SPORT
How Do You Say 'Three and Done' in Afrikaans?: The Quadrennial and Funtastic Fanzine World Cup Preview
/ Pete Hausler
06.11.10
Me: Someone who has followed the long, arduous, sometimes tedious World Cup qualifying campaigns of various countries—from Azerbaijan to Zambia—in sundry outposts (Marshall Islands? Malta? Pre-volcanic Iceland? Canada?) so that you don’t have to. Believe me when I say, these qualifying proceedings drag on longer than a U.S. presidential primary. My preparation includes digesting tens of thousands of written words in the form of game recaps; player profiles; other publications’ previews; and even uniform rumors, leaks, innuendo, unveilings, and criticism (yes, there are actually Web sites for this).
You: Someone who is at least mildly interested in sports, and for one reason or another—hopefully love of the game, but possibly genuine curiosity—is interested in soccer. Welcome. And read on, if for no other reason, than to have something to say in the subway, in the elevator, at the bar, at the water cooler. In a few weeks, we’ll regroup and have a laugh at how far off our predictions were.
You probably know that the World Cup is taking place at various sites around South Africa. The World Cup tournament architecture is simple, really: 32 teams qualify from six different qualifying regions, based more or less by continent (The U.S. was top dog in the North America /Central America/Caribbean group). There are eight groups (A through H) of four teams each. The order the teams appear here is our projected order of finish within their group.
In group play, three points are awarded for a win and one point for a tie. Each team plays the other teams in their group once; so, three games each. The two teams from each group with the most points advance to the round of sixteen. From there it’s a straight-up, sixteen-team, winner-advances, loser-goes-home bracket. We have listed the FIFA world-ranking in parenthesis (FIFA is the soccer’s world governing body, and administrator of The World Cup). In a word, the rankings are specious1 (but actually less subjective than, say, the college BCS rankings), but are fun to look at anyway, so we include. Without further ado, your eight groups in the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
–––––––
And the rankings change. See here as they do.
You: Someone who is at least mildly interested in sports, and for one reason or another—hopefully love of the game, but possibly genuine curiosity—is interested in soccer. Welcome. And read on, if for no other reason, than to have something to say in the subway, in the elevator, at the bar, at the water cooler. In a few weeks, we’ll regroup and have a laugh at how far off our predictions were.
You probably know that the World Cup is taking place at various sites around South Africa. The World Cup tournament architecture is simple, really: 32 teams qualify from six different qualifying regions, based more or less by continent (The U.S. was top dog in the North America /Central America/Caribbean group). There are eight groups (A through H) of four teams each. The order the teams appear here is our projected order of finish within their group.
In group play, three points are awarded for a win and one point for a tie. Each team plays the other teams in their group once; so, three games each. The two teams from each group with the most points advance to the round of sixteen. From there it’s a straight-up, sixteen-team, winner-advances, loser-goes-home bracket. We have listed the FIFA world-ranking in parenthesis (FIFA is the soccer’s world governing body, and administrator of The World Cup). In a word, the rankings are specious1 (but actually less subjective than, say, the college BCS rankings), but are fun to look at anyway, so we include. Without further ado, your eight groups in the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
–––––––
And the rankings change. See here as they do.