Friday, May 1, 2009

World Cup 2006 Blog

World Cup 2006 Blog

Link to World Cup Soccer - South Africa 2010

Swine Flu Taking Aim At The Confederations Cup

Posted: 30 Apr 2009 03:30 PM PDT

Most have already heard about the cancellations of Mexican league games - or those forced to be played behind closed doors - and FIFA’s cancellation of a CONCACAF tournament while Carlos Vela was quarantined from Arsenal training before Wednesday’s Champions League fixture because he’s Mexican he had family visiting. But now the virus is leaking into the international sect and has caused a great deal of worry in the FIFA camp, who are now saying the Confederations Cup is now at risk as cases start to pop up in the south of Africa.

In what may come as a mild surprise, the Confederations Cup is only six weeks away. It still seems ages and ages before the World Cup is due to creep up on us, doesn’t it?

With the tournament so close and swine flu quickly closing in on pandemic stage, FIFA’s medical team have been assembled to determine how the world’s game should deal with it and what will happen should the virus continue to grow and spread - a great worry due to the timing, as the longer swine flu lives the worse it gets and the virus has six weeks to do its damage.

Valcke said Wednesday the threat of a travel ban due to the outbreak of swine flu could pose a serious risk to the Cup, which is due to open in six weeks. “We are monitoring the situation and we hope that it would be under control before we have to think about when the teams are moving from South America to Africa, from North America to Africa, from Europe to Africa, etc.”

Now the big question: would anybody care if the Confederations Cup was canceled? About ten minutes ago I firmly said yes. Number one, I dread the summer without proper football (as much as I love the Swedish Allsvenskan….Champions League it ain’t) and how often do we get the opportunity to watch the champions of each continent/confederation take on one another? After all, it rarely sets up so nicely in the World Cup.

But then, do we really need to see what amounts to Who is superior over a set of friendlies: Europe or South America? Of the five modern tournaments only Mexico has won outside of SA and Europe and that was largely because they were, you guessed it, in Mexico, while six of the eight most recent semi-finalists resided in one of the two footballing havens. South Africa doesn’t have a prayer, so we’re left wondering….Brazil, Italy or Spain? I can wait a year. The anticipation will make the real thing all the sweeter.
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