Draw in December:

South America -

Brazil
Argentina
Paraguay
Ecuador

North America -

USA
Mexico
Costa Rica
Trinidad & Tobago

Africa -

Ghana
Tunisia
Angola
Cote d'Ivoire
Togo

Europe -

Czech Republic
Netherlands
Ukraine
Spain
France
Germany (host)
England
Poland
Switzerland
Italy
Sweden
Portugal
Serbia & Montenegro
Croatia

Oceania -

Australia

Asia -

Saudi Arabia
Iran
Japan
Korea Republic

Notable DNQ's:

China
Uruguay
Ireland Republic
Turkey
Cameroon
South Africa
Colombia
Russia
Greece

[Edited on November 16, 2005 at 4:16 PM. Reason : .]

11/16/2005 4:15:00 PM

when do they draw groups? does anyone know?

11/16/2005 4:20:51 PM

don't forget Nigeria as a notable DNQ

and didnt Greece win the last Euro Cup?

11/16/2005 4:30:43 PM

gg T&T and Aussies

11/16/2005 4:42:50 PM

^^^ december 9th

11/16/2005 5:03:45 PM

Quote :

"Ireland Republic Turkey Cameroon "

and Nigeria


Wow.......

[Edited on November 16, 2005 at 5:35 PM. Reason : ads]

11/16/2005 5:34:43 PM

so who's supposed to win

i think england will be strong this year

brazil has no real strong players like in the past
there doesnt seem to be any standout stars for this world cup

11/16/2005 6:35:30 PM

I would say England looks really good as does argentina but i dont know much.

11/16/2005 6:46:04 PM

Is Korea Republic the North or South? I dont remember.

And my early pick is England, most def.

11/16/2005 8:11:33 PM

the korea republic is in the south

and yes, greece did win the euro 2004 and now didn't qualify

the coach, otto rehhagel, is german too, and now has talked about retirement as a result of not getting to coach in a world cup in his homeland, which sucks because he singlehandedly rebuilt greek soccer and with one tournament run made greece forget about its history of failures on the international scene

11/16/2005 8:17:56 PM

Quote :

"brazil has no real strong players like in the past "

ronaldo, robinho, ronaldinho, julio baptista, kaka..........

11/16/2005 8:35:08 PM

exactly, if ronaldo, who is something like three goals short of pele's alltime world cup goals record, is having to fight for a starting spot, that's all that needs to be said

11/16/2005 8:39:33 PM

Brazil is going to be ridiculous.

To be honest, the Brazilian pure strikers don't even matter with Kaka', Ronaldinho, and Robinho playing withdrawn/in the middle. With that said, I think Adriano will find his form again before the Finals.

11/16/2005 9:09:29 PM

remember the renaldo blue silver and yellow nike cleats back in the day? Those were fucking awesome.

11/16/2005 9:29:32 PM

I'm just curious, but how do you guys stay up with the international soccer scene? Do you actually get to see games or do you just read about it?

[Edited on November 16, 2005 at 9:37 PM. Reason : x]

11/16/2005 9:36:17 PM

THE INTERNETS

[Edited on November 16, 2005 at 9:52 PM. Reason : oh and fox soccer channel ]

11/16/2005 9:52:20 PM

^^ Fox Soccer Channel. Call your cable operator.

11/16/2005 10:07:03 PM

Also if you know where to look you can get pretty much ALL European games streamed live for free...

11/16/2005 10:23:45 PM

I hope we don't have to play Iran, b/c you know we'll get bombed (though we would beat the hell out of them 1st)

11/16/2005 10:54:23 PM

Talk about Group of Death...

11/16/2005 11:02:04 PM

Quote :

"Also if you know where to look you can get pretty much ALL European games streamed live for free... "

where do you look ?

11/16/2005 11:04:37 PM

Quote :

"Notable DNQ's: China Uruguay Ireland Republic Turkey Cameroon South Africa Colombia Russia Greece"

Oh, snap.
Those guys better watch out next time they get off a plane. Liable to get their asses killed.

11/16/2005 11:27:54 PM

soccer sucks

go america

11/16/2005 11:41:12 PM

Quote :

"I hope we don't have to play Iran, b/c you know we'll get bombed (though we would beat the hell out of them 1st)"

you weren't following soccer in 1998, were you?

11/16/2005 11:45:35 PM

man still seems so far off. cant wait tho


my single favorite sporting event in the world. and i only get to see it every 4 years heh

[Edited on November 17, 2005 at 12:03 AM. Reason : ]

11/17/2005 12:03:01 AM

from what ive seen, ronaldo is old, ronaldinho just dances, kaka means crap, and i dont know who batista is

the players im looking forward to see is ronaldinho, van nisterloy, all england, henry, but thats all that ive kept up with

11/17/2005 12:37:35 AM

^ Oh dear.

Robinho is going to make your head explode.

11/17/2005 12:46:44 AM

how can you even dis brazil...they have kids literally on the streets of rio and sao paulo that could probably beat our (U.S.) first team squad a few times out of 10...ronaldinho dancing? dont be suprised if hes the best player next year at the WC, and dont suprised if ronaldo comes away with the golden boot, he seems to come out of nowhere (usually off an injury) every year for the world cup to do well

11/17/2005 1:17:00 AM

i hope iran plays USA and beats them again.

thats all i want out of this tourny.

11/17/2005 1:18:41 AM

also dont forget brazil has been in the final matchup the last 3 world cups and has come away with the win 2 times...wouldve been 3 had france not been on one of those Senegal, Turkey, or Greece runs where no one seems to stop them

11/17/2005 1:19:24 AM

yea...98 was humiliating...chad deering playing in the field...need i say more

11/17/2005 1:20:03 AM

back in 94 i made holland my team...i'm sticking with them since ireland is out

11/17/2005 1:21:53 AM

^^^ Or the Brazilian federation wasn't forced to play Ronaldo by commercial interests.

As for the US showing in '98...all of the blame, and I do mean ALL, can be placed squarely on Sampson.

11/17/2005 1:43:14 AM

yea with that 3-6-1 shit or whatever he tried to match germany's midfield...thank god for bruce arena, i may not like his picks with what players he goes with sometimes (why must he persistently play convey, he sucks), but he pulled us out of a hole that sampson nearly buried us in

11/17/2005 2:29:40 AM

im going to be in England during the Cup, im excited.

might try to hop over to Germany on a weekend if i can.

With Scotland eliminated, Oz is my team this year. Oi! Oi! Oi!

[Edited on November 17, 2005 at 2:43 AM. Reason : .]

11/17/2005 2:40:51 AM

^terrorism

were better at soccer than we are at basketball

11/17/2005 2:44:12 AM

true

11/17/2005 3:20:36 AM

I'm excited for Trinidad to finally go. They have great fans, even if their head guy is very corrupt in running CONCACAF.

The USA will be guaranteed one of the following in the group stage (all the supposed first seeds, except Mexico who we're not allowed to play in group stage):

Brazil
Argentina
England
France
Spain
Germany (hope not)
Italy

In addition to Mexico, we can't be drawn with Costa Rica or Trinidad.

11/17/2005 7:23:44 AM

Quote :

"soccer sucks go america "

11/17/2005 7:44:08 AM

we're ranked #7 in the world

what are they smoking

11/17/2005 1:15:56 PM

I hope its France ^^^

11/17/2005 1:47:45 PM

^^ thats what you get when our regulars include costa rica and trinidad

"The FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking includes the national A-teams of all FIFA member associations who play international matches. Not included in the calculation are matches played by junior teams or other representative national sides (such as the women's national team).

Taken into consideration for the ranking are all international-A match results over a time span of the last eight years:

* World Cup finals matches
* World Cup preliminary matches
* FIFA Confederations Cup matches
* Continental championship final matches
* Continental championship preliminary matches
* Friendly matches

The ranking list is produced by a computer program which assigns a team points for every match, according to clearly defined criteria. The factors taken into consideration are:

1. Winning, drawing and losing
2. Number of goals
3. Home or away match
4. Importance of the match (multiplication factor)
5. Regional strength (multiplication factor)

For each team only the seven best results per year are given full weighting. Results from the past are given progressively less weighting year by year until after eight years they are dropped completely. In this way current success is rated more highly than past results. "

[Edited on November 17, 2005 at 2:16 PM. Reason : .]

11/17/2005 2:14:58 PM

^^^are you sure about some of those teams you named possibly being in our group, most of those teams you named are going to be 1 seeds, as are we, so we wouldnt be paired with them

11/17/2005 3:36:13 PM

no we're not a #1 seed... Mexico is

11/17/2005 4:55:23 PM

^^^ so in otherword this ranking is pracically meaningless.

11/17/2005 6:03:03 PM

^^ Actually we finished on top of the CONCACAF table thanks to goal diff...

11/17/2005 6:03:56 PM

^^ yes, it's something FIFA invented to make themselves feel important, it's an international soccer version of the BCS...

No one really believes the USA are the 6th best team in the world.

11/17/2005 6:20:28 PM

^^ yeah I knew that, I just heard that because of World Rankings, they were getting the 1 seed instead of us

11/17/2005 7:30:33 PM

i dont think they use the world rankings at all to dictate what seed you will be in for the world cup, we should have a 1 seed cause we finished top in concacaf, the hardest team we should get in our group should theoretically be a 2nd place team from either south america or europe...which could possibly be argentina or brazil(i forget what they placed in south america) or czech republic or even spain

11/17/2005 8:30:03 PM

You're talking about an elementary school, right?

No one in the US plays soccer after 6th grade.

11/17/2005 8:57:52 PM