Extracted from a longish, very well-written article over at Soccerblog.comRonaldinho will stamp himself as the greatest player in this World Cup. Lionel Messi will be declared the next Maradona in the making...
Brazil will win for a record 6th time and in a way that will make the 2002 World Cup final look pedestrian.England will enjoy its best finish since World Cup 1966....
The Dutch coached teams of Trinidad and Tobago and Australia will show mettle and unselfish teamwork that will make them hard to be beaten but they will be at the nth minute. But the Soca Warriors and the Socceroos will make sure that nary an eyebrow is raised when Brian Lara and Ricky Ponting crush Pakistan and India by a thousand runs and three innings and two thousand and sixty three runs and three and a half innings, respectively. At least for a couple of weeks before Cricket returns as God....
Africa through Cote D'Ivoire, Togo, Angola, Ghana, and Tunisia will announce a paradigm shift in the way that soccer is played, serving notice that the most serious opposition to Brazilian samba and favela in the years to come will be the makossa, griot , and rai of Western Africa and the Maghreb. The Czech Republic through MIlan Baros, Pavel Nedved, and Jan Koller will overtake the French duo of Thierry Henry and David Trezeguet in their sharpshooting abilities.
Zizou will grit his teeth playing through pain, showing flashes of his brilliant playmaking. But the French will fade. Poland will bring its hooligans. And the US-Poland match will show why El Jogo Bonito is muy dificile for some teams.
Iran wil be the most scrutinized team as every player will be suspected of being radio-active. Ukraine will impress through Andrei Shevchenko, the one man demolition squad and they should make it to the second round but the Orange revolution will stall. The US is fourth in the FIFA rankings. This after losing to Germany and drawing with Jamaica. But as they say FIFA-FO-FUM, I smell the blood of a flatterer waiting to deceive.
If past matches are any indication then the US will vault over the Czech Republic after being beaten or drawn in their next friendly with Morocco....But maybe after their early World Cup exit, the US team will disappear into the leafy suburbs of Connecticut to play XBox soccer and hakke sack.
And what of the Netherlands? How rude of me to put them at the last minute. The creators of total football. But that way they get attention. And here is hoping that they get there to the top. A Brazil- Netherlands final would be sublime. The Dutch Masters against the Samba Kings.These are the best 32 teams in soccer that in the World barring a few exceptions and getting there is no mean feat!
