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From: Google Beta User on 6 Mar 2010 02:13
On Mar 6, 1:56 am, Enzo <s_debgu...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

> Germany should hammer Italy, France and Argentina. They will
> almost certainly lose to Brasil and England ( unless they get real
> lucky like in the 1990 semifinal where they won even though they
> were played off the park; IMO that England team was better than
> the one in 1966 and probably close to the one in 1970 ).

1990 had some strong teams. Looking at England, Holland, Italy,
Germany and Brazil's XIs....pretty nice teams.

From: Enzo on 6 Mar 2010 02:52
On Mar 6, 7:04 am, Google Beta User <wanyik...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 6, 1:56 am, Enzo <s_debgu...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > The side that I am real interested to see is Serbia. They are quietly
> > winning everything. They are now at #13, having jumped 6 spots
> > in Feb/March. The other 2 teams with comparable jumps are
> > Slovakia and Slovenia, both of them also in the WC. I tip
> > one of these 3 to make the semifinals ( like Croatia in 98 ).
>
> I'm not sold on Slovakia and Slovenia, however like you say, Serbia
> are being ignored probably because no one has heard their name. Most
> people automatically picked Germany and Ghana out of that group.  Why
> is Ghana automatically better than Serbia?

Australia and Ghana are in big trouble.

Serbia are at their highest FIFA ranking ever. 4 years ago, they were
50th.
Now they are 13th; they first hit 13th in April 2009, and have been in
the
top 20 since then, coming back to 13th in March 2010 with a 6-position
jump from Feb.

Back in 2006 they reached a low in the group of death as Serbia-
Montenegro.
The team was disbanded, Montenegro got independence and Javier
Clemente
from Euskadi arrived to take charge of the team. He couldnt do much
and in came
Radomir Antic, the former Barca, Atlético and RM boss; he has guided
them
superbly into the world's elite and the team is peaking at the right
time.

A key feature of Antic's side during qualifying was their defensive
strength -
shipping a miserly eight goals in ten matches. Branislav Ivanovic
(Chelsea)
and Nemanja Vidic (Man U) were the foundation on which the
rock-solid backline was built The midfield is built around the
experience of
Stankovic. Up front is the underrated giant Zigic who has scored 13
in 19
for Racing this season, Pantelic ( who left Hertha in tatters ) and
Jovanovic (
established star for Standard Liege in the newly strong Belgian
league ).

Other top players are Genoa playmaker Bosko Jankovic and Milos Krasic
of Ciska Moscow. If Serbia does well, look for a lot of these players
to
sign bigtime contracts in the summer ( Jovanovic is already signed
with
L'pool ).

Serbia are also a very tall side and unlikely to be fazed by super-
tough Ghana
and the Socceroos.
From: Mark on 6 Mar 2010 05:35
On Mar 5, 11:17 pm, Google Beta User <wanyik...(a)gmail.com> wrote:


>
> I beleive the last first time finalist was in 1978?


Argentina played Holland that year. Both of them had reached the final
before.
From: Jellore on 6 Mar 2010 06:13
On Mar 6, 9:35 pm, Mark <Pammieshe...(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On Mar 5, 11:17 pm, Google Beta User <wanyik...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I beleive the last first time finalist was in 1978?
>
> Argentina played Holland that year. Both of them had reached the final
> before.

Surely France in 1998 were the last First time finalists? Or Germany
in 2002 if you want to get technical about it.

From: Joachim Parsch on 6 Mar 2010 06:14
Google Beta User schrieb:
> Thinking of the past world cups, it's all well and good to call it a
> cup, but I don't remember any fluke finalist, in the past couple of
> years (though I'm still in disbeleif that ITaly managed to beat
> France).
>
> I beleive the last first time finalist was in 1978?

As Sven said, France 1998. But the last time before that
were Netherlands 1974. Before 74, there were only two WCs,
with both finalists being there before (1970 and 1962),
all the others had at least one new team.

And there were only two WCs, where both finalists were
first time finalists: 30 and 34 (if you count the
last game of 1950 as a "final"). Quite boring since then ;-)

Joachim
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