Brazilian legend Pele believes Asian and African nations have the ability to cause upsets at this summer's World Cup, but are unlikely to prevent one of the established footballing superpowers from lifting the title.
Pele said although Asian teams such as South Korea were improving rapidly, they were still not good enough to seriously threaten the leading European and South American sides.
'I have seen teams from South Africa and Nigeria and they have good individual players. I think they will maybe cause a few upsets in France, but I still think they need more experience,' said Pele, who is in Hong Kong to launch the new HongkongBank MasterCard World Cup credit card.
Pele echoed his views when asked about Asia's quartet of teams in the World Cup - South Korea, Japan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
'Like I said about African teams, I think they can beat teams, but I don't know if they are strong enough yet. But I remember in the past Korea have played very well and so the big teams will have to be careful, ' he added, referring to North Korea's run to the quarter-finals of the 1966 tournament, which remains the best performance by an Asian team in the World Cup finals.
Pele declined to nominate any clear-cut favourites for France 98 but was emphatic when asked to assess the current Brazilian squad. 'Player for player, Brazil has the best individuals, there's no doubt about that,' he said.
'But, at the World Cup, you need more than just good individuals, you need good organisation and you need to be a team . . . that is the most important thing, 'Look at Germany - they may not have the best players, but they are always a strong team and they have done well at the World Cup.' The former Santos and New York Cosmos star re-iterated his widely reported view that the Brazilian team were playing in too many exhibition games and had not yet found a settled side.
