World Cup 2010

Every four years, the world outside of the US stands still for four weeks while the soccer world cup finals are played out. The 2006 edition was played in Germany; 2014 will be in Brazil. Because the tournament provided the primary motivation for our trip, and because some of you may not be experts in the mechanics, this post is just a short primer on how the thing works.

During the two years prior to the finals, pretty much every country in the world participates in regional qualifying tournaments. FIFA has carved up the world into regions, and each region gets a number of spots in the finals. There are 32 spots up for grabs, and Europe gets 13, North/Central America 3, Africa 5, et cetera. This year's qualifying phase ended several months ago; perhaps the most notorious event of the qualifying was when France's Theirry Henry used his hand before scoring a goal against Ireland--France won and qualified, and if they had lost Ireland would have qualified.

The finals progress in two rounds--first, a round robin arrangement called the "group" phase, then an elimination tournament called the "knockout" phase.
The group phase proceeds as follows: the 32 teams are drawn into eight groups of four teams each. Some groups are strong (Brazil, Portugal, Cote d'Ivoire, and North Korea are generally considered the strongest group with three contenders) and some are weak (the US is in a middling group, with England, Algeria, and Slovenia). During the group phase, each team plays against the other three teams in their group and, through a rather complicated tie-breaker and scoring method, the winner and runner-up for each group advance to the knockout round. The third- and fourth-place teams in each group go home. The US-England match on June 12 (7:30 AM PST televised nationally on ABC) is one of the marquee matchups. Draw or win, and the US stands a very good chance of advancing.

Sixteen teams then advance to the knockout phase, which proceeds as a familiar-to-Americans single-elimination tournament. The winner will be crowned in Johannesburg on July 11.

South Africa is hosting matches in ten cities scattered around the country. We have tickets to the following:

• June 13: Germany v. Australia, Durban.
• June 16: Spain v. Switzerland, Durban.
• June 24: Cameroon v. Holland, Cape Town.
• June 29: Elimination Round of 16, Cape Town.
• July 2: Elimination Round of 8, Johannesburg.

The country is huge, as you'll learn from future entries on the blog, so we will be doing a lot of driving. But the atmosphere is already electric, with flags on every car and with soccer the ONLY subject of conversation.