Summer Spectacular

2010 World Cup Preview
By Walter Villa

David Beckham won't be bending soccer balls, Portugal may be cursed by Paris Hilton and the prime minister of Slovenia has promised to clean the boots of his nation's players.

That's only a fraction of the happenings over the past few months in the sport that is a world obsession just about everywhere except in the USA.

We're talking World Cup soccer, and the big event is set to kick off June 11 in South Africa. Teams all over the globe spent two years trying to qualify for the 32 available spots. By June 25, after three games of round-robin play, the top two teams in each group advance to begin the single-elimination knockout rounds.

The favorites are five-time winner Brazil, which last won in 2002; four-time champ Italy, which won the most recent Cup, in 2006; and Germany, which has won three times but not since 1990.

Three teams with a strong chance at a breakthrough are the Netherlands, which has never won but finished second twice in the 1970s; England, which won only once, in 1966; and Spain, which has never won the Cup but earned the prestigious Euro title in 2008. The Brits, however, will have to carry on without one of its stars, Beckham, the master of the curving, twisting, spinning free kicks.

France, which won the Cup in 1998 and finished second in 2006, qualified for South Africa - barely. The French eliminated Ireland on the strength of a blatant hand ball that led directly to the decisive goal late in the final qualifying attempt for both teams.

The player who engineered the illegal play, Thierry Henry, confessed his sin after the game and said that, in all fairness, the Irish deserve a rematch. But FIFA, soccer's governing body, said no to that notion.

So France is in, and so is Argentina, another team with an impressive pedigree which also struggled to qualify. From 1978 to 1990, Argentina was dominant, winning twice and finishing second once.

Diego Maradona, the team's star player in that era, is now the coach, and he blasted the Argentine media for treating his team "like (expletive) garbage" after they struggled to qualify, needing late goals in their final two games against Peru and at Uruguay to take the last automatic qualifying berth in South America.

Portugal, an emerging power that finished fourth in the 2006 Cup, struggled in qualifying but is still an intriguing side. They have Cristiano Ronaldo, the world's highest-paid player and FIFA's 2008 Player of the Year.

But published reports indicated that a certain hotel heiress, wildly famous in the U.S., is Ronaldo's ex-girlfriend, and she's been accused of cursing him by stabbing a voodoo doll in the spine.

Ronaldo recently suffered an ankle injury, so maybe it worked.

No such drama in Slovenia, but it was a big story in that country when Prime Minister Borut Pahor promised to clean the players' boots if they qualified for the World Cup.

Well, get the shoe polish out, Borut, because Slovenia is in for just the second time since the nation gained its independence in 1991.

Those are just some of the stories. More will develop over the month-long tournament.

Who will win? Who will surprise? How will Team USA fare? Here are my early guesses:

GROUP A - In the most evenly-balanced bracket in the tournament, the picks to advance are Uruguay and France. Mexico and host South Africa will battle, though.

GROUP B - Argentina is the top seed in the group, but this is an upset special: Greece, which won the Euro title in 2004, and Nigeria will advance. South Korea finishes fourth.

GROUP C - Team USA should join England in the second round, eliminating Slovenia and Algeria in what is a favorable group for the Americans. In the only previous World Cup meeting between this group's top two teams, USA stunned England, 1-0, in 1950.

GROUP D - Germany is the dominant team in this group, with Australia, Serbia and Ghana in a scramble for the second spot. The guess here is that Ghana qualifies on its home continent. Look for Germany to play Team USA in round two.

GROUP E - Advancing are top-seeded Netherlands and Denmark, which finished ahead of Portugal, Sweden and Hungary in qualifying. Failing to advance in this group: Cameroon and Japan.

GROUP F - Italy should have little trouble, and Paraguay, which earned wins over Brazil and Argentina in qualifiers. also advances. Slovakia and New Zealand are eliminated.

GROUP G - This is being called this World Cup's "Group of Death", but the picks seem clear: Brazil and Portugal (as long as Ronaldo is healthy and not hexed). For the second straight Cup, Ivory Coast gets no luck of the draw. North Korea is a distant fourth.

GROUP H - Spanish is the dominant language here with Chile, Spain and Honduras. Switzerland does not fit in as far as language but will survive as a runner-up to powerful Spain.

It should be quite a show. Nearly 500,000 fans are expected to travel to South Africa for the event, which pays $31 million to the winning team. Even the teams eliminated in the first round walk away with $9 million.

The ultimate winner? Brazil is the safe choice, but I will go with Spain taking its first title.

Let the countdown for World Cup 2010 begin!