Possible Group in 2010

Beckham so wants anyone as long as it isn't his stick Mrs!!!
smittyz112009-12-05 17:34:02

Paraguay Squad- qualifiers :

Goalkeepers: Justo Villar (Real Valladolid), Aldo Bobadilla (Independiente Medellin), Diego Barreto (Cerro Porteno)

Defenders: Julio Cesar Caceres (Boca Juniors), Denis Caniza (Nacional), Carlos Bonet (Olimpia), Dario Veron (Pumas UNAM), Paulo da Silva (Sunderland), Aureliano Torres (San Lorenzo), Antolin Alcaraz (Club Bruges), Marcos Caceres (Racing Club), Miguel Samudio (Libertad)

Midfielders: Enrique Vera (LDU Quito), Nestor Ortigoza (Argentinos Juniors), Cristian Riveros (Cruz Azul), Jonathan Santana (VfL Wolfsburg), Victor Caceres (Libertad), Osvaldo Martinez (Monterrey), Eduardo Ledesma (Lanus)

Forwards: Salvador Cabanas (America, Mexico), Nelson Haedo (Borussia Dortmund), Oscar Cardozo (Benfica), Edgar Benitez (Pachuca), Jorge Achucarro (Newell�s Old Boys), Dante Lopez (Pumas UNAM)

be interesting to see how tv3 & 1 report the group & All White's chances etc 

First news story on TV3 tonight. Superb.

And they gave Gouride one of them flash screens!!!!

TV 3 gave it longer, and did - woah!  the "big if" 2nd stage comment tigers2009-12-05 18:44:33

I want booze and hot foreign girls without AIDS.

both channels gave it a decent go in the sports' news  

+1

 

i think she is  much much smarter than that- She had been chastized by fifa for her spontaneity mid week so played the dumb blonde role, the faux naif, to highlight the inherint stupidity of an over wrought draw process. yes, it is important, yes it does mean moolah and kudos, but no, it is not life and death.

If you have ever had anything to do with fifa you will know that they overcomplicate things to serve their own heirarchy. By playing the 'dumb blonde' who doesn't understand clever Charlize ridiculed them in her own small way, whilst earning a nice lil nest egg.

rant over.

Salmon072009-12-05 19:20:18

Realistically we probably wont manage a point against any of these teams, but my hope is that somehow we get a point off Slovakia first up, lose only narrowly to Italy and go into the last match against Paraguay with a mathematical chance of qualifying for the next round.

that post was your 1981 post

one more and you are the magic number!

 

Assuming we play extremely well without injuries and make round two, our opponent would be the Netherlands.

Now all we need is 'a waitress named Suzie'.
Does Laurie Mains have her number???

Why hate on Charlize for. I found her all right. If anything she gave some life to the draw. Lighten up blonde haters haha

Back to whats important...I think the AW's will cause an upset. I mean we have already against both games v bahrain. The more warm up/friendly games the AW's hve, the more they wll be able to gain confidence, get combinations sorted etc... Everyone in football land can write AW off all they want. I believe they will cause afew upsets.

Our group is OK. Australia have a harder group. I can see our games being very close, high altitude could even things out.  Our aim is for  2 draws and 1 win.  Some good warm-up games will help sort out our combinations.  I really think we can cause 1 or 2 upsets against Slovakia or Paraguay.
Bring on June 2010..............

i thought theron did a good job.

yeah, we have a sniff. remember, the TAB had us paying $7 to get passed bahrain initially.

just a climpse of how dangerous paraguay can be.

Indeed, the numbers are based on what has happened up till now, rather than recognising that the team now has Nelsen back, Fallon included, McGlinchey, Vicelich out of retirement and on form. If you counted the African friendlies, Confederation Cup and Intercontinental World Cup play offs, it's two wins, three draws, four losses. And most games without the extra power and skill of the above players. Time together is the key factor, speed and fitness would help.
edward l2009-12-05 22:53:42

Think it was Bahrain $1.37 and NZ $2.90 to progress (these were the odds before the Manama leg)

Even after the 0-0 result, because of the away goals rule, they had Bahrain $1.70 and NZ $2.05 to progress (prior to the return leg).

The fact of the matter is, we have caused an upset by qualifying for the World Cup. Most pundits would probably have predicted Bahrain to beat us over two legs. In actual fact, we did.

We will be perceived as the team that everyone thinks that they can beat. Even South Africa, the lowest-ranked team, beat us 2-0 at the Confederations Cup, and it could easily have been more if not for Mossy. Admittedly, we were missing about 5 regulars, but I think it proves my point.

Even Korea DPR and Honduras would be 'favoured' to beat us.

We can cause a stir here, and today's draw gave us almost the best possible opportunity to do so.

I just hope the Italians are honest enough and play to win each game, as Paraguay or Slovakia claiming points against them would make our challenge all that tougher.

I feel that the schedule has worked out well for us too.

Might be getting way way ahead of things here,but out of interest...If we did make the 2nd round (qualifying 2nd in the group),who would we then play most likely?

Not the worst group winner to play if we got that far obviously.

The Dutch in knockout games of big tournaments are chokers, almost like the All Blacks...

Would be over the f**king moon if we got that far.

Grrr! Soccernet.com not really doing it's homework:

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-cup/feature?id=708071&cc=3436&ver=global

"New Zealand: The group's whipping boys are expected to finish this group as they finished their last one in 1982, without a point. The team is made up mostly of part-timers with only Blackburn's Ryan Nelsen as a leading light".

Don't disagree with the prediction but MOSTLY part-timers??

Man if the other teams scouters has the same lack of knowledge of us as the international media has, I think we can definitely cause a nice lovely upset.

In fact the more they underreport us the better.

What squad did we take to the Confederations Cup?

Although it's more likely that the Netherlands will finish top of their group I reckon Denmark have it in them to cause a surprise, and if they can then they'd more than likely finish first.  NZ vs Denmark would be awesome, being part Danish I'd love to see two of the teams I support playing each other.

Some kinder odds here.
NZ 12/1 to qualify for round two.
Take off their 20% margin, that's a 7 percent chance of going through.

For the Slovakia game approx. 15% NZ, 36% draw, 49% Slovaks.

http://www.oddschecker.com/football/internationals/world-cup

I dont read much into odds etc...TAB are only money makers and are only out to take your hard earn cash if you bet.

The big unknown factor is how will teams cope being in Africa. When the WC was played in Japan/korea many of the usually strong European teams did poorly. The whole lifestyle culture thing was completly foreign to them. It was the Asian teams that did well.

I think we're more likely to get points off Italy than Paraguay. Paraguays speed and technical ability should be far too much for us, whereas italy play a much slower game

"Far from daunting draw" says Sportal Australia.

Agree with most of your points. It is winter in South Africa in June. Up on the veld the temp. will be from 0 at night to 20 degrees in the day. It does not rain in the winterso days are clear with sunny skies. Down in Durban it will be a bit warmer but it won't be hot.
The main problem will be the altitude, and the only way to overcome this is to live there for 3 months?