By Jay Kitchen

All in just one glorious month.

The worldwide party that every human being was invited to was capped off Sunday with Spain finally getting that elusive world cup credential after the game had to go a little longer to find a winner.

Besides the fact that the World Cup was held in the continent of Africa for the first time, there were other events and things that stood out in the month-long tournament.

The roughly 700 million people, a FIFA projection, who watched the slew of games which kicked off on June 11 with Game 1, which had the host nation playing an aspiring tie against Mexico to help peak the curiosity, South Africa helped begin the roll of emotion for the world.

The real unfortunate thing that put somewhat of a damper on the opening day was the absence of Nelson Mandela who had lost one of his granddaughters the prior day to a car accident.

Soon to follow was a bizarre, at least to the soccer world, string of surprises and upsets.

Four years ago, Italy and France faded each other in the final, with Italy winning out in penalty kicks, the harshest way to lose a game in soccer.

These two giants, however, this time folded away like a wet towel. With little inspiration and “older” players, Italy, under Coach Marco Lippi, did not even make it past the first round where two top teams out of four in the group qualified for the next round.

With the certainty of having a new champion, France did everything it could to choke away their chances. They too failed in the first round. Not only that, but they did not show up to their last practice, staging a protest against an unpopular coach. France gave the host something to be happy about as South Africa went on to beat the French and ended their tournament run on a high note. But, despite the win, the Bafana Bafana did not have enough points to go through, but in the bigger picture brought in a wave of national pride with the victory. They tied one game, lost one game, and won one game, a better result than many thought they could achieve.

Also falling way short of sky-high expectations was the favorite Brazil. Their quarterfinal duel against eventual final championship team, Holland, had the samba and all their flair come up one goal short. Leaving quickly after the defeat, Coach Dunga got fired soon after returning to Brazil. The Brazil soccer federation and millions of fans of the team’s have little patience when it comes to losing, especially in the event that they have won five times.

The United States can receive a B-minus with their play in 2010, and an Oscar for their dramatic endings. Their last showing was more of a horror story.

Getting lucky against England, and some more with Algeria and Slovakia, they went up against Ghana, a team they should have beat, but did not. This time Cinderella was really the wicked witch for the USA.  Late in the game, GhanaGhana would move on to the next round, but their dreams would also go down the drain soon as Germany would eliminate the last African hope in the Round of Eight. would strike the final blow, keeping African hopes alive, and putting all of Landon Donavan’s dreams on hold for four more years.

But there has to be some added credit to Ghana. Other African teams did even less. Algeria were rookies and looked like it. Cameroon and Nigeria are both veterans of prior World Cups but had little impact and did the very minimum to inspire their hometown followers. Their lack of making any type of impact was maybe the only negative thing out of all things African.

Spain came in as one of the favorites and after decades of frustration of winning European tournaments and possessing some of the best talent in the world with players like Xaxi, Fernando Torres and the man who scored the winning and only goal, Andres Iniesta, in the past walking away from the World Cup empty handed.

But with Iniesta’s tally in the 116th minute, the hex was over. Though the game was not what many expected to see, Spain did enough with both teams having few chances and both looking to play not to lose, instead of playing to win.

On Monday, hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of Spain’s city of Madrid to welcome home the heroes. It will now be four years before the World Cup is played again, this time in soccer-crazed Brazil. Stars Kaka and others did not live up to the hype.

While South Africa is in the rearview mirror for some already, history will tell Africa’s impact for some time to come.

While all the World Cup hype from FIFA, ESPN, ABC and other media outlets have created the positive vibe the past months leading up to the event, and during it has made a “feel good” atmosphere, let’s remember that if this event was held here only a few decades ago, things would have stayed the same way it had been for years. Mandela and other blacks may not have even been able to watch the games inside the modern stadiums that cost millions to build, and to a degree, maybe it would be interesting to see how FIFA would have handled it.

Soccer is a powerful source of money and more money, including FIFA. We here in the states are sometimes stunned by the wages given to people. Recently ESPN changed their format just to see where LaBron will play his basketball. Trades come and go in the NFL and the NBA--that is a given. But in some of the larger soccer leagues in the world, especially in Europe, there are few free trades for players. Fees for players’ services are the norm-large fees. In the world of futbol, there are many LaBrons, with many of these well paid walking away with bags of money, you know, the ones with those big dollar signs on them used in cartoons.

For one month in the world of soccer, in one nation and maybe others, race, war and other worries were subdued. A nation proved its worth. A race proved their substance. One event also proved that one month can leave a stepping stone to erasing stereotypes for not just one month, but for a lifetime.