Shamelessly stolen from the front page of WorldCupBlog. Daryl has a great post up today. He takes all 32 teams that qualified for the world cup, ranks them based on FIFA rankings, and then designs an NCAA-esque table to see what the matchups would be like in an alternate, basketball-infused universe.

Click to continue reading...

By AVI CREDITOR

Wednesday's friendlies provided a glimpse into the progress of Group C's teams, and the results showed a bit of vulnerability for two of the United States' opponents.

England fell behind by a goal before rallying for a 3-1 victory over Egypt.

Click to continue reading...

There was no change in the top four teams in the FIFA Coca-Cola monthly rankings. Spain continue to be atop the standings, while Brazil cut that lead by 11 points. The Netherlands and Italy follow in the standings.
The Rest of the Top Ten
Germany and Portugal flip flopped places while England and Argentina did the same; but the biggest surprise came from a relative outsider. Click to continue reading...

The United States fell four slots to 18th in the February 2010 FIFA Rankings, losing 9 points from January after a friendly win over El Salvador. Devaluation of results from last year and the relatively low ranking of El Salvador caused the slide. Mexico moved up two slots to 15th after beating Bolivia. Click to continue reading...

AP Photo/Andre Penner

FERREIRAS, Portugal (March 1, 2010) – Second-half substitute Lauren Cheney scored two wonderful goals to lead the U.S. Women's National Team to a 2-0 victory against Sweden in the final Group B match at the 2010 Algarve Cup.

The victory puts the USA into its eighth consecutive Algarve Cup final where it will face Germany, winners of Group A after a dominating 5-0 victory against China today.

Click to continue reading...

Some folks out there are staking a lot of claim in the Wednesday friendly between the U.S. and Netherlands. And that's an easy thing to do -- it'll be the last chance that the U.S. gets to beat a difficult opponent, away from home.

The Americans have a chance to send out a warning to the rest of the world by marching into Amesterdam ArenA and knocking off the No.

Click to continue reading...

Some folks out there are staking a lot of claim in the Wednesday friendly between the U.S. and Netherlands. And that's an easy thing to do -- it'll be the last chance that the U.S. gets to beat a difficult opponent, away from home.

The Americans have a chance to send out a warning to the rest of the world by marching into Amesterdam ArenA and knocking off the No.

Click to continue reading...

The latest FIFA rankings have been published, with the top nine positions remaining unchanged. Egypt was the month's big winner, jumping from 24th to 10th on the strength of their impressive Africa Cup of Nations triumph. Cameroon, meanwhile, slid from 11th to 20th after making a disappointing early exit from the tournament. Click to continue reading...

The United States are once again 14th in the January 2010 FIFA Rankings, losing 17 points from December after a friendly loss to Honduras. Cup of Nations winners Egypt moved up 14 places to 10th and runners-up Nigeria improved seven slots to 15th. Mexico stayed at 17th. In World Cup Group C, England remain in 9th, Slovenia drops two slots to 33rd, and Algeria drops five to 31st. Click to continue reading...

�

Photo by ISIphotos.com

�

You can add Ricardo Clark to the list of U.S. national team starters dealing with injuries.

The Eintracht Frankfurt midfielder will be� sidelined three to four weeks after picking up a calf strain in training on Tuesday.

Click to continue reading...

photo credit: wyliepoon

The Team: Unlike their North Korean dopplegangers, the South Korean people are known as lovers of� democracy and all that accompanies� it. I think the freedom they express in their daily lives has translated to the soccer field too, as they have� sharply risen in the FIFA rankings over the last two decades.

Click to continue reading...

Jozy Altidore Against Spain at Confederations Cup

As promised last week, here are my highlights from 2009 in American Soccer, in no particular order:

U.S. National Team Beats Spain in Confederations Cup Semi-Finals:

On June 24, 2009, in the Semi-Finals of the Confederations Cup, the U.

Click to continue reading...

So our pre-World Cup friendlies were just annnounced.

China (93rd in FIFA rankings, in Reunion, date tba)
Costa Rica (44th in FIFA rankings, May 25, venue tba)
Tunisia (53rd in FIFA rankings, May 30 in Tunisia)

Um...yeah.

Click to continue reading...

The FIFA rankings of world teams have been released and Spain toped all the charts as the overall best team in the world. Not bad considering the competition every other team in the world! In a close second was Brazil followed by The Netherlands.

The United States were placed at a decent 14, not bad for a team that only just recently created a competitive soccer league.

Click to continue reading...

The United States stay 14th in the latest FIFA Rankings. With non of the top teams playing during the rankings period, the movement in the Top 20 was limited. Mexico dropped two places to 17th, one of only six Top 20 teams to move. The rankings for the top 11 stayed the same from November. In World Cup Group C, England remain in 9th, Slovenia is 31st, and Algeria is 26th. Click to continue reading...

The countdown to the World Cup has officially begun. Six months separates us and the opening match between the host nation South Africa and Mexico in Johannesburg on 11 June.

Every football fan from Paris to Pasir Ris had their eyes glued to the screen to see Charlize Theron play with balls and FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke crack jokes that were not even worthy of pity laughs.

Click to continue reading...

First, let me be the millionth person to say what an amazing draw for the USA. It's about as good as we could've hoped, and for the first time actually we're a favorite to advance. What exactly are the odds of us advancing after this lucky draw? Well, it depends on who you ask. It seems like everybody has a national team rating system these days, so let's take a look at how each of them rate our chances. Click to continue reading...

This is how lucky the United States got Friday.

After the U.S. was drawn in Group C with England, if I could have handpicked a country from Pot 3 and Pot 4 I would have selected Algeria and Slovenia (if you don't believe me, I worte it yesterday). For the U.S. to actually draw both those teams there was a 1/64 (1.

Click to continue reading...

First of all, apologies some peculiar technical glitches with my internet connection� (who knew that 'the internets' could get blown around by high winds) and my laptop (which desperately needs a new fan), it's not been possible to post anything for a week or so. Everything seems to be working at the moment, so here's a new post.

Click to continue reading...

In the lead-up to Friday's World Cup draw, there has been plenty of speculation about the seeds, pots, and best- and worst-case scenarios.� While doing my best to take part in the guessing game, it dawned on me: the World Cup draw is an inherently unfair system.� Not just "kind of unfair" the kind of unfair one could justify for the sake of geographical diversity but really, blatantly, unforgivably unfair.

Click to continue reading...

FIFA met today, and we now know a lot more about what's coming Friday.� First....unexpectedly, FIFA based its 2-8 rankings on current FIFA rankings instead of a formula where previous World Cups are weighted equally with current FIFA rankings.� I say 2-8 because you can't really tell me that S. Click to continue reading...

Today FIFA announced the 8 teams that will be seeded for the World Cup. If you had been browsing the English news lately, you might have seen a few articles preemptively criticizing FIFA for putting France in pot #1 for the World Cup draw (pot #1 contains the only seeded teams + the tournament host).

Click to continue reading...

With J Hutcherson -- Well, in a move that shouldn't be all that surprising, FIFA's Organizing Committee took advantage of the October FIFA Rankings to seed the usual suspects. That gave them an easy out on seeding France after they barely qualified, along with pretty good odds on setting up two monster groups with France and Portugal in Pot 4 and able to be drawn against any of the seeded teams. Click to continue reading...

The seedings for the World Cup draw were announced today and there were a couple of surprises. Namely the news that the great Fabio Capello has effectively wiped Euro 2008 from statistical history and that France will need a small miracle not to be drawn into a Group of Death.

Going into today's meeting it was undecided which methodology FIFA would use to determine the seeds for Friday's draw.

Click to continue reading...

After weeks of speculation, the World Cup seeds have been determined and FIFA have used the shortest route with France as the biggest losers. Readers of SPAOTP will know that in the past FIFA have used a baffling array of criteria to decide which team gets those coveted places as the top dog in each group. Click to continue reading...

The seeding formula and pots have been released by FIFA. They've decided to use only the October 2009 FIFA ranking and nothing else to determine the seven seeded teams. I'm a bit disappointed, if only because the work of people like Edgar and myself has been for nothing this cycle.
The big news is that the change means that the Netherlands will be seeded instead of France. Click to continue reading...

While we don't know the exact pots in Friday's World Cup draw in South Africa we do have a pretty good guess of where FIFA could go with them. Based on the ESPN video I posted here yesterday below are the four pots.

POT 1-Brazil, Spain, Argentina, France, England, Italy, Germany, South Africa

POT 2- Netherlands, Portugal, Denmark, Slovenia, Greece, Slovakia, Serbia, Switzerland

POT 3- Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Nigeria, Algeria

POT 4- USA, Mexico, Honduras, South Korea, North Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand

ESPN is figuring the South American sides will be paired with the African sides and the CONCACAF sides will go with the Asian ones.

Click to continue reading...

The drawing of lots for the 2010 World Cup will be determined on the 4th of December. � FIFA have yet to announce the seeding procedure and thus a mixture of geographical draw precedent, current FIFA rankings and past World Cup performance points, and upcoming ranking changes, have been used to complete the below.

Click to continue reading...

1-0 at half time...9-1 after 90 minutes, with three of Jermain Defoe's goals coming in seven minutes before the hour mark. I know it's a while before Mr Capello announces the squad, but that's exactly the kind of performance I'd want from one of my strikers.

The� last� FIFA rankings before the draw were published on Friday.

Click to continue reading...

The United States dropped three places to 14th in the latest FIFA Rankings. FIFA once again extended the rankings period, this time to include the playoffs for the final six World Cup slots. The United States played twice during the rankings period, losing to Slovakia and Denmark. Mexico moved up three places to 16th. Click to continue reading...

World Cup Qualifying is completed is completed. I've updated the 2010 World Cup Eliminations Timeline, which tells you exactly which date each team was eliminated and in what order. That won't require another update until June.
But the real exciting news is that with all the qualifiers completed, we can now focus on the World Cup seeds and the draw. Click to continue reading...

By Clemente Lisi - NEW YORK, NY (Nov 17, 2009) USSoccerPlayers -- The United States continues the European tour this week, playing Denmark on Wednesday in another test against a mid-tier team headed to next year's World Cup. The US will be looking to reverse Saturday's 1-0 loss to Slovakia. Denmark may actually be an easier opponent than Slovakia, even though they're six places higher in the FIFA Rankings. Click to continue reading...

• Thiery Henry to MLS Red Bulls? http://tinyurl.com/ygqkhlj #
• O'Brian White for Canada? http://bit.ly/u9WdP #
• Montreal Impact defeat Vancouver Whitecaps 3-1 to win USL-1 title http://www.canadaeast.com/sports/article/827508 #
• Tweet, blog or FB update with hastag #beatcancer & 1 cent gets donated to cancer research http://beatcancereverywhere.

Click to continue reading...

At least if the latest FIFA rankings are a guide. USA earned a few more points, but remains at 11. The Red, White and Blue still have a chance at cracking into the top 8 by December, but it would take more failures from France and Portugal, a win at Denmark, and probably [...] Click to continue reading...

1) The 2010 seeding formula. Using the previous formula (from 2006), it appears that Portugal's resurgence may see them get seeded after all at the expense of France. They were always in good shape as long as they managed to qualify, and that looks very likely now. The same eight teams have been in the running ever since July 2006, so one good team is going to get let out no matter what. Click to continue reading...

Apologies to Ireland, Slovenia, Ukraine and Bosnia. FIFA does not want you at the World Cup in South Africa next summer. So fervent was its determination that the rules of the competition were changed midway through it with the introduction of a seeding system in the qualifying play-offs.

Click to continue reading...

The UEFA (Europe) region has finished its group stage of qualification on Wednesday with nine teams earning automatic qualification. The teams that have already qualifed from this region are England, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, Germany, Slovakia, Switzerland, and Denmark.

Here are the final Group Stage standings for the UEFA region along with the top 8 second place teams that have qualified for the play-off round where there are four additional spots available.

Click to continue reading...

No major firm of bookmakers anywhere in the Far East is willing to price up the Asian Handicap on tomorrow's England versus Belarus FIFA World Cup South Africa 2010 Qualifier.
Now, why would that be the case now?
Our primary Hong Kong broker will enlighten you.
##################################################################################
###############################################################################
#################################################################################
###############################################################################
#################################################################################
###############################################################################
Our broker makes the following comparison. Click to continue reading...

Since the brilliant US win over Honduras on Saturday, the internet has been abuzz with discussion of the potential for the USMNT to receive a top seed in the World Cup. Assuming a victory on Wednesday, the US is likely to be ranked ninth when the new FIFA ranking is released.�

However, the chances of the US being a top seed are remote based on the criteria used by FIFA.

Click to continue reading...

There are just two rounds of qualifying left in the European World Cup qualifying groups and there has been some mixed news for all the sides still with a chance of making the tournament in South Africa from Fifa this week.� The ruling body have announced that the teams who finish second in their Euro qualifying groups will be seeded before their play-off match.

Click to continue reading...