World Cup Preview Part One

Alright, it is time to preview the World Cup. This marks the three weeks every four years that we actually care about soccer (six weeks for those of us who find the Euro Cup moderately exciting.) This should be a fun preview as I only moderately follow world soccer which makes me a better judge of the competition than 98 percent of the people in America. I’ll go through the first four groups tonight and the second four groups tomorrow.

Group A:
Teams: South Africa, Mexico, Uruguay, France
Predicted to move on: Mexico, France
Thoughts: South Africa is the host country and therefore should make the second round merely because every host country has made the second round since the dawn of time. However, this doesn’t take into account the fact that South Africa isn’t that good of a team. I give them a decent chance though of sneaking past France for the second spot given that France shouldn’t even be in the tournament due to a missed handball call in the game versus Ireland. A call that thus removes the possibility of the reigniting of the classic Ireland – Uruguay rivalry. Uruguay is best known for its capital city of Montevideo. Or possibly Ascencion. Basically Uruguay is a country that should just change its name given all of the snickering at the United Nations. Anyway, Mexico isn’t as good as it used to be but still should be able to advance. Rather weak group, which is probably intentional in order to give the host country the best possible shot.

Group B
Teams: Argentina, Nigeria, South Korea, Greece
Predicted to move on: Argentina, Nigeria
Thoughts: Argentina is coached by national hero Diego Maradonna who celebrated his retirement from the beautiful game by apparently eating every single animal in the country. Dude is freaking huge now. I mean when he hangs out around the stadium he hangs out around the stadium. Still, while his coaching is suspect they clearly have the most talent here. The second spot is a bit of a toss up between Nigeria and South Korea. I’m going to give the nod to Nigeria due to their home continent advantage and the fact that they are historically a really fun squad to watch. South Korea is a much better soccer nation than you would ever expect. I don’t expect much from the Greece squad as most of them will be spending the game waving metal detectors over the field in the hopes of picking up scrap metal to sell. That is assuming that the country can afford the airfare to send the team down there in the first place.

Group C
Teams: England, United States, Algeria, Slovenia
Predicted to move on: England, United States
Thoughts: USA! USA! USA! Or more accurately, “Yay, we drew a pool where we can legitimately make it through.” We should be able to beat Algeria and either beat or draw against Slovenia and that will be enough to move on. I even think that we could draw against England (win if things got really wacky) but for the most part we are the second best team in the group. If we play to our talent, which for this team is never a guarantee, we’ll move on. England will have its eyes on David Beckham even though I don’t think he is on the squad. I just assume that there is a BBC camera crew following David Beckham at all times. Algeria is just happy to be here and Slovenia is hoping that the World Cup allows for a) someone to be able locate the country on a map and b) people to realize that they are not the same as Slovakia.

Group D:
Teams: Germany, Australia, Serbia, Ghana
Predicted to move on: Germany, Serbia
Thoughts: Germany plays soccer like they make cars or cook: methodical, precise and without any emotion or style whatsoever. It is like watching a group of accountants. They are some of the best accountants in the world and can beat any other group of accountants but still they’re a bunch of accountants. Serbia and Australia is an interesting little matchup but I think that Serbia is just going to be a little more experienced down in the trenches so to speak. I will say that of all the teams I’d like to go out drinking with the Australian team mainly because, well, they are a bunch of Aussies. Always a good time with them. Ghana just isn’t Ghana make it through. Get it?

Best of 120 Minutes: Given that I have the Stanley Cup going on in the background I figured that I would play my favorite hockey music video featuring Soul Asylum.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) The Jayhawks “Sound of Lies”
2) U2 “Under a Blood Red Sky”
3) R.E.M. “Automatic for the People”
4) Josh Rouse “Nashwille”
5) Counting Crows “August and Everything After”