Its all Soccer

Yup as the title says this post is all about soccer and just soccer and the reason simple being the draws for World Cup 2006 have been made, yes all the groups and dates have been finalized and the biggest soccer show is just few months away. Here are the Groups.

Group A
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Germany
Costa Rica
Poland
Ecuador

Group B
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England
Paraguay
Trinidad & Tobago
Sweden

Group C
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Argentina
Ivory Coast
Serbia & Montenegro
Netherlands

Group D
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Mexico
Iran
Angola
Portugal

Group E
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Italy
Ghana
United States
Czech Republic

Group F
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Brazil
Croatia
Australia
Japan

Group G
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France
Switzerland
South Korea
Togo

Group H
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Spain
Ukraine
Tunisia
Saudi Arabia

This time in quite a complicated way FIFA seeded the teams for the draws which resulted in many eye brows to be raised. But now as the picture looks like couple of groups are what we call the groups of death(meaning the kind of groups where easily one big team can be easily knocked out). Group C and Group E are the two of them, Group E teams have more reasons to worry about because even if they qualify for the knockout stage, second placed team from this group will be playing Brazil (yikes) that means early elimination on the cards. Since Italy aka Azzurri have been my favorite team since World cup 1990(yes people am that old :P), am particularly worried about them. Firstly they are always known as slow or shaky starters to any cup which more than often results in their last group match to be a do or die situation and often it depends on the result from other match too. Secondly they have Czechs, US and Ghana in their group. Czechs attacking qualities are well known to everyone but even US can easily cause an upset or two with some quality young players. As for Ghana simply being Africans means they can easily be another Senegal. So its must for Italians to start the group well and try to finish on top in order to avoid Brazilians so early in tourney but even if they do face them you never know what might happen. They do have some young quality players with the likes of strikers Luca Toni and Alberto Gildarno and in midfield they have Pirlo who is considered to be the best in taking free kicks in Europe right now. Plus some hard working mid fielders as Gennaro Gattuso, Mauro Camoranesi and Gianluca Zambrotta . And world famous defenders Fabio Cannavaro and Alessandro Nesta. Not to forget under achievers Francesco Totti and Del Piero(not sure will he make up in the final squad or not). Only problem for them is to linkup together as a team and control their nerves.

In other groups England vs. Sweden, Argentina vs. Dutch and Spain vs. Ukraine seem to be mouth watering. Plus there are chances of the warlike clash of England and Germany in the 2nd round and Dutch vs. Portugal again in round 2. So some really hot matches on store. I just seriously hope that of eight teams who make it into the quarters six are the big ones and two the underdogs.

Predictions ummmm if World cup maintains its history of an European team winning in Europe then it will be either England or Germany but me really hoping it will be The Azzurri :D , Spain or France might but highly unlikely. Other wise from Non-Europeans it will be either Brazil (not again) or Argentina(that would be awesome) and if you want a team with flair to win then hope for Czechs to play an outstanding tourney and keep their nerves intact.

To end the post Inter Milan has won the Milan Derby Brazilian Adriano involved in all three inter goals while from Milan side Pirlo’s(the man) free kicks were the casue of two goals. Tomorrow’s ,actually Today’s eurosportsnews will make a good watch.

PS: can someone tell me how can I align that groups into layout of 2 rows and 4 columns, wasted whole stupid an hour or maybe more on that. no Tables dont work for some odd reason this stupid blogspot was creating that table half of the size of the page errrrrrrr. VL is needed but that dodo has stopped visiting blogs sigh.