Now the fun starts!

First an apology for last week - I completely forgot to include the north/central America teams in my list. From our area, Mexico, Honduras, and the USA qualified. Sorry for the confusion.


I will now explain the last 2 things you need to know to understand how the World Cup works, then get on to the real fun stuff. Last week we talked about all of the countries (there are 32 of them). Obviously you can't have them all playing each other - that would take too long. What they do is separate them into 8 groups of 4 teams each. To make it fair, they choose the 8 best teams and put one of them in each group. Then they fill the groups with the rest of teams. As you can probably imagine, you always run the chance that the other teams in your group will be REALLY good, since they are selected randomly. You will hear the announcers talk about this as a team's "draw"(to use it in a sentence: "Oh crap, we have to play Brazil. That's a tough draw.").

Each of the 4 teams in these groups plays each other, and the best 2 teams in each group advance to the next round. How do they figure out who the 2 best teams are? In soccer you can either win, lose, or tie a game. In the world cup you get 3 points for a win, 1 point for a tie, and none (duh) for a loss. So, lets say that France won 1 game, tied 1, and lost 1, they would have 4 points. But wait, you say (since I know you're all smart) - couldn't two teams end up with the same number of points. They could, and so soccer has various tiebreakers. First, they use goal differential, meaning how many you scored minus how many you allowed your opponents to score (so if, over the 3 games, you scored 5 and allowed 2, your differential would be +3). After that they go to other stuff which is too boring to explain.

From there on out, it's a direct, single-elimination tournament - one loss and you're out. It goes from sixteen to 8 to 4 to 2 to 1.

Now, onto the real part of the blog - the whole reason I started it in the first place: talking about the teams, and who you should watch. I will be covering 1-2 teams a week, together with necessary videos. I'm going to be starting with Group A, and working my way through.

Group A is South Africa, Mexico, Uruguay, and France. Today we'll talk about our compadres to the south, Mexico.

The scoop on the team: I will say first and foremost that this is the most difficult team for me to write about. As a die-hard fan of US soccer, I dislike the Mexican team with a passion. That aside, they are usually a fun team to watch. Like most South American teams, they play with a flair, and have rabid fans. But old wounds are slow to heal, which is why the first video I'm posting is of the beat-down that we gave them during the knock-out rounds of the 2002 World Cup. As the game went along, and the Mexicans knew they were going to lose, they turned all of their energy towards attempting an on-field beat-down of US midfielder Cobi Jones while the game was going on (Rafa Marquez's flying kick/headbutt earned him a red card). Like I said, no love here.


Who to watch: Carlos Salcido is probably be their best player, though a little temperamental. Still, he's great defender, and has scored some spectacular goals. Below is one his better ones, which he scored for his club team:


Salcido might be better, but the one everybody remembers is Cuauhtemoc Blaco. Named for the last Aztec emperor, he has long been a fan favorite, and has seemed to get better with age. He is a masterful passer and a fiery competitor (though he can be rattled - in 2002 the USA's Pablo Mastroeni got under his skin so much in their World Cup match that it was all Blanco could do to keep from slapping him. Below are some of Blanco's best goals (just so you know, "America" is a Mexican soccer club that Blanco played for).


Are any of their games must-watch events: You probably shouldn't miss Mexico - France if you can help it. Both teams are very talented, and should be fun to watch playing each other.

How they will do: The Mexicans are always capable of a full-fledged stink-bomb, but they usually do pretty well in the opening round. After that, they always seem to find ways to flame out (to Argentina at the last world cup, and to us at the one before that). They have more and more players playing professionally at the top leagues in Europe, so everybody keeps thinking they're going to turn the corner. This may be their year. They should do enough to get out of their group to the knockout round.

That's all for Mexico. Let me know if there's more that you want to know about teams than what I've put. Until next time....