Who do you think will win the World Cup?

[Deuce]

Originally Posted by I_Believe_In_Kreis

I'm surprised at how many of you think someone other than Brazil will win. This might be the least wide open tournament in recent memory - I think Brazil is head and shoulders better than the rest.

As far as Argentina goes.....well, you all know I'm a huge blanquiceleste fan, but given that the World Cup final isn't being played at El Monumental in Buenos Aires, they basically have no shot.

Gosh... I guess we should cancel the World Cup cos Brazil is a gonna win...
There have never been any upsets or cinderella teams in the World Cup so we should all just not watch because IBIK has given away the ending...

I think that all 32 teams have a shot... that is part of the beauty of the beautiful game...
YES Brazil is the favorite but they have by no means won it all... They have to actually play... just like everyone else...!

[I_Believe_In_Kreis]

Damn Deuce....sorry. Didn't mean to strike a nerve like that. I hope your post was due to too much coffee. I was simply saying that with a clear cut favorite this year, I'm surprised to see so many varying opinions. As far as Argentina goes, well, the last time they beat Brazil away from home was 1991. If they meet in the WC final would you put money on Argentina straight up?

Originally Posted by knowwonnose

How boring would it be if everyone picked the "sure thing."

The poll is about who will win, not who you WANT to win. I doubt anyone here will debate that Brazil is the best team in the world.....while obviously they could lose, they've probably got the best shot of any team at going all the way. That's what the poll is asking. And again, I'm not criticizing anyone's choice - if you think Angola's going to win it all, good for you - I'm just expressing my surprise that more people aren't voting for Brazil. Personally I'd love it if Brazil went down.

Deuce has a point about my post, my phrasing about Argentina could have been better, but I'm not sure why you (knowwonnose) are all up in my face.

[Deuce]

Originally Posted by I_Believe_In_Kreis

Damn Deuce....sorry. Didn't mean to strike a nerve like that. I hope your post was due to too much coffee. I was simply saying that with a clear cut favorite this year, I'm surprised to see so many varying opinions.

Sorry I forgot this 😉 on my post! Must have been the caffeine shakes! 😲

[I_Believe_In_Kreis]

Originally Posted by Deuce

Sorry I forgot this 😉 on my post! Must have been the caffeine shakes! 😲

No worries dude.

How about posting some pictures from the RSL/Harry Potter game?

[Deuce]

Originally Posted by I_Believe_In_Kreis

No worries dude.

How about posting some pictures from the RSL/Harry Potter game?

I am waiting for them to get posted on the photo site... I sent them saturday night... it's out of my hands at this point... I will post a link as soon as they get posted.

[knowwonnose]

Originally Posted by I_Believe_In_Kreis

Damn Deuce....sorry. Didn't mean to strike a nerve like that. I hope your post was due to too much coffee. I was simply saying that with a clear cut favorite this year, I'm surprised to see so many varying opinions. As far as Argentina goes, well, the last time they beat Brazil away from home was 1991. If they meet in the WC final would you put money on Argentina straight up?

The poll is about who will win, not who you WANT to win. I doubt anyone here will debate that Brazil is the best team in the world.....while obviously they could lose, they've probably got the best shot of any team at going all the way. That's what the poll is asking. And again, I'm not criticizing anyone's choice - if you think Angola's going to win it all, good for you - I'm just expressing my surprise that more people aren't voting for Brazil. Personally I'd love it if Brazil went down.

Deuce has a point about my post, my phrasing about Argentina could have been better, but I'm not sure why you (knowwonnose) are all up in my face.

I have no need to argue this one with you but please include the second sentence in my post.

Originally Posted by knowwonnose

I don't think anyone will be surprised if they win, but, for me anyhow, I think favorite often get knocked off.

Edit: I do apologize if you think I was in your face. I didn't intend to be.

[AreliusIV]

I'm taking Brazil over Argentina in the final.

England over France in the 3rd place match.

[AreliusIV]

World Cup Soccer: More Than a Game

By Steven D. Stark and Harry Stark
For The Inquirer

It is, quite simply, the biggest event in the world.

The World Cup, which will begin Friday in Germany, is more than an international soccer tournament - a "football" version of the Olympics. Say what you want about the spread of American popular culture, but soccer is still the closest thing to the world's universal language. If one measures size by how many people care about it and by how much, there is nothing that comes close.

Strike up a conversation with a cabdriver about superstars Ronaldo of Brazil or Zidane of France in almost any place but North America, and you'll receive an animated response.

That's true even in places where travelers rarely dare to venture. Iraq is wild about soccer, though given the history of Saddam Hussein's regime, it's no surprise that while he was still in power and the national team lost, players reportedly were forced to kick a concrete ball around in practice, had their heads shaved, or were even tortured. Even the North Koreans - the world's hermits - will venture out occasionally for games, as they did several years ago to play South Korea in Seoul in a contest billed as "the reunification match."

Yet soccer is more than just an international language. In most places outside of the United States, the sport is a window into the soul of nations. It has assumed such importance in Italy, for example, that it's impossible to comprehend fully that nation's politics and its recent election without understanding its soccer, if only because Silvio Berlusconi owns a leading team, AC Milan.

There's more to it than that, however. National teams are reflections of their cultural heritage, which is what makes the World Cup so fascinating. Michel Platini, the great French soccer star, had it right when he once said, "A football team represents a way of being, a culture." As author Pete Davies once noted, watch the Italians with their emphasis on artistry (sometimes to the exclusion of scoring goals), and one begins to understand some of the attributes that gave birth to the Renaissance. Follow the English as they forge ahead offensively, ignoring defense, and one sees what helped give rise to the industrial revolution and the wasted cities it left behind. Alex Bellos titled his book on Brazil Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life, and it was, if anything, an understatement.

The international nature of soccer also helps to keep alive the fierce, age-old rivalries that fuel a lot of the passion for the sport. One of our few experiences with anything like the nationalism that soccer evokes was 26 long years ago in the midst of the Cold War when the Americans beat the Russians at Olympic ice hockey.

It helps that much of the world has long and painful national memories, far more so than Americans do. We Americans may love our sports too, but the results - at least on a national level - signify far more in the rest of the world than they do for us. We tend to see contests as ephemeral, the results written in invisible ink. ("Wait till next year!")

The quintessential North American sports comment came when an announcer asked the Dallas Cowboys' Duane Thomas after a Super Bowl what it felt like to win "the ultimate."

"The ultimate?" he replied. "Then why are they playing it again next year?"

The rest of the world perceives history a little differently, and those perceptions come to the surface through soccer. Every match or controversy is just the latest permanent notation in a 10,000-page historical tome going back centuries, if not millennia. Thus, only in Europe and only with soccer could you have a coach from the Balkans seriously telling the media several years ago that his local team's match against Fulham of England would be "revenge" for the deaths of Yugoslavs in World War II, 60 years earlier.

In his terrific book Football Against the Enemy, Simon Kuper described how the president of Bolivia dropped all state business in 1994 and flew to watch his team live in the Cup. When asked whether he might be better attending to "domestic priorities," he replied, "In Bolivia, the World Cup is the top domestic priority." And so it will go for the month of June and into July for almost all the world.

So regardless of your interest in soccer, this tournament will be fascinating on two levels - the geopolitical and the sporting. There will be scores of guides and articles analyzing who will win the World Cup and why. Yet in reality, predicting the top teams and eventual winner isn't that problematic because World Cups conform to two basic rules. They are:

The same team always wins, and home field counts for a lot. There are soccer competitions where long shots thrive. The World Cup, however, isn't one of them. Whether it's the pressure, the importance of the competition, or the fact that the winner now has to run the gauntlet through seven games in more than a month, talent and form prevail in this tournament. Since 1958 only six teams have won the Cup and of those, three have won it only once - two while playing on their home turf. Thus, if history holds, the winner in Germany will come from one of only four teams from the 32 remaining to contest this tournament - Brazil, Germany, Italy or Argentina. And Germany has an edge playing at home.

Geopolitics helps determine winners.

Because national identity is so bound up in how a team performs on the field, it means that a nation that is generally feeling good about itself as it enters this competition - or feels it has something to prove - has a better chance to win. England won the Cup in 1966, in part because it was the host. But it also aided that nation's efforts that "swinging London" had become the envy of the Western world at about the same time.

Of course, Brazil has been a political mess for decades and it has rarely affected its soccer fortunes - though there's an argument that in a country with so little to boast about on the world stage, losing at soccer hurts even more, which provides something of an incentive. But if geopolitical concerns do play a major role in this year's Cup, Germany could again benefit. With a new chancellor, Angela Merkel, off to a promising start, the press has been full of stories over the last few months with headlines like "Germany Regaining Its Stride."

Of course, settling an old score doesn't hurt a nation and its team, either. Certainly, Senegal had no problem getting psyched for its upset at the 2002 World Cup against its old colonial subjugator, France. In this tournament, the situation will repeat itself when Togo plays France and Angola faces off against Portugal.

And so it goes in different ways all over the world. Does England often have Argentina's number because the English are a better team or because the English humiliated the Argentineans two decades ago in the Falklands War and have seemed to intimidate them ever since? Does the United States' recent quasi-dominance of Mexico have anything to do with the fact that millions of Mexicans want to leave their home country and emigrate north? Will Iran play over its head this year because it's the current world pariah, or will that cause the players to want to head home as soon possible? (Hard to tell.) It's hard to argue that politics doesn't play a major role in soccer.

In the end, we'll leave it to former French coach Roger Lemerre (and current Tunisia skipper) to describe what winning the Cup means politically in most of the world. "It is a strong and meaningful experience," he said. "It does not mean you are better but it gives you more confidence and self-belief. It literally transforms a country."

Proving the point, after the '98 Cup, Jacques Chirac began talking about "a France that wins." This year will be no different. Let the games begin.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[AreliusIV]

Simulation engine claims the Czech Republic, Baros will lift the trophy

World Champion: Czech Republic
World Cup Final: Czech Republic 2 Brazil 1
1st team to be eliminated: Ecuador
Golden Shoe winner: Milan Baros, Czech Republic (7 goals)
Golden Ball winner: Pavel Nedved, Czech Republic

[AreliusIV]

Originally Posted by AreliusIV

Simulation engine claims the Czech Republic, Baros will lift the trophy

World Champion: Czech Republic
World Cup Final: Czech Republic 2 Brazil 1
1st team to be eliminated: Ecuador
Golden Shoe winner: Milan Baros, Czech Republic (7 goals)
Golden Ball winner: Pavel Nedved, Czech Republic

By the way, on this same simulation the US managed wins over Italy (3-2) and Ghana (2-0) and tied the Czech Republic (2-2) in the difficult Group E before its luck ran out against the powerful Brazilian side in the Round of 16. I guess we will know on Monday if you can trust a simulation to predict the future.