World Cup Predictions
- Brazil will not win the World Cup. They will win all three of their group games but will have physical difficulties versus Australia and will concede two goals to Japan. I am positive they will make it at least to the semi-finals, but may be disturbed by a serious injury, an overtime win, overconfidence or defensive/goalkeeping errors. Not only that but the statistics are very unfavorable to them - not a single South American team has won a European-hosted World Cup in 48 years, and this happened only once out of the 17 editions.
- Sweden will perform well once again, but will be the unfortunate victim of a difficult game in the final stages (perhaps going to penalty shootouts). Italy will have the same problem and will go out in their now customary horrific way before achieving the semi-finals.
- The surprise of this Cup might be Ivory Coast, Japan or Australia. Realistically, I don’t see either of the three winning, but they might get a chance to go up to quarter-finals if not semis. Nevertheless it will be exciting to see if other continents aside from Europe and South America can finally take a share of the cake.
- If the U.S. can beat Czech Republic, we might see a fun second round game versus Brazil.
- France can win the trophy if they find the prolific offensive combination. Ribéry might be the one to offer such solutions and if so might well become the heir to Zidane. It will be a tough competition for Zizou, but if France makes it to the finals he will score an essential goal (perhaps a penalty kick during the game).
- England may also be adorned of a second star on their jersey if Beckham can focus as much on his game as he does on his haircut. Robocrouch may be the one who holds up the offensive line while Rooney recovers.
- Whatever the final game is, it will certainly be hard-fought. I am confident we will be watching one of the most exciting cups of the next decade. A new generation of players is taking over and many of them will be reshaping football in the next few years, I’m thinking of players such as Messi, C. Ronaldo, Ribéry, Robinho, Robben, Rooney, and others whose names don’t begin with the letter ‘R’.
Jun 7 '08 at 12:23