World Cup Blog Competition

Here is the first in what should be a regular series of World Cup blog competitions.

The Competition: Predict new England manager Fabio Capello's starting eleven for the friendly match against Switzerland on Feb 6th, 2008.

Just post your predicted starting eleven as a comment on this thread.

The Prize: Two football shirts for any international team in any size delivered anywhere in the World.

The Deadline: 23:59 GMT February 4th, 2008

Choosing A Winner: A winner will be chosen at random from the profile names of all those who correctly guess the starting eleven at 20:15 GMT February 6th (presuming at 20:00 kick-off).

The winner will be announced on this thread of this blog, so bookmark us, subscribe to our feed , get our widget or check back regularly.

Winner Notification: When we announce the winner, we will post an email address they can contact to claim their prize.

Just to kick you all off, here's my predicted starting eleven for England vs Switzerland :

Goalkeeper: Robert Green
Defenders: Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand, Micah Richards, Joleon Lescott
Midfielders: David Beckham, Gareth Barry, Steven Gerrard, Ashley Young
Strikers: Gabriel Agbonlahor, Dean Ashton

Post your entries in the comments section

All These Coaches Deserve To Reach The World Cup Finals

The bigger the business we call football has become, the less we see the type of characters that made the game so enjoyable in the past.

Luckily, there are still a few eccentric and charismatic characters around - mostly, it seems, coaching teams in Africa.

It is for this reason that this World Cup blog would very much like to see both Egypt and Ghana qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Egypt's manager Hassan Shehata once called Mido (who admittedly was playing like a slightly overweight sloth) "a donkey" and is not a man who is afraid to state his opinions on the media, fans, players...anything that takes his fancy, really.

Ghana's current coach, Claude le Roy, looks like a middle aged post-operative female-to-male transsexual (look, it's true, I just call it as I see it).

The joy of le Roy is that he spends all his time creating strange metaphors (mostly related to sex) and once described football as "a permanent orgasm".

He is another charismatic character (he once said " eloquence is the ideal G-string for people who want to hide embarrassing things about themselves.") in a game that is far from brimming over with them. For that reason, let's hope he and Ghana make it to South Africa 2010.

Of course, honourable mention must go to another coach (this time not managing an African nation) : the legendary Otto Rehhagel, manager of Greece.

Any coach who simultaneously holds the Bundesliga record for the most victories (387), most draws (205), most losses (228), the most goals scored (1473) and the most goals conceded (1142) truly deserves a place at the World Cup finals.

World Cup Football News For Your Blog or Profile

If you have a MySpace, a Xanga or a Facebook profile or would like to add World Cup news and views to your blog, then our widgets can help you do that.

In fact, whatever social network or personal homepage you use (Bebo, PageFlakes, Orkut, Freewebs...the list goes on), you can get a World Cup widget for your site.

You'll get all the latest World Cup posts right there on your blog. Can't be bad.

For smaller widgets (you can customise colours, sizes and more), go to http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/2010-world-cup to get our World Cup widgets.

Opera Users : Opera users can click this link to get an Opera widget.

Got More Space To Spare ? : You can get a larger, fancier looking widget (250x300 pixels minimum) from SpringWidgets.

Iran Could Be Thrown Out Of World Cup

Iran's preparations for the 2010 World Cup qualifiers is, by all accounts, in a bit of a shambles already.

Because of delays to the Iranian Football Federation elections and the lack of a head coach, they had not submitted a team squad to FIFA by the January 4th deadline.

Safaei Farahani, the chairman of the IFF Transitory Board, issued this warning a week or so ago:

"I just know that if we do not submit the list by January 4th, Iran will be eliminated from World Cup Qualifier games. I have expressed the sense of emergency of this issue to other members in our meeting tonight and that we should act as fast as possible."

"I also have to add, the process of submitting the squad list does not only consist of the names of the players, but also the completed documents of these players. Hence we really have very short time left."

There were moves in the 2006 World Cup Finals to exclude Iran because of the actions of their President (see this post) but this time around it seem like they are quite capable of shooting themselves in the foot without any additional political intervention.

However, despite missing the deadline, Iran have called up a 50 man squad (yes, you did read that right) for the qualifying campaign.

Smaller Nations Must Get Their Chance

A lot of commentators here in England think that some of the very much smaller European nations (San Marino, Lichtenstein, etc.) should not even be able to take part in the qualifying rounds for the 2010 World Cup football finals.

They think there should be a separate qualifying tournament for these countries and only the winners should be allowed to compete in the World Cup qualifiers proper.

Personally, I think the idea is a terrible one. All footballing nations, whatever their size, should be able to compete for a place in the World Cup finals. It really doesn't matter if San Marino or whoever are terrible and will almost certainly lose. That's not the point.

The point is that there is a (fairly) level playing field at the start of the qualification matches and the best football teams will qualify - no matter who they might be.

We Will Qualify Or, Um, Die In The Attempt

Having been offered 1 million dollars by the Chinese Football Federation to qualify for the 2010 World Cup Finals, the Chinese national team have taken things one step further.

With typically Chinese seriousness, the national team made a public New Year announcement, in which they "pledge to advance to the World Cup".

Slightly strange, I'm sure you'll agree. But not nearly as strange as this bit, where they "swear by death to kill along the bloody road of defending the honour of the motherland and realise our youthful dreams."

Um. You know this is just a game, right? There really isn't any need to "swear by death" or doing any kind of killing along any "bloody road". I admire the patriotic spirit of the Chinese football team, but isn't this taking things just a little too far.

Oh well, good luck to 'em. They've got to get past Iran, Australia and Qatar first.

The Countdown To The World Cup Starts, Um, Now

One of the joys of every World Cup is the ridiculous sponsors and their equally ridiculous antics.

So, it is with great pleasure that I introduce First National Bank's World Cup countdown clocks.

These countdown clocks have been unveiled in a number of airports and host cities in South Africa.

The first was unveiled in Mpumalanga (which, as we all knew, lies in eastern South Africa, north of KwaZulu-Natal and bordering Swaziland and Mozambique).

According to FNB spokeswoman, Tsidi Lebenya, "this should serve as a catalyst for everyone in Mpumalanga to focus and use every opportunity they have to improve their lives through this event and beyond".

Yup, not only do these clocks count down to the 2010 World Cup Finals, they actually improve people's lives. How fantastic is that ? Can I get one? I'd very much like to improve my life by having a clock that counts down to some nominal date over 3 years from now.

But, according to the Premier of Mpumalanga, Thabang Makwetla :

"The official slogan for the event "Ke nako [its time]" must inspire us to work timeously to provide road infrastructure, health amenities and disaster management capacity and that our Nelspruit CBD becomes a crime free environment in preparation for a world class event.

"The countdown clock must symbolically remind us that there is serious work going on in our hosting cities."

Does a lot, this clock, doesn't it ? Although, it might be better to rely less on a symbolic clock and more on trying to resolve the strike action that has halted the building of at least one of the stadiums. Just a thought.