December 4, 2009

The Group of Heck


By now everyone who's anyone knows that England and the USA will play each other in the group stage of next summer's World Cup. All things considered, this is a reasonably good draw for both teams, in my opinion.

For example, we could be in Mexico's zapatos, having to face the host country and a good Uraguay as well as Ireland. (Hold on... what's that? Really? Really?) OK, France. Or in Korea's place with Brazil and Portugal in the group. Or Denmark's group with Netherlands, Japan, and Cameroon. Or Nigeria's, against Argentina, Korea, and Greece. Even Australia look to have a difficult road to the knockout stage with Serbia and Germany.

This time, even with the absence of Charlie Davies and Oguche Onyewu (no, I didn't look it up to see if I spelled it right), the US should look at a first-round exit as a severe disappointment. They've got solid defenders and a teriffically athletic midfield, and despite their recent friendly losses they have a strong top 11 or 13 players. And they've actually got an advantage in having played well in the Confederations Cup this year.

The worst thing about the World Cup draw is that now we have to wait six months for the games to begin!

I will be supporting the USA (obviously), England, Australia, Netherlands, and New Zealand. That should be enough to get me someone to root for at least through the quarterfinals.

What teams do you support? Will you be watching live? Will you see every minute of every game? Will you ignore the whole thing? Anyone want to come over to my house to catch a few games? Bring beer.

3 comments:

Stephen Parrish said...

I live in Germany. As you might imagine, the question isn't whether Germans care about the world cup, rather whether anything else exists in the universe during the tournament. I'll be rooting for both U.S.A. and Germany.

Aniket Thakkar said...

I'm for Germany and Argentina too.

And yup, we are going to watch every minute of it. At least, will try our level best too. We are planning to set up a projector in house to watch it on big screen. :)

Robin B. said...

My husband really got a kick out of telling me how France legally screwed Ireland to get in. (I'm 100% Irish descent, so ya know, being a Welsh husband, he has to tease the crap out of me.)

SO I'm formally not gonna be for anyone, because I woulda been for Eire.

Or us. I guess I could do that.