Well well well, why isnt there a thread on Goup F - the one with the most exciting team in it i.e Brazil. (Samba music in the background)
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/w/group/index.html#
Brazil will advance and win the tournament, Kar lo jo karna hega :snooty:
Re: World Cup - Group F
Second place here is up for grabs -- of course Brazil wins the group.
Japan needs to have beaten both Australia and Croatia before facing Brazil -- it'll be fatal going into that final match needing a result -- so psychologically the pressure on Japan is greatest -- Japan must win the first two matches.
If Japan drops points against either Croatia or Australia, then when those teams play each other in the final round of matches they'll know exactly what they need to do to go through, which is helpful, as their fate will be in their own hands. If Japan drops points to both, then the Australia v Croatia match is a straight knock-out for second place.
So the key matches here are Japan v Australia and Japan v Croatia -- Japan can beat either or both on the day, but equally, on the day, Japan can lose to either or both.
Croatia, Austraila, and Japan all have a good chance of advancing. Personally I think Croatia will be second, beating out Sweden for first in their qualifying group is an impressive accomplishment. I'm not sure exactly how many times Croatia has qualified but I believe they've done well recently in the WC. Was it 1998 when they were leading by 1-0 against France at the halftime of semi-final? Austraila is my pick for third, they have a good time, but they just don't don't have enough experience at this high of a level. Playing only one or two difficult need-to-win games every four years is going to hurt them. Japan is the underdog and in my opinion will get fourth. I don't know enough about Japan to make much of a statement but it seemed last WC's advancement was only due to homefield advantage and a lucky draw.
Re: World Cup - Group F
I was gonna post it here 5abi but my net startred sucking as usual 
anyways Brazil is no doubt the favorites to win not only this group but the wc itself. Strike force of Three Rs and Adriano is the best in the business. Ronaldinho is almost double the player he was in 2002. He has grown in stature, tricks, vision and is likely to win major player of the tournament yet again.
Last worldcup’s surprise package Japan consist of more or less same players and under worldcup winning coach Zico they have the armory to qualify for the second round. If they can get a result against Brazil, that will hold them in good stead against Aussies and croatia
Croatia are not threatening on paper but they had a good qualification campaign and would like to repeat the heroics of the 1998 worldcup when they managed a semifinal berth.
Aussies in my opinion are gonna be another surprise package in this worldcup. In Guus Hiddink, they have a magician of a coach and several players have experience of top class football in premiership and La liga . So dont be surprised if they upset either croatia or japs for a berth in the second round.
My prediction: Brazil to top the group and accompanied by Aussies.
Re: World Cup - Group F
I agree its brazila and aussies from this group, the match to watch would be teh croatia and australia match, both teams know they can beat japan, both teams know that they wprobably can not beat brazil, so when they play each other it would be something to watch
Re: World Cup - Group F
My prediciton is Brazil and Croatia to go forward from this group, with Brazil the winners of the world cup.
Re: World Cup - Group F
I think Brazil and Croatia will progress.
Don't be surprised if Croatie can hold Brazil for a draw: they got some very technical players. Solid defence and good midfield. There is a new generation coming through in Croatian football, who have plenty to play for.
As for Brazil: if they win the group they will play the runner-up in the Italy/Czech Republic group. So it will be tough second round for Brazil, because both Italy and Czech Republic have what it takes to win against them
Re: World Cup - Group F
Brazil is a given, i still think that the deciding match in this group is the croat-aussie match
Re: World Cup - Group F
Why do you guys assume Japan will be so easy to defeat?
Re: World Cup - Group F
France were knocked out in stage one during 2002 , and as they were they the 1998 winners, maybes Brazil will be knocked out in stage one too. Makes sense doesnt it, or have I had a blonde moment and completly confused myself?
I don't want Brazil to win.
Re: World Cup - Group F
^^ I think u just had a blonde moment.
Brazil will go all the way!!!
Re: World Cup - Group F
My logic is that if you won the previous world cup you don’t qualify past stage one in the next tournement. I think I make sense.
Re: World Cup - Group F
r u willing to place a bet on your logic :D?
Only if you are france playing in '02 world cup!
i am wondering if there has been any other defencing world cup champ eliminated in the first round before france?
Re: World Cup - Group F
^ No there wasnt one. Besides being eliminated, France failed to score a single goal and that was another 'honour' for them. But I dont think that brazil will suffer form this honour :D
Re: World Cup - Group F
why do u assume that they will be a formidable foe?
Re: World Cup - Group F
They have a couple of good players. Their recent results are pretty good. I think they can defeat australia and challenge croatia. I think they can progress to the second round.
Re: World Cup - Group F
That brings so much satisfaction after the misery of brazils '98 defeat!!!
Re: World Cup - Group F
1) all teams have atleast a couple of good players otherwise they would not be in the cup
2) Which recent results are you mentioning? I mean if we just go by recent results..or as I said in a diff thread..by FIFA rankings, then US should be the 5th most likely team to win the cup :) recent results but against which teams..
3) What is the basis of this thinking? sure they 'can' do it, but is it 'likely'. here we are talkign about the most likely scenario not every possible scenario.
Re: World Cup - Group F
Fifa rankings don't mean much. Japans recent warm up games have been decent. they lost some. won some, drew against germany.
u still haven't said why it will be so easy to defeat them.
Re: World Cup - Group F
general quality of teams X recent results X quality of teams they obtained those results against X general tournament experience X potential # of supporters X previous tournament legacy
Re: World Cup - Group F
Brazilians Take Carnival on Road
Colorful names and a glorious tradition are part of the defending champions’ mystique
By Grahame L. Jones, Times Staff Writer
June 4, 2006
HAMBURG, Germany — The names just roll off the tongue, each one more exotic than the other, each one conjuring visions of magicians in yellow and blue weaving spells across the bright green soccer fields of Germany.
In this, the summer of the 18th World Cup, Ronaldo, Adriano, Ronaldinho, Kaka, Ze Roberto, Emerson, Cafu, Juan, Lucio, Roberto Carlos and Dida hold center stage.
They are the starting 11 for defending world champion Brazil. They are the players whose dazzling skills are admired by fans as much as they are feared by opponents. They are the ones expected to be standing on the victory podium come July 9 in Berlin.
But it might not be that simple.
Only once in the nine times that the World Cup has been played in Europe has a non-European team triumphed — the Brazilians of 1958, inspired by a teenage prodigy named Pele.
And only twice in the quadrennial tournament’s 76-year history has a country successfully defended its title. Italy won in 1934 and 1938, and Brazil followed its 1958 victory in Sweden by winning in Chile in 1962.
So history, in a sense, is against Brazil.
But who can stop the Brazilians from winning for a sixth time?
While the other 31 teams go to great lengths to hide their lineups and tactics, Brazil does just the opposite. Such is the confidence surrounding the five-time champion that Coach Carlos Alberto Parreira selected his starting lineup six weeks before Brazil’s June 13 opener against Croatia.
It was almost as if Parreira were saying, “This is what we’ve got. What are you going to do about it?”
Truth be told, the Brazilian roster could be split in two and both sides would have a better-than-average chance of making it to the final.
Even Pele said so.
“Brazil has two teams,” the three-time World Cup winner said. “If they have to change a player, it makes no difference.”
And who can argue that point, especially with the likes of Robinho, Cicinho, Juninho Pernambucano, Luisao, Gilberto Silva and half a dozen other stars on the bench?
Parreira, who coached Brazil to its 1994 triumph in the U.S., is well aware that extraordinary talent alone is no guarantee of success.
“The team wins and the team loses,” Parreira told Reuters last month at Brazil’s training camp in Switzerland. "We have the best players in the world, they are all celebrities, but in the end they are integrated into a team.
"We know that having a team of celebrities is not enough to win the World Cup. You have to have humility and play for the team.
“We are trying to create a relaxed and tranquil atmosphere so that the players can play with happiness and freedom, creativity and improvisation.”
In other words, play like Brazil, with a smile like that of Ronaldinho, a two-time world player of the year.
“We play a happy game,” Parreira said.
Toward that end, the players are on very long leashes. When a Swiss photographer spotted Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos and Emerson in a bar late one night last week, Parreira did not blink an eye.
“A day off is a day off,” he said. “They can do what they want as long as they’re back in the hotel at the stipulated time. I have never worried about this before and I am not going to worry about it now, as long as it is within limits.”
Brazil and its entourage have always had a carnival atmosphere surrounding them at international tournaments and this time is no different. Think Mardi Gras with a Portuguese accent. Scantily clad female fans and a drumbeat of music are part and parcel of the experience.
Wine, women, samba and soccer. It’s a heady mix.
And so it will be a colorful and noisy Brazilian contingent that travels to Olympic Stadium in Berlin on June 13 to play Croatia and begin defense of the title it won with a 2-0 victory over Germany at Yokohama, Japan, four years ago.
“Psychologists say it is very important in the dressing room and coming from the hotel to the stadium to do something with your hands, with your mouth,” Parreira recently told Agence France-Presse.
"If you just sit there worrying, clutching your hands, that does not help. If you play something, it helps relax. This is why we give them drums and things.
“Since 1970, we have done this. We buy instruments for them, and they play on the bus — instead of saying, ‘Oh, my God, we are going to play Germany or England in a World Cup game.’ That does not help.”
After Croatia comes Australia on June 18 and Japan on June 22. On paper, the first-round group looks relatively easy, but Brazil did not defeat any of those three teams the last time it played them.
Then there is the fact that goalkeeper Dida has had a shaky season for AC Milan, that outside backs Cafu and Roberto Carlos will be 36 and 33, respectively, by the opener and, therefore, perhaps susceptible to speed, and that Brazil has played no strong opponent since qualifying ended.
Even if it gets through, which is almost certain, the second round is a minefield. Brazil would play either Italy, the Czech Republic or, at an outside shot, the United States.
“I’d be the happiest man alive,” U.S. Coach Bruce Arena said Saturday of the possibility of playing Brazil.
From there on, the road to Berlin only gets more difficult.
That Brazil has the talent to win it all is not in question. Parreira will employ a 4-4-2 system that in reality is a 4-2-4, with what the Brazilian media have dubbed the “magic quartet” of Ronaldo, Adriano, Kaka and Ronaldinho in attack.
Parreira dislikes any mention of magic.
“The word magic is not part of our vocabulary,” he told reporters in Brazil. “We’re not involved in this sort of talk. I want to hear words like efficiency, productivity, winning well, sweat, perspiration and talent.”
Brazilian fans don’t want to hear any of that.
They want their wizards weaving magic runs, improvising moves, trying the outrageous, playing soccer the way the Globetrotters play basketball.
They want Ronaldo — the goat of 1998 when Brazil lost in the final to France and the hero of 2002 when he scored both goals against Germany in the final — to break German Gerd Muller’s record of 14 World Cup goals. Ronaldo has 12.
And they want to win.
Brazil is pretending not to be the favorite, the superstition being that it has failed in previous tournaments when it was labeled the odds-on winner.
“I think Germany and Italy are just as much favorites,” Parreira told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper. “In fact, I think Germany are bigger favorites. They have played in seven finals, including three in a row, and they have the fans on their side.”
But Brazil is the reigning world champion and holder of both the Copa America and the Confederations Cup titles. The airplane that carried the team from Brasilia to Switzerland was decorated with five stars, for Brazil’s world titles in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002.
The plane carrying it back might well have six stars.
“There is not a lot to teach these players when they’ve got the ball,” Parreira said. "They are all capable of deciding a match in an instant and they are all players who, when they are in a difficult situation in a match, know how to react and get out of it.
“What we need to do is to organize the team without the ball, so they know what to do when the opposition is in possession.”
That opposition includes history. The brilliant Brazilians of 1970, perhaps the greatest team of all time, succumbed in 1974, coming in as defending champions but finishing only fourth when the World Cup last was played in Germany.
Will history repeat?
Tostao, one of Pele’s 1970 teammates, told England’s FourFourTwo magazine that he believes it is possible.
“I’d say the chance of Brazil not winning is greater than the chance of Brazil winning,” he said.
But that leaves another question. If not Brazil, then who?
DYNAMIC DUO: Ronaldo, left, and Ronaldinho are stars on a powerful Brazilian team that is seeking a sixth World Cup title.