World Cup Buzz

Fox Soccer Channel has announced its TV schedule for the 2010 World Cup Qualifying matches, scheduled this September. The matches that will be shown in the United States are:

• Hungary v Denmark, Saturday, September 6, 1:30pm ET
• Ukraine v Belarus, Saturday, September 6, 4pm ET (tape delayed)
• Russia v Wales, Wednesday, September 10, 11am ET
• Macedonia v Holland, Wednesday, September 10, 2:30pm ET
• Slovenia v Slovakia, Wednesday, September 10, 5pm ET (tape delayed)

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Hernan Medford’s run as Costa Rica manger has ended. Medford a near legend as a player presided over an aging squad whose poor results obviously did not sit well with the powers that be in Costa Rican football. Medford was a member of Costa Rica’s 1990 and 2002 World Cup teams and managed Saprissa to the 2005 CONCACAF Champions Cup title. Costa Rica has been drawn into the easiest qualifying group in CONCACAF, Group C. Group B features four of the top six ranked teams currently in the region according to the FIFA World Rankings. Thus Costa Rica is probably going find easy passage to the final round of qualifying. However, the powers that be decided that Costa Rica’s struggles dictated a change immediately.

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The final round of Asian World Cup qualifying has been set. The round will last from September 2008 through June 2009.

Group One:                                                Group Two:

Bahrain                                                      Iran
Japan                                                        Saudi Arabia
Australia                                                   North Korea
Uzbekistan                                                South Korea
Qatar                                                         United Arab Emirates

The top two in each group advance to the World Cup with the best third place finisher facing the winner of the Oceania Confederation (likely to be New Zealand) in a two leg playoff for a World Cup birth.

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I’ve gathered a list of websites that will help you stay up to date with your national team and learn who will be in the squad for 2010!

• Sam’s Army- http://www.sams-army.com/
• Mexico- http://mexico.theoffside.com/
• Canoe- http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Soccer/Canada/home.html
• Portugal- http://www.geocities.com/colosseum/sideline/1497/
• England- http://www.thefa.com/UMBROFivesSplash.aspx
• Spain- http://www.soccer-spain.com/
• Brazil- http://www.topix.com/soccer-fifa/brazil
• Argentina- http://www.einnews.com/argentina/newsfeed-argentina-soccer
• France- http://www.fff.fr/

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Trinidad and Tobago turned around a first leg deficit with a 2-0 win at Bermuda tonight, for a 3-2 aggregate victory. T&T used goals from Daryl Roberts and former Columbus Crew and Sunderland forward Stern John to advance to the group which includes the United States, Guatemala, and Cuba who cruised 4-0 over Antigua for an aggregate 7-1 victory. Haiti used an own goal to defeat the Netherlands Antilles 1-0 after a scoreless first leg. Haiti now advances to the group stage where they will face Costa Rica, Suriname and El Salvador who used three late goals to beat Panama 3-1 and 3-2 on aggregate. Panama becomes the only side to have made the Hexagonal (final stage of qualifying) for 2006 and the knock out stages for Gold Cup in 2005 and 2007 not to qualify for the next stage. A shocking development indeed.

The next stage of qualifying will consist of the following groups. Seeded teams are in bold.

Group A

USA

Cuba

Guatemala

Trinidad and Tobago

Group B

Mexico

Canada

Honduras

Jamaica

Group C

Costa Rica

El Salvador

Haiti

Suriname

Clearly Group B is the toughest with arguably four of the top five current CONCACAF teams drawn together. (The US is the exception and faces a much easier group based on current form) Group C is the softest with not a single team in my opinion that could place in the top two in Group B. The top two in each group will participate in the Hexagonal which represents the final stage of qualifying. The top three finishers in the Hexagonal advance to the World Cup with the fourth place finisher playing the fifth place South American finisher in a two leg playoff for a World Cup birth.

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After watching the way Russia played against a formidable Netherlands squad, its very clear that Guus Hiddink’s side look to be a favorite to win EURO 2008. With a young to middle aged squad, Guus has worked his magic in bringing in quality players and forming them into world class caliber talent. With the likes of Andrei Arshavin, Roman Pavlyuchenko, each only 26 and 27, by the time 2010 rolls around they may be one of the best 1 & 2 combos that Russia has. With the form that has been showed in Austria & Switzerland, Russia no longer has the “under dog” tag that has been given to them in the past. If they go on and win EURO 2008, it will be a milestone in the mountain that Guus has built, restoring Russia back to its glory from the 1980’s. Unlike Greece, Russia have a greater chance at world cup glory with the talent and middle of the park age range to grow on. Guus well done on this one like all the others!

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Dale Mitchell’s Canadian side continued its rise in CONCACAF with a 4-1 victory over St Vincent on Friday night and now enters the group of death in CONCACAF with Jamaica, Honduras and presumably Mexico. It can be strongly argued (as it will be here) that four of the five best CONCACAF footballing nations at this point in time have been drawn together in an impossible group for qualifying. Dwayne DeRosario added to continued success of MLS players this World Cup qualifying cycle (while MLS itself insists on accelerating their schedule during these qualifiers ensuring players like DeRosario, Carlos Ruiz, Kei Kamara and others who are giving credit to the league with their performances abroad miss as many club matches as possible) with two goals. Canada won the two leg tie by an aggregate score of 7-1.

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After a dismal 2006 performance, the U.S.M.N.T (United States Men’s National Team) looks to a younger generation for a better outing in 2010. The old boy’s are gone, Claudio Reyna, Brian McBride, and Kasey Keller. In come the likes of Freddy Adu, Jozey Altidore, Maurice Edu, and Michael Bradley to name a few. With the recent matches in Europe against some of the best in the world, this young and improved U.S side looks to make its mark in CONCACAF qualifying. A 8-0 win over a dismal Barbados side was impressive, but has yet to bring out the very best that the U.S. has to offer. I believe that with the fresh new blood in the air that the U.S will be the best team out of CONCACAF and will makes its mark on world football in the coming years.

Hello my name is Justin Franklin aka Justinthemanc on theEPL community. I am a new “blogger” on here and will be reviewing and previewing the up coming qualifying matches and the results on the road to South Africa. A little info on me, I’ am from the U.S, My favorite club team is Manchester United and always will. A favorite player of mine is Cristiano Ronaldo and although may be leaving, will not affect my liking of this wonderful player. I hope that you enjoy my articles in the future and i to will enjoy your thoughts.
Cheers!

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The United States crushed Barbados but not much can be taken from the match. Barbados missing four of their five best players got rolled by a fired up US squad 8-0. While the scoreline was impressive, many concerns still persist for the U.S. like keeping proper spacing between attackers on the pitch and players knowing their respective roles while on the pitch. I’ll save these discussions and criticisms for another day because the US did what they had to do to avoid the pitfalls others faced in qualifying this past weekend. The issues with the US remain today the same as they were last week. However, other nations that the US competes with such as Mexico are showing themselves to be much weaker than anticipated.

Mexico’s performance Sunday against a team ranked 51 spots below Barbados in the FIFA world rankings made the rest of CONCACAF look like world beaters. Mexico used two controversial calls to notch late goals against the 172nd ranked team in the world, Belize 2-0. In what can only be described as a shocking display of football, Mexico was so bad that from minute thirty onward Belize was tempted go forward and attack. Particularly bad for Mexico from my eyes was Andres Guardado who was repeatedly dispossessed and several times lost his composure.

Mexico’s two goals were controversial. A late foul call just outside the box in minute 67 led to a free kick which Carlos Vela cleaned up for a goal, and then deep into stoppage time after a Mexican shot went far wide, The referee stopped play and called a penalty because a Belize defender had clipped the Mexican shot taker on his follow through after the show was taken. Jared Borgetti, calmly booked the PK, and Mexico ran out a 2-0 victor. This performance paled in comparison to the impressive displays provided by Mexico’s likely second round group opponents: Honduras is already through to group stage with an aggregate 6-2 win over Puerto Rico, Canada crushed St Vincent 3-0 in the first leg even without injured Rob Friend, and Jamaica beat the Bahamas 7-0 in the first leg of their series, and 6-0 in the second leg.  Rene Simoes return as manager of the “Reggee Boys” seems to have had the desired affect at least initially for the Jamaicans. So in other words, Sven Goran Eriksson has a momentous task ahead of him, as Mexican football is suffering from a crisis of confidence and run of about two years of indifferent, if not simply poor results.

Trinidad and Tobago has been in a steady decline since thrilling the world in Germany 2006. Now T&T is in serious jeopardy of being dismissed from World Cup 2008 qualifying just two years after participating in the last tournament. Bermuda went to Port of Spain and won 2-1 yesterday. If Bermuda advances they will be grouped with the US, Guatemala and the Cuba/Antigua winner. Panama struggled to defeat El Salvador 1-0 at home and now must be considered a slight underdog in this weekend’s return leg. Costa Rica who has qualified for the previous two world cups and actually won the CONCACAF hexaganol qualifying for the 2002 cup, had to mount a valiant comeback to draw Grenada 2-2. The second leg is this weekend in San Jose.

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We’ve seen it with the Mexicans all the time, we’ve seen it in Europe and yes last night we saw it in Brazil: A home crowd turning on its own team in a crucial World Cup qualifier. This crowd reaction culminated with wild applause as Lionel Messi was subbed out late in the match. The draw does just enough perhaps to keep Dunga his job as Brazil’s coach but time seems to be running out. But why? He won Copa America with an inferior squad to Argentina and the current table not withstanding we all know Brazil will qualify for the World Cup, right?

Brazilians are spoiled. They want beautiful soccer and winning football: Jogo Bonito. Right now Dunga feels the way to beat the Argentines who have vastly more talent than Brazil or anyone on the planet is to clog up the middle and take away space for the attackers. That requires an approach unfamiliar to Brazilian Football but effective in stopping the Argentines. But it is an approach that irritates the Brazilian faithful.

The reality of this match is that Brazil did what it had to do to deny Messi and his fellow Argentine attackers enough good chances to score a goal. Brazil playing without Kaka and Ronaldinho among others stole a point if you look at it that way. The bigger problem for Brazil may be long term as it appears the younger generation of Brazilian players haven’t developed quickly and Dunga is instead calling on many older players who weren’t critical parts of Brazil’s past success at the international level.

The Argentines have drawn their last three matches: A friendly at the USA, and qualifiers versus Ecuador and Brazil. Brazil is also struggling after being fortunate to beat Canada in a friendly, the Brazilians dropped a friendly to Venezuela, a qualifier to Paraguay and now have drawn with Argentina at home.

The Argentines however wanted more from the match: Juan Roman Riquelme stated “We are not happy with a draw because we came here to win and I think we deserved to do so. It’s a pleasure to play in a team like this, though, to be able to come to Brazil and play the way we did. That’s one thing we should be happy about,”

Here are the current COMNEBOL World Cup Qualifying standings:

1. Paraguay, 13 pts (GD +8)
2. Argentina, 11 (+6)
3. Colombia, 10 (+2)
4. Brazil, 9 (+4)
5. Uruguay, 8 (+9)
6. Venezuela, 7 (+0)
7. Chile, 7 (-1)
8. Ecuador 5 (-6)
9. Bolivia 4 (-10)
10. Peru 3 (-12)

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