Almost, but not quite.....

With work finished up and less than a week to go, we are almost ready to start the next World Cup Adventure.

Even though I'm gonna miss the team at AsureQuality, I was glad to finish up there with a few weeks to spare. I've needed a break from work for quite a while now, and you know what, I think that 66 days of travel, football, adventure and the more than occasional beer is just what I need...

So this is the point where I need to ask myself the age-old question I always ask at this point in proceedings.... Who do I think will win the World Cup...??

This time around, the chances for the host nation, South Africa, are pretty slim, in fact, I don't really give them much of a hope of getting past the Group stages. Having said that, you can never under-estimate the power of the home crowd advantage, so who knows how they will fair.

There are effectively only a few teams that have a realistic chance of making it all the way through to the Final stages, and if I was a betting man, (which I am), then my money would be on either Spain or Brazil taking the cup in 2010.

On current form you would have to fancy Spain's chances, with their recent European Championship, their strong club sides and their wealth of talented and skillful players playing around the world. But Spain don't have the greatest record in the World Cup, having imploded on more than one occasion, and rarely making the final stages. With this be their year...?

Anyone who counts out Brazil would be a fool.... Brazil are the archetypal tournament team, and regardless of their form leading up to the World Cup or recent performances, they always 'bring it' when it matters. I would expect them to sail through the group stages and secure at least a semi-final spot.

My bet for an outside chance would be Holland, it's about time they pulled something out of the bag, and lived up to their reputation.

As ever, I will continue my long suffering devotion to supporting England. Before every tournament they promise so much, and nearlyalways they deliver so little. Is 2010 going to be any different...? Fabio Capello has pulled together a strong squad that is more focused and prepared than for previous World Cups. I dunno,... I just can't quite see them pulling it off this year, but I can quite easily see them losing on penalties once again ain the later stages. I hope I am wrong...

But there is something to be positive about... This time around I will have the All Whites to root for, and even though they have only a fraction of the chance that Spain, Brazil or England have of getting through to the next round, it's gonna be fun regardless of what they achieve. If they can get a couple of wins in the group stages, and qualify for the next round, that will make me almost as happy as England winning the whole damm thing.

So Fiona & I will be heading off to Namibia next Tuesday for the start of this years adventure. With minimal wi-fi coverage in the desert, I suspect that posting to my blog may be sporadic for the first couple of weeks, but I will try and write something every couple of days even if I don't get to download it straight away...

I hope you will join us on the trip....

Steve & Fiona

FIFA are up to their old tricks again...!

Looking back at my last post, I was effectively correct with my prediction for the seeding and groups, except for getting the pot numbers wrong and the the swapping of France for Holland as a seeded team.

If you understand anything about the way FIFA seed teams for major tournaments, you'll know that they effectively make the rules up as they go along, for their own "promotional & marketing" reasons. There has never been much consistancy in the way FIFA apply their so-called rules over the years, and they deliberately make the rules vauge enough to allow for some creative interpretation at a later date. If you need any better evidence of this just look at the "last-minute" decision to seed team in the European qualification play-offs....

So what has FIFA done this time....? Well, for the seeding of the World Cup draw later this week, they have decided to exclude the results from the last 4 European qualification play-off games and therefore used the world ranking as they stood at the end of October. Had the play-off games been use in the seeding calculation, (as they have been in past World Cups and other tournements), then France would have been seeded ahead of Holland....!

So if FIFA creatively changed the seeding of play-off games to help France to qualify for the World Cup, why would they again change the rules to stop them being seeded...? Could it be that in light of the global outcry over the "Hand of Frog" incident, that FIFA are now stealthily penalising France for Henry's handball....??

Never underestimate FIFA's ability to manipulate both the seeding and draw for their own benefit....

Let's do a little test.... I wonder who is going to be grouped with the seeded South African hosts at the draw this weekend...? I am strongly of the belief that FIFA have a vested interest in ensuring that South Africa make it though to Group stages, as it's always better for the Hosts to remain in the tournament for as long as possible, (for those "promotional & marketing" reasons). With this in mind I am going go out on a limb and suggest that we should not be too surprised to see South Africa drawn with some of the 'minnow' teams that have made it to the World Cup. My guess is that they may end up grouped with the likes of New Zealand or North Korea from pot 2, Chile from pot 3 and Slovakia, Serbia or Slovenia from pot 4.

My thoughts from the last post about what the teams we are following need to do to qualify for the Round of 16 are pretty much the same. The only real difference is that now Holland has been seeded, it means that England will avoid them in the group stages, and quite honestly, as long as we don't get drawn with either Portugal or Ivory Coast, I'll be happy. The flip side to that is that the USA, NZ or Australia could be in a group with Holland and one of the other teams above, which I think will make moving beyond the group stage difficult.

Anyway all will be revealed very soon.... I'll be up early on Saturday morning to watch the draw live and be posting here what team we will be watching with the tickets we have....