Soccer Fan Blog

One of the things I learned as a novice fan following the 2006 World Cup is that the World Cup as I knew it was not the World Cup Competition as such, but merely the finals. This really got me, the very idea of an international competition with over 200 teams. This tickled the political and social chords of interest at least as much as the sporting spectacle.

Since the Qatar game the other night, Australia has entered the fray of the 2010 World Cup, and I’ve had some fun checking out how the competition is going so far. This is just some random notes.

Of 201 teams who officially began (or are yet to begin) the qualifiers, 31 have already been knocked out.

In October and November last year a preliminary knock out round in Africa claimed Comoros, Guinea-Bissau and Somalia. The rest of the federation has been drawn in 12 groups of four, to begin the round on the 30 May with Cameroon vs Cape Verde Islands and other games. They play for 5 places in the finals, including South Africa which has it’s place as host guaranteed.

New Zealand has all but won Oceania but definitely out in that Federation are American Samoa (remember them), Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Samoa, Tonga and Solomon Islands. On 23 June New Zealand will most likely defeat Fiji bringing them to 12 points and claiming the Oceania 0.5 chance, knocking out Fiji, New Caledonia and Vanuatu. Then they’ll have to wait for the Asian Federation to get sorted before they can play off Asia’s number 5. Oh what delicious irony if they have to play Australia.

A lot of teams were knocked out in Asia before we got to play, seeded as we were in the third round of play-offs. They are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chinese Taipei, Macau, India, Vietnam, Palestine, Nepal, Maldives, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Yemen, Tajikistan, Indonesia and Hong Kong. The remainder are in five groups of four, playing for our 4.5 places.

Europe is divided into nine groups of six and their opening match on 6 September is between Albania and Sweden. Europe is playing off for a whopping 13 places in the finals.

Games have already been played in the North, Central America and Caribbean Federation, but teams will not start dropping out until 26 March, when Dominic and Barbados play their second home-and-away to decide who will play off against the USA (good luck to either of them) along with a few other parallel games between minnow hopefuls. They go for 3.5 places in the finals,

South America may be one of the top two Federations but it is the smallest in numbers. They are one big home-and-away group of 10. Everyone’s already played 4 games but there’s a long way to go. Paraguay is on top with 10 points and Bolivia is trailing on one. The next games are on 14 June, with Argentina (on 9 points) vs Ecuador (3), Uruguay (4) vs Venezuela (6), Peru (2) vs Columbia (8), Paraguay (10) vs Brazil (8) and Bolivia (1) vs Chile (4). They are playing off for 4.5 places in the final, the 5th having to play off against the 4th from Africa.

I intend to maintain at least a watching brief of this meta-competition, and will no doubt stream a few of the games, and more as the stakes in the big federations heat up. I do this with a globe on my desk. Really, this game is cool.

However sparsely, I intend to follow an entire World Cup for the first time.

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