World Cup
Day 2
Day Recap and World Cup History Lesson

Match 3
Paraguays own goal, gave England the only score of the day and the only one they would need. I hope Paraguay fans are a little more forgiving than Columbia fans. First time in tournament history a 1-0 game was decided that way. England once again drastically underachieved but appears as though they will be able to creep into the round of 16 where they will need the services of Wayne Rooney back. Beckham just looked really washed up.

Match 4
This is where American fans will start scratching their heads. After watching the joyous celebration from Trinidad and Tobago following the sweden game you would have thought the +950 underdogs pulled off an upset. Well sorta. A nil nil tie was an upset indeed even though it garnered them a mere one point. This sets the stage for some drama in Group B now. Paraguay is all of a sudden given new life by this tie and Trinidad the smallest country ever to qualify for the Cup is now in serious contention.

Match 5
Diego Maradonas name will be in every lead for a story written on this game and in every highlight reel as well. So I decided to follow suit. Perhaps the greatest World Cup player of all time was on hand to watch the Argentinas waltz to a 2-0 lead and hold on 2-1 against the Invory Coast to take command of the Group of Death (C). The road only gets harder with matchups against Netherlands and Montenegro. You can officially write off the Ivory Coast.

Italy 1982 and 2006
Oh the simalarities
The World Cup was played in Europe both years
Near identical friendlies
Both in 1982 and 2006 they drew with Switzerland 1-1 and disapointed in their second friendly
Since 1970 Italy has reached the final at 12-year intervals
1970
1982
1994
2006?
Both teams were coming off scandals that rocked the soccer world and all of Italy
Paolo Rossi (the greatest Italian world cup performer of all time) was coming off a two year ban for being involved in a betting scandal.

Betting Scandal
Fabbio Cannavaro, team captain of Italy, might suffer the most from the added scrutiny. It can not be helping Buffon either. The only positives that may come from this are a mentality that a World Cup Correspondent defined as us vs. the world.

The 1982 squad went through the same thing and adopted a similar mind set.

Italy will take off from Pisa on Wednesday carrying with them not only a full squad and the customary plane load of food - Germany, you see, is a strange land where weird people eat weird stuff, so hey presto, with the prosciutto and Parmigiano.
-Soccernet.com

The Fifa rankings do not update throughout the tournament but sportsbooks constantly are. Here is a live market look at the odds after Saturdays action using a specific formula npoc has adopted by combining 9 of the biggest sportsbook in the world
The lower the number the better
n's World Cup Rankings
June 10
After 5 matches and 2 days
No. 1 Brazil 25
No. 2 England 55
No. 3 Argentina 57
No. 4 Germany 74
No. 5 Italy 98
No. 6 France 118
No. 7 Netherlands 135
No. 8 Portugal 201

No. 9 Czech
No. 10 Mexico
No. 11 Croatia
No. 12 Ukraine
No. 13 USA
No. 14 Serbia and Montenegro
No. 15 Sweden
No. 16 Australia
No. 17 Ivory Coast


No. 34 Trinidad & Tobago
No. 35 Saudi Arbia
No. 36 Costa Rica

Looking Ahead
Sunday Day 3
Appears to be a weak day of matches lineup with Netherlands and Serbia Montenegro from the Group of Death capturing most of the headlines. All the games do look like mismatches but we're bound for one upset.
Angola and Portugal, colonizatio, warfare, killing and soccer all collide for this matchup, a little added drama. The Mexico goalkeeper still mourning over his father could add some emotion to the telecast. It will be fun to watch Iran play just for the fact that it seems to wrong for them to be aloud on TV.

From now on I shall refer to Serbia Montenegro as Serbia. For one because its easier to type and I know how to spell it and two because no players on the team belong to Montenigger.

World Cup History Lesson
Top World Cup Scorers
Gerd Mueller (West Germany) 14
He had 10 in the '70 World Cup and got the rest in '74
Just Fontaine (France) 13
Imagine if he had played in more than one World Cup
Pele (Brazil) 12
He had 6 the same year Fontaine had his 13, Pele played in FOUR world cups, from '58 to '70. Amazingly his two best years were his first (6) and his last (4)
Ronaldo (Brazil) 12
Chance to take over the lead this year after his eight goal performance in Korea 4 years ago

1994 Flashback
Host: United States
Champions Brazil
Runnerup Italy
3rd Sweden
4th Bulgaria

Top scoreres
Salenko (Russia) 6
Stoitchkov (Bulgaria) 6
Roberto Baggio and D. Baggio had 4 and 3 goals respectivley.
Italy did not even win their group that year finishing second to Mexico in Group E


Italy 2006
Nesta Cleared to Play vs Ghana
The injured right leg is healed and Italy is now only one defender away from having the best defense in the entire world cup. Nesta still has not trained with the team but alongside team captain Fabio Cannavaro its like magic on that backline. Zambrotta should be back for the second game.

Del Piero fighting for starting time over Totti's injured leg. Del Piero took a back seat in 1998 to Baggio. Del Piero has never been able to duplicate his success on the club circuit to the national scene.

Italy has:
The best defense in the world
The best goalkeeper in the world (when healthy)
The best defender in the world (Nesta)

One of the wildcards on this roster is Massimo Oddo. He probably wont start, but looking back on the Italians luck in past world cups, Oddo is one of the best penatly kick takers around.

Group E was not considered the Group of Death but no one will deny that its atleast 2nd hardest, featuring Ghana the USA and the Czechs
The winner of the group will not have to worry about Brazil until the finals, the runner up, gets them in the round of 16


-n