The FIFA World Cup starts June 12, 2014 and everyone is
on the edge of their seat awaiting the roll out of the teams they are backing.
I must say the coverage this World Cup has received (both positive and
negative) has been second to none I can remember. Everywhere I turn there is
some advertisement or commentary about the World Cup 2014.........the sponsors
must be elated, and saying money well spent.
I still think the traditional powerhouse teams (who have
already won the World Cup) will factor in the latter stages with Spain now
joining that fray. There is a formula to win the FIFA World Cup and Uruguay,
Argentina, Brazil, Spain, France, Germany, Italy and .........unbelievably
England, know how to do this. However, IN MY VIEW, World Cup 2018 will be won
by a team who has never won it before.
My only regret is that I won’t get to see Radamel Falcao
of Columbia playing at this FIFA World Cup, if I feel this way, I can’t even
imagine how he feels. This striker is lethal in front of goal; and if I have to
explain to anyone who this player is, something must be wrong with you. Nevertheless,
you can read about his exploits here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radamel_Falcao
I think there will be a lot of surprise results at this
tournament. The minnow teams are doing their homework and getting much better
at organizing and strategizing. I speak of teams from the CONCACAF region, Asia
and Africa. Europe holds centre stage when we speak of powerhouse teams, as 5
World Cup winners belong to Europe and 3 belong to South America.
The solid teams have shown themselves so far, namely
Spain, Brazil, Germany.......you know the usual suspects. It will be dangerous
to predict which 2 teams will be coming out of their groups; I will only
attempt to predict 1 from each group:
GROUP A BRAZIL (FIFA
ranking #3)
GROUP B SPAIN
(FIFA ranking #1)
GROUP C COLUMBIA
(FIFA ranking #8)
GROUP D URUGUAY
(FIFA ranking #7)
GROUP E FRANCE
(FIFA ranking #17)
GROUP F ARGENTINA
(FIFA ranking #5)
GROUP G GERMANY
(FIFA ranking #2)
GROUP H BELGIUM
(FIFA ranking #11)
Injuries are impacting all the teams, which is in itself
a chance for each team to show their depth. The eventual World Cup winner of
this tournament (which I think will be Spain....again), will have it very hard
this time around. Firstly, Vicente del Bosque has the fact that only 1 coach (Vittorrio
Pozzo) in the history of the World Cup has won back to back tournaments, going
against him. Also, Spain is aging and in my estimation this team has hit their plateau
(although they are still ranked #1 by FIFA). Nevertheless, they will take some
beating as they have the quality and they have done it already.
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Disclaimer
All the
commentary posted in this publication are my personal view(s) and do not
reflect the view(s) of any Association, Federation or Governing Body.
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