World Cup Update

I’ve found some time and I must update you on the hap­pen­ings out­side of Europe, which surely every­one is pay­ing atten­tion to, includ­ing me.  The whole hier­ar­chy of African qual­i­fy­ing is in dis­ar­ray after some totally shock­ing results that most def­i­nitely have flown under the radar to the untrained eye.  I only heard about them because I check FIFA.com rit­u­ally.  As I write right now, I am watch­ing Dji­bouti get destroyed by Congo DR 5–0 in the 85th minute, and in only a short while Ethiopia and Mau­ri­ta­nia will bat­tle as well.  So with that let’s take stock in the African situation.

AFRICA (CAF)

 The afore­men­tioned upsets came about on June 8th (this past Sun­day while the EURO 2008 Group B fix­tures were dom­i­nat­ing the atten­tion of the world), and there are a few I must speak of.  First, the biggest and most thrilling upset has to be Swazi­land beat­ing Togo 2–1.  This result puts Swazi­land in the dri­ver seat of their smaller Group 11 (which is the only group with 3 teams com­pared to the nor­mal 4 thanks to Eritrea with­draw­ing) and a win for them on the 15th against Zam­bia would force a seri­ous sit­u­a­tion for Togo, who were sur­pris­ing atten­dees at the World Cup in 2006, but still held their weight.  Surely Swazi­land were not expect­ing to go 2 goals up after 70 min­utes, but they must have fought off a seri­ous chal­lenge from Togo, only let­ting up one goal in the dying min­utes.  This can go down as one of the shocks of the tour­na­ment, but there’s no rea­son to jump the gun and expect to see Swazi­land any­where fur­ther than the final grouping. 

The sec­ond sur­prise is actu­ally 2 games that weren’t won but tied.  To see Gam­bia and Mada­gas­car tie stronger oppo­nents (and bet­ter yet, hold them score­less!) in Sene­gal and Cote d’Ivoire must have stirred some atten­tion in the CAF orga­ni­za­tion.  With only Cameroon and Ghana (barely) tak­ing care of busi­ness, we may have another few sur­pris­ing qual­i­fiers in the upcom­ing 2010 World Cup.  Let’s take a step back and view the larger pic­ture.  These 6 African qual­i­fy­ing posi­tions are the most impor­tant African rep­re­sen­ta­tives to ever enter the World Cup.  This is because the World Cup is in Africa and any African team that rep­re­sents their coun­try, and con­ti­nent, on home soil will do so as if they are defend­ing their own blood.  I expect to see the most fer­vent com­pe­ti­tion in World Cup qual­i­fiers from the CAF zone, which always means unex­pected results and sur­prise qualifiers.

It ended Congo DR 6–0 Dji­bouti, a thrashing.

ASIA (AFC)

 Asia (plus Australia) has been plug­ging away qui­etly behind African head­lines to pro­duce some of their own sur­prises, namely an inter­est­ing result here from the Iraq v Aus­tralia game.  After the Soc­ceroos took a 1–0 result from Iraq’s visit to Bris­bane, Iraq has returned the favor no more than a week ago in Dubai by the same result.  Aus­tralia was tipped to be a very strong addi­tion into the Asian zone, but no one there is giv­ing them an inch, they’ve scraped for each of their 2 wins against resilient com­pe­ti­tion.  We see Qatar in sec­ond in Group 1, a sur­prise to me per­son­ally, and an embarassed China PR in 4th with noth­ing to show from 4 games except 1 goal and 3 under­whelm­ing draws.  A team with major aspi­ra­tions is Uzbek­istan, who has qual­i­fied for the next round effi­ciently, tak­ing 4 wins from 4 games in a group includ­ing Saudi Ara­bia, a tra­di­tional World Cup entrant.  Please take care not to expect Korea Rep and Japan to just sweep through these qual­i­fiers any­more (as used to be the gen­eral feel­ing about Asian qual­i­fiers), this is not the same com­pe­ti­tion as in years past.  Bahrain, Iran, UAE, and Qatar are mak­ing strong cases for them­selves, and while there are only 4.5 places to fight for (really 5 assum­ing the one Asian team in the play­off can fight off New Zealand or New Cale­do­nia) expect 2 of them to belong to brand new World Cup entrants. 

AMERICAS (CONCACAF)

Let’s jump across the world now and remind the read­ers that we’re approach­ing the thick of the early CONCACAF qual­i­fy­ing rounds in just merely a few days.  Hon­duras has given us a run­ning start with a 4–0 whoop­ing on Puerto Rico and tomor­row we’ll hear about a few other pow­er­houses:  Costa Rica shouldn’t be trou­bled with Grenada, and Guata­mala will feel the same about St. Lucia.  Don’t expect upsets here.  I would tip Guyana to beat Suri­name, even away, and Hon­duras to fin­ish the job 2 or 3–1 in Puerto Rico.  Sun­day pro­vides the real meat of this weekend’s qual­i­fiers.  So while all of you are pay­ing atten­tion to the third games in the EURO 2008 Group A, keep one eye on the USA as they host Bar­ba­dos.  The Amer­i­cans are com­ing off of a tumul­tuous 3 game stint against world pow­ers Eng­land, Spain, and Argentina.  This is both a spur and a bri­dle: we lost 2 and tied one and played against com­pe­ti­tion 10 times bet­ter than Bar­ba­dos, but we played our best game in the con­fines of our home turf in New York and we played teams that have a fluid style.  I expect Bar­ba­dos to pound us with phys­i­cal­ity and work our inside mid­field with direct and quick pass­ing.  A player like Pablo Mas­troeni would give us the kind of phys­i­cal pres­ence to com­bat this totally dif­fer­ent type of oppo­nent.  I expect a 3–0 win, but I’ve been wrong before, espe­cially about the United States.

Look for the Jamaica/Bahamas game to be inter­est­ing, it could sig­nal Jamaica’s intent for qual­i­fy­ing, and I would inter­pret the final score there as either pos­ing Jamaica as a threat or another also-ran.  T&T should win com­fort­ably, while the most hotly con­tested game should be Panama/El Sal­vador.  Both of those teams can expect to be in the final group­ing nor­mally, but now one will be trag­i­cally denied, and I cer­tainly can­not choose between them, although I would say Panama from my gut. 

South Amer­ica (COMNEBOL)

South Amer­ica jumps back into action this week­end,  and the teams that must get results are Uruguay and Ecuador, both of which should expect to be in the top 5 but are instead floun­der­ing mid-table after 4 games.  Paraguay has per­formed well so far, and they’ll be rewarded for a most invalu­able start to the cam­paign, which always dic­tates any team’s mind­set for the rest of qual­i­fy­ing.  Sun­day they meet Brazil at home in Asun­cion, what do we expect?  I’ve heard Kaka will not be in the team because of injury, but Brazil are so strong, it should be a win for the Samba boys, even away and espe­cially after their dis­s­a­point­ing tie with Peru.  Brazil must con­cen­trate harder against lesser com­pe­ti­tion.  I am excited for Venezuela, I had a friend from there and he spoke so highly of his coun­try dur­ing the 2002 World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing even though they were peren­nial whip­ping boys.  This year we see them in 5th so far with 2 wins. Uruguay is clearly beat­able (they play on the 17th) and Chile isn’t any stronger (they play the 19th).  Which means this 2 game stint for Venezuela could eas­ily pro­vide 2 wins, it would really be some­thing to see them at 4–0-2 after 6 games.  The biggest game of course is the Brazil/Argentina matchup in Belo Hor­i­zonte on the 18th.  I pre­dict an Argen­tine win, but by no more than a goal or two.

Ocea­nia (OFC)

Not that any­one is pay­ing atten­tion except for me, but Van­u­atu and New Cale­do­nia play tomor­row, then again on the 21st.  It’s these two games that will deter­mine New Zealand’s chances of escap­ing their tricky group.  New Cale­do­nia has to be the only team within strik­ing dis­tance of the New Zealan­ders, and they must record two wins against Van­u­atu to put any pres­sure on the front run­ners.  The New Cal­en­do­nians are the only team in the group that New Zealand has not faced, and they have 2 cru­cial match-ups in the fall (Sept and Oct) that will undoubtably decide the out­come of the group pro­vided New Cale­do­nia beats Van­u­atu twice this week.  In my opin­ion New Zealand must win the group and the final 2 legs to give the OFC a chance at a World Cup appear­ance, which is unlikely already any­way con­sid­er­ing the strength of the Asian teams.  Keep in mind, the OFC qual­i­fiers also stand in as the OFC nations cup, which is like the EURO 2008 of Ocea­nia (can you make that con­nec­tion?), so it is played with great pride for all nations involved.

When not watch­ing the EURO 2008 unfold, def­i­nitely check out all that is going on in the World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing, the results have been excit­ing and more sur­prises are sure to come this week­end!  Thank you for read­ing, I’ll return as soon as I can.