French daily papers are in outrage. “It’s collective suicide,” exclaimed Le Figaro, commenting on the squad’s bizarre decision to boycott their Sunday training in protest at Anelka’s explulsion. The blow-up, which has been gleefully mocked in the international press, follows Mexico’s defeat of the 1998 World Cup winner.

Still, Jason Gay noted in The Wall Street Journal, “If there is any consolation for France, it’s the torment of England.” So far, England has only managed two draws against Algeria and the US, the latter game including the devastating American goal at the hands of the English goalkeeper. That, bearing in mind that the last time the English won the World Cup was in 1966. As Roger Cohen, columnist for The New York Times, cruelly observed, “The body language of the English players suggests dead men walking. England right now is to football what the vuvuzela is to music: one note going nowhere.”

England and France aren’t the only ones to suffer in what Cohen called a “power-shift event”: Italy suffered a stunning 1-1 draw with poorly ranked New Zealand and Germany lost to Serbia. This accumulation of European losses might not sound so dramatic, but, as Simon Kuper in the Financial Times pointed out, they are: “In the last World Cup, the only time a western European team lost to a team from another region was Switzerland’s defeat by Ukraine on penalties.”

So it’s not surprising that Western Europe is one verge of becoming the laughing stock of the world sporting press. Rob Hughes, writing in The New York Times Sunday, asked, “[J]ust what is wrong with these European powers?” Hughes continued, “Are the teams out of their comfort zone?” Are the bleating of vuvuzelas, the controversial stadium trumpets, to blame? Or the South African weather? For Clegg in The Wall Street Journal, Europe’s real problem is the squad captains: “If there’s one kitchen-table diagnosis that seems to make more sense than the others, it’s this one: The pasting Western Europe has received in the World Cup may be a simple case of failing to bear in mind one of the eternal truths of team sports, that every winning team needs a good captain.”

But leadership aside, it seems that in spite of having provided the winner of six of the past World Cups, Europe’s hegemony as a football continent is on the decline. As the Spanish newspaper El Periodico claimed, under the headline “The World Cup of globalization”, this is a “turning point” in football, as if the smaller nations like Japan, the two Koreas, United states, Central Americans were strengthening at the expense of the former “great” football nations.