The Paraguay national football team is controlled by the Paraguayan Football Association (Asociación Paraguaya de Fútbol) and represents Paraguay in men's international football competitions. The team has reached the second round of the World Cup on four occasions (in 1986, 1998, 2002 and 2010). The 2010 trip also featured their first appearance in the quarterfinals. Paraguay's only major tournament victories have come in the Copa América, in which they triumphed in 1953 and in 1979.
South Africa 2010 was Paraguay's fourth consecutive trip to the World Cup final tournament, having previously qualified for the final at France 1998, Korea/Japan 2002, and Germany 2006.
Famous quotes containing the words football team, national, football and/or team:
“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)
“This is the first national administration we’ve ever seen where the housewife couldn’t afford to buy groceries and the farmer couldn’t afford to grow them.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“Relying on any one disciplinary approach—time-out, negotiation, tough love, the star system—puts the parenting team at risk. Why? Because children adapt to any method very quickly; today’s effective technique becomes tomorrow’s worn dance.”
—Ron Taffel (20th century)