World Cup 2010 – Preview – Part 2

Its now 5 days until the World Cup starts in South Africa.  As promised in my previous blog, I will continue my thoughts about past World Cups and make some predictions about World Cup 2010.

I remember the 1990 World Cup in Italy as the one that got away for England.  England seemed to be riding their luck when the won their second round and quarter final games in extra time, but they cam up short in the semi-finals losing to West Germany, who went on to win the final, on penalties.

England then failed to qualify in 1994 in the United States and as a result I cannot remember much about that tournament at all.

I remember the final of the 1998 World Cup held in France as the French crushed Brazil, which in itself was quite a surprise.  Not that France didn’t deserve to win, but to beat Brazil 3-0 was quite a shock, and England yet again went out on penalties – this time to Argentina in the 2nd round.

The 2002 World Cup was memorable as 1998 champions France didn’t even manage to advance from their Group – England were in a group of Death with Argentina, Nigeria and Sweden, but they were able to advance by virtue of a 1-0 defeat of Argentina.  England were defeated by eventual champions Brazil in the Quarter-Finals, with the surprise of the tournament being the South Korean co-hosts who advanced to the semi-final (losing 1-0 to Germany).

The 2006 World Cup yet again saw England go out in a penalty shoot-out – this time to Portugal, but the memorable moment for me was in the final when Zinedine Zidane lost his cool and was sent off – Italy going on to win in a penalty shoot out.

And so we come to 2010.  In my previous blog I previewed Groups A-D, so I will continue with the final 4 groups.

Group E

Cameroon, Denmark, Netherlands and Japan make up this group.  The Dutch are one of my favourite teams to watch, with their brand of “total football”.  They qualified quite easily and if they manage to keep together as a team should win the group, with probably Cameroon advancing as runner-up.

Group F

Italy, New Zealand, Paraguay and Slovakia make up this group.  Italy are notorious slow starters in tournaments.  I remember being in Italy during the 2008 European Championship, where they just made it through the group stage, going on to be runners up to eventual winners Spain.  They should qualify from this quite weak group with Paraguay, but I am not going to predict what order they will be in.

Group G

Brazil, Ivory Coast, North Korea and Portugal make up this group.  This is the “Group of Death” of the tournament, especially if Ivory Coast play as a team.  Brazil should win the group but the runner-up is a crap-shoot between Portugal and the Ivory Coast.

Group H

Chile, Honduras, Spain and Switzerland make up this group, which is Spain’s to lose.  Spain are the class of this group, although they do have a reputation of choking in the big tournaments – which in my opinion has only been partially lifted by winning Euro 2008.  The remaining three teams are fairly evenly matched and whoever is “good on the night” will go through with Spain.

So there it is – my predictions for the group stages.  In a couple of weeks when we know who actually does make it through, and how the teams are performing, I will try and predict who the final winner will be.