Olympic Soccer Standings: 5 Biggest Surprises of Tournament so Far

The football tournament at the 2012 London Olympics has been full of the unexpected, surprising us from the opening day of competition.

Sports reporters have been made to look complete fools—I'll be the first to concede defeat—due to their incorrect predictions and assumptions about what would take place in the group stages of the competition.

With the quarterfinals about to commence, let's take a look back at the five biggest surprises in football at the 2012 London Olympics...before anything else happens that we weren't expecting.

Brazil entered the 2012 London Olympics as the gold-medal favorites, meaning that their success in the competition so far isn't a huge surprise.

However, just how dominant and cohesive they've looked definitely is.

Nine goals and nine points from their opening three matches, the likes of Neymar and Leandro Damiao are firing Brazil towards victory, and they seemingly haven't even gotten out of third gear yet.

This team is looking scary good.

With quality players and the home crowd behind them, Great Britain always stood a chance of qualifying for the knockout stages of the Olympics. But deep down inside, everyone expected them to fail.

I mean, this is Britain we're talking about—the kings of early elimination in world football.

But not only have they qualified for the knockout stages, they've done so undefeated through three matches and atop Group A, having disposed of the dangerous Uruguayans in the process.

For many, Uruguay were thought of as the potential dark horse of the competition. And with a squad boasting the likes of Edinson Cavani and Luis Suarez, that didn't seem to be too far off the mark.

Turns out it was.

Knocked out in the group stages, Uruguay were left to rue a match against Senegal, where they lost 2-0, despite Senegal only having 10 men for most of the match.

Simply put, they weren't good enough for London 2012—something that few saw coming.

Uruguay's elimination was nothing next the shocking elimination of Spain from the group stages, though. Spain finished in the bottom of their group despite entering the competition as one of the teams to beat.

They didn't win a game and finished the tournament with just one point—a measly scoreless draw against a Moroccan side that probably should have beaten the Europeans.

A squad that boasted several members of Spain's recent European Championship-winning team should have done better at the 2012 London Olympics. But it failed to connect in any way, shape or form.

Even bigger than Spain's elimination was the fact that they didn't trouble the scorers at all throughout the entire tournament.

Such a vast wealth of attacking talent, but Spain found no goals through three matches against the otherwise unknown defenses of Honduras, Japan and Morocco.

It has been a tournament to forget for Spain, but unfortunately for the European champions, it won't be one that the rest of the world will forget any time soon.

What's been the biggest surprise of the London Olympics for you?

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