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By
Jim Allen
Outsports.com
Brazil. Just give the Jules Rimet trophy
that goes to the winner of the World Cup to Brazil right
now. Unless most of their squad is wiped out by pneumonia
or torn ACL’s, I simply don’t see another team beating
them. But I’m being paid to put my neck on the line with a
prediction, so here goes.
The road to the Final is paved like
this: Each group sends the top two point-getters. In the
Round of 16, the winner of Group A plays the second place
finisher in Group B, the winner of Group B plays the second
place finisher in Group A and so on down the alphabet.
Though there will surely be an upset or three
along the way (my picks are fairly conservative and
predictable to be honest), if by some miracle the group
parcipants hold, the following matchups will take place:
A: Germany vs. Sweden. The hosts
should have a fairly easy time beating a good, but not
great, Swedish team
B: Argentina vs. Angola. Argentina
will have no problem with Angola, first time World Cup
participants
C: England vs. Costa Rica. The Three
Lions never do things the easy way, so figure on them
winning this via penalty kicks
D: Portugal vs. Netherlands. A
mouth-watering matchup between two underachieving teams that
will see the Netherland advance
E: Czech Republic vs. Croatia. The
Czechs will simply have too much firepower for Croatia
F: France vs. Ukraine. Ukraine will
have advanced from a weak group, but they’ll be overmatched
against an excellent French team
G: Brazil vs. Italy. Normally, I’d
hope this would be a semifinal, but Brazil will not be
stopped
H: Spain vs. South Korea. Spain will
benefit from a good pairing and have no problem dispatching
South Korea
The quarterfinal matchups see A vs. B, C vs.
D etc. with A vs. B grouped with E vs. F and C vs. D grouped
with G vs. H for seeding in the semifinals.
A: Germany vs. Argentina. It won’t
reflect badly on hosts Germany to lose to a superb
Argentina.
B: England vs. Netherlands. England
matches up well with the Netherlands, so expect them to book
a date in the semifinals.
C: Czech Republic vs. France. France
looks to erase the memory of their poor showing in
Korea/Japan in 2002 and they should do so against a fine
Czech team
D: Brazil vs. Spain. I’m not sure if
this matchup will take place (see: upsets) but I really hope
it does as it matches two superb footballing powers who
contain a bunch of the best players in the world
That leaves our semifinalists as:
Argentina vs. England: A rematch of
the fiery Round of 16 game in the 1998 World Cup, look for
England to lose in some catastrophic way (penalties, giving
up a freak goal two minutes from time etc.) as Argentina
book a place in a dream final
France vs. Brazil: Seriously, nobody
is going to beat Brazil, though expect France to push them
to the wire before losing.
And our finalists: Argentina vs. Brazil
BRAZIL! BRAZIL! BRAZIL! I simply don’t see
how anyone, even a terrific Argentinian team that beat
Brazil 3-1 in the qualifying stages, can beat a Brazil that
has a B squad that could beat most of the teams in this
tournament. |
Clockwise from top left: Koji
Nakata (Japan); Landon Donovan (USA); Gianluigi Buffon
(Italy); Sammy Adjei (Ghana); Scott Chipperfield
(Australia); Petr Cech (Czech); Cafu (Brazil) and Robert
Kovac (Croatia)
Clockwise
from top left: Maxi Rodriguez (Argentina); Kali (Angola);
Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal); Jose Fonseca (Mexico); Edwin
van der Saar (Netherlands); Kolo Toure (Cote D'ivoire);
Hossein Kaabi (Iran); and Igor Duljaj (Serbia and
Montenegro)
Clockwise
from top left: Michael Ballack (Germany); Anders Svensson
(Sweden); Russell Latapy (Trinidad and Tobago); Michael Owen
(England); Ivan Hurtado (Ecuador); Gabriel Badilla (Costa
Rica); Carlos Gamarra (Paraguay); and Artur Boruc (Poland)
Clockwise
from top left: Adel Chadli (Tunisia); Sami Al-Jaber (Saudi
Arabia); Andriy Shevchenko (Ukraine); Thierry Henry
(France); Iker Casillas (Spain); Ludovic Assemoassa (Togo);
Ky Hyeon Seol (South Korea); Phillipe Senderos
(Switzerland)