Tuesday, June 22, 2010

World Cup: Looking Back After the First Two Go-Rounds

Two-thirds of the way through Round One already!

Once again I must revise my Power Rankings. The new listing:

1. Brazil
They're not quite as overpowering as we're used to, but they simply exhude "victory."

2. Argentina
Getting by on natural ability.

3. Netherlands
But I'm waiting for the collapse.

4. Chile
Possibly overrated by me here, but they scored on the Swiss when no one else had in forever.

5. Portugal
But how much can we really take from 7 goals against a weak team?

Teams that have become a puzzle:
Germany (awesome in their first game; fizzled out in their second)
Italy (they have the ability, but...)
Spain (are they really that different from past Spanish teams?)
France (we knew this was their year to do poorly-- they only do well on European soil-- but my goodness!)
The African teams (uniformly failing to impress)

Teams that have very much impressed, but aren't quite in the top five:
Paraguay
Switzerland
Denmark
Slovenia
Ghana

2 comments:

Bob said...

I have to disagree Van, the Dutch now have Robben back, and look to be the best of the Euro clubs, and maybe the tournament winners.

However, the two real stories of the WC have been the dominence of the South american sides and the total collapse of the traditional Euro futball powers. down goes France! Down goes Italy! Either Germany or England is next.

Bob

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