Archive for category World Cup

John Harkes/John Terry and Rio Tinto proposed as Jamaica Venue

A couple of interesting reads:

First, I watched Eric Wynalda on the Fox Football Fone-in show, but didn’t understand the context.  It sounds like the US had it’s own scandal analogous to the one that England is going through with the situation where Captain John Terry has been reported to have had an affair with the girlfriend of teammate Wayne Bridge.  It seems that the US dealt with a similar situation for the 1998 World Cup:

Breaking more than a decade of silence, former U.S. soccer coach Steve Sampson said Tuesday he dropped John Harkes from the national team roster two months before the 1998 World Cup because the American captain was having an affair with the wife of teammate Eric Wynalda.

Second, Match Fit USA has an interesting proposal for setting 8 fixed locations for the US to play CONCACAF opponents in order to maximize home field advantage.

Jamaica- Sandy, Utah: An overwhelming majority of the Jamaican population in the United States is split between Florida and New York. So, let’s go a couple of thousand miles west of both of those places and play the Reggae Boyz in picturesque Sandy. The fans in Utah have supported the Yanks well in the last two qualifiers there (though their showing at Rice-Eccles Stadium in 2005 was much more impressive than last year’s match), and the location would make it very difficult for hordes of Jamaican fans to support their team in person.

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VIDEO: Bradenton Days 2006

Must see video of Beckerman, Donovan, Beasley, et al, during their Bradenton days talking about the 2010 World Cup.

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More CBA updates, and ESPN World Cup schedule

Apologies for the heavy dose of Collective Bargaining over the last couple of days, but this seems topical.  Here are two audio interviews that give some good insight:

Interview #1, the second in Major League Soccer Talk’s educational piece on Collective Bargaining and how it relates to Major League Soccer.  This one is heavy on the single entity status of the league.  Some of you may have a good understanding of this, others may find it informative.

Interview #2, a stellar 24 minute interview with Revs star Taylor Twellman.  About 20 minutes of this is on the Collective Bargaining topic.  He is very open about the players position on things.  He also sounds very optimistic about a resolution in the near future.

Also, today ESPN released their TV schedule for the upcoming World Cup (courtesy of our friends at WVHooligan).  Below is the info for the US group stage matchups:

Date Time Network Matchup Location
Sat 6/12 12 p.m. Mountain ABC England vs. USA Rustenburg
Fri 6/18 7:30 a.m. Mountain ESPN/ESPN360.com Slovenia vs. USA Johannesburg
Wed 6/23 7:30 a.m. Mountain ESPN/ESPN360.com USA vs. Algeria Pretoria

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2010 World Cup Draw

I attended the gathering at Rio Tinto for the 2010 World Cup group drawings. However, to be honest my main reason for attending was the potential of winning a raffle for an official 2010 World Cup game ball. Unfortunately, luck is rarely on my side in these sorts of things. I blame Nick Rimando who was drawing out the raffle tickets. I didn’t count, but they probably gave away 3 or 4 #5 soccer balls, and maybe 10 mini-balls.

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Official 2010 World Cup South Africa “Jabulani” Game Ball

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2010 World Cup Groupings

(including most recent FIFA/Coca-Cola World Rankings)

Group A: South Africa(86), Mexico(15), Uruguay(19), France(7)
Group B: Argentina(8), Nigeria(22), Korea Republic(52), Greece(12)
Group C: England(9), USA(14), Algeria(28), Slovenia(33)
Group D: Germany(6), Australia(21), Serbia(20), Ghana(37)
Group E: Netherlands(3), Denmark(26), Japan(43), Cameroon(11)
Group F: Italy(4), Paraguay(30), New Zealand(77), Slovakia(34)
Group G: Brazil(2), Korea DPR(84), Côte d’Ivoire(16), Portugal(5)
Group H: Spain(1), Switzerland(18), Honduras(38), Chile(17)

As it turns out, the US ended up with a very good group drawing. Aside from South Africa, England was the lowest ranked seeded team. And the US is ranked higher than the other two teams in the group. Opening against England may also be a benefit to the US as seeded teams will often struggle in their opening match. The US team ended up in one of only a couple of groups in which they would likely have been considered a favorite.

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