Brief Thoughts On The World Cup 2010

Now that the first round of the World Cup is out of the way I can now feel safe about making some comments. South Americans teams did extremely well as all five teams have moved into the second round. Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay all won their groups and Chile nearly won theirs.

I’ve been reading online how many Americans are crowing about the team winning their group and are now predicting a deep run into the latter rounds but I’m not so sure. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see that happen but so far they have had trouble finishing which doesn’t bode well for winning lots of games. They get plenty of shots on goal but for some reason can’t seem to put the ball in the net as much as they should. Part of it could have to do with youth and inexperience on the part of players like Altidore but that can only be remedied with time and games played. To me it seems that the team does not have an elite striker, one can can create and score consistently with a booming shot. If they beat Ghana then (possibly) facing Uruguay and winning could be a challenge they may not be up to.

I am sick of seeing players fail to the ground flailing around or grabbing their face while they writhe in agony as they pretend that they have been mortally wounded just in hopes of getting a penalty shot or seeing their opponent given a yellow or red card. Stop taking dives and play like a man! If you fight through contact it’s much more evident of a foul being committed than it is when you receive the smallest of bumps and go somersaulting to the ground. The other thing is referees calling fouls that they didn’t see. Kaka from Brazil got his second yellow card of the game (which then becomes a red card and forces him to miss the next game) just because a player ran into him and then did as I wrote above. He dropped to the ground grabbing his face writhing in false agony and even though the referee didn’t see it he still gave the yellow cardto Kaka. Don’t even get me started on goals being taken away because of horrible calls. It’s unbelievable and unforgivable. FIFA needs to clean this mess up before the next World Cup if they want to have some credibility.

Finally, My final four picks are Argentina vs Spain and Brazil vs Uruguay and I have Argentina vs Brazil in an all South American finale. If anyone is to be a dark horse upset victor I predict it will be either Uruguay or perhaps Japan. But then again, what do I know? I’m no expert.