World Champion 2010 - ITALY ?

Every football fan remembers Italy's captain Fabio Cannavaro holding up the FIFA World Cup trophy following Italy's victory over France, won on penalty kicks in July 2006.

4 years later, with 4 months left until the World Cup , will Italy be able to defend their 4th title won in 2006?

Even though the actual team seems old they have the quality and experience to threaten. After a not a very good campaign at Euro 2008 the coach was replaced with Marcelo Lippi the one who led the team to victory in 2006 ( he was born in the same day and month with me and that makes me proud lol ). His mission is not gonna be very easy as he has to pick 23 players from a list of 35-40 players who play at high level.

Early this week Lippi said : "The team is coming together nicely, 17 players are already certainties for the World Cup in South Africa. I need just six more to complete the squad. I have four months left to choose these six players and to insert them into the group of 23."

It would be interesting to see if he will recall the 2006 golden oldies Francesco Totti and Alessandro Nesta or he will leave it to youngsters.

At this moment the first 11 could look like this :

Goalkeeper - Buffon
Defenders - Cannavaro, Grosso, Chiellini, Zambrotta
Midfielders - Pirlo, Cassano, De Rossi, Brighi
Attackers - Rossi, Gilardino

Will Marcelo Lippi become the second coach in the world who wins 2 world cups after Italian Vittorio Pozzo who won the trophy in 1934 and 1938 ?

World Cup record : Champions - 4 times in 1934, 1938, 1982 and 2006

Below you could see a great movie with all the goals scored by Italy in 2006! Awesome live italian commentary! The way Fabio Grosso celebrates his goal in the semifinals against Germany is priceless ( reminding of Tardelli's celebration from 1982 ).

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Will South Africa be the first home nation to fail to advance past the first round of the World Cup?

No host nation has ever failed to advance past group stage in the long history of the World Cup.

Ranked 81 in FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking ( below nations like Uganda, Cyprus, Montenegro, Bahrain, Canada etc ) and losing 8 of the last 9 matches ( including setbacks in international friendlies to Norway and Iceland ) South Africa has "great" chances to beat this record.

Bafana Bafana failed to qualify to African Cup of Nations which was the perfect opportunity to do some team building and test itself in competitive games against top african teams. Now they have to organize international friendlies in order to work itself into shape.

As a result of this chaotic state, the manager Santana was fired and replaced with Carlos Alberto Parreira who led Brazil win the World Cup in 1994. That has lead to Benni McCarthy's return to the national team.

Will the experience of the new manager and South Africa's all-time leading scorer in international play be an important boost for rebuilding the squad into a contender before the 2010 World Cup?
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Introduction to World Cup 2010

This summer South Africa is going to be the first African nation to host a World Cup. More than 3 billion people are expected to watch what's known as the most widely-viewed event in the world.

Great players, national rivalries, passion, drama, emotions all in the same place.

Here's the list of participating countries in the alphabetical order :

Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Côte d'Ivoire, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Korea DPR, Korea Republic, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Paraguay, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, United States, and Uruguay

Which country , do you think, will lift the trophy ?

Who will be the surprise of the tournament?

How about the under-achievement?


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