Actually I've always felt that having a stable connection is far more important than hops in most cases. many of the games best have played from sub par machines and connections and still consistently won.
I won my first tournament on a machine that couldn't even play the game above medium and iOn won over me in the last tournament on a bad computer. Although, at that high a level of play it evened out since we payed on a Texas server and given the negligible difference in our skills at the time my loss came due to terrible character choice.
I've played the euros one on one in their own servers and beat most of their best handily. The fact is simply that there's not a single player from Europe who would fit into an all time top twenty list.
As for the aerials, I'm relatively sure that it can be done on single player as it's angle and timing based.