The Norwegian miracle and other world cup qualifiers

Besides the many friendly matches between countries yesterday, there were also a few World Cup qualifiers. One of these was in the most uninteresting group in the world, namely the European group 9, where Netherlands with seven victories in a row, already qualified ages ago. In the meantime, the rest of the teams are fighting for the crumbs of a play-off match and basically all four of the remaining teams have an option.
Until last night, Norway was last of the group with a mere three points and two (!) goals after five matches. For most teams this would be catastrophic, but turns out that because the other teams (Macedonia, Scotland and Iceland) have been so lousy, Norway could still have hopes of qualifying by winning against Scotland in Oslo last night.
And the miracle happened: Norway doubled their points and tripled their score by winning 4-0. Considering Norwegian attacking power this is indeed a miracle!
Nevertheless, I must say that I believe that whoever draws the second of this group for the play-off will be going to South Africa.

The CONCACAF qualifers were more interesting: Honduras took a big step to South Africa by defeating the leading Costa Ricans by 4-0 (Costa Rica nevertheless remains on first spot) while Mexico, with a 2-1 victory over the archrivals from the USA, took a step to recover from their bad start in the qualification, and are now in line for a play-off match and threatening both the USA and Honduras in the CONCACAF qualifying group!