World Cup 2010 Blog: “Honduras World Cup 2010 Profile” plus 5 more |  |
- Honduras World Cup 2010 Profile
- Daily Dose: 2006 to May 14th, 2010.
- Changes to Commenting on World Cup Blog
- Official World Cup Preliminary Squad Lists (Plus: First Signs of “Unorthodoxy” From North Korea)
- If International Transfers Were Allowed, Which National Team Would Cristiano Ronaldo Sign For?
- What Will David Beckham’s Role at World Cup 2010 Be?
| Honduras World Cup 2010 Profile Posted: 14 May 2010 08:32 PM PDT
Yet probably because Honduras hasn’t qualified for a World Cup since 1982, they seem to be the underdogs in World Cup 2010 Group H, where they’ll face Spain, Switzerland and Chile. Read on, get a reminder of which players are Honduran, and you might start thinking about Honduras as contenders for a spot in the Second Round. Also, for some reason, Honduran players have easily the best names in the tournament.
FIFA World Ranking as of April 28th 2010: #40 Group H Matches: Kit: White with blue trim.
After working his way up through Colombia’s U-17, U-20, U-21, U-23, and senior (read: proper) teams, Rueda took the Honduras job in 2006 and led them through World Cup 2010 qualification. So no club management experience. Which I find fascinating. Honduran fans definitely don’t mind though, as Rueda has taken Honduras to the World Cup for the first time since 1982. Key Players: You know more Honduran players than you think you do. If you’re an MLS fan, then you’ll be very familiar with captain and attacking midfielder Amado Guevara, who has played for New York, Chivas and Toronto, but is now back in Honduras for his fifth spell with C.D. Motagua. Yep. Fifth. If Guevera doesn’t provide enough creativity, then there’s always Julio César de León who spent last season at Torino (on loan from Parma). The midfield muscle will come from Spurs d-mid Wilson Palacios. Basically, you don’t want to get in this man’s way. You especially don’t want to come between Wilson and a football. Left back Maynor Figueroa became internet famous for his long range free kick for Wigan this season (see vid below, if you haven’t already) but is also a pretty impressive left back even when he’s not scoring from distance. The only other defender playing in Europe is Víctor Bernárdez, who’s on loan at Anderlecht. (Can anyone explain why so many Hondurans are on loan?) Striker Carlos Pavon is 36 years old and Honduras’ all time top scorer. He’s good in the air, has played for seemingly every football team in the world and was apparently voted the most popular footballer in the world earlier this year. Which doesn’t sound quite right to me. Pavon will likely be joined in attack by Inter (but on loan at Genoa) striker David Suazo, which makes a pretty dangerous strikeforce for a team that won’t be fancied. Player with best YouTube video: A compilation of Amado Guevera’s MLS glory days (put together by the excellent Climbing the Ladder. But this free kick from Maynor Figueroa free kick is a bit good too: Player with best name: Sadly, Carlos Costly is injured. So the runaway winner is Motagua striker Georgie Welcome. Never heard of him until today, and not sure if he’ll even make the final squad. But you can’t beat that name. Because any time he says thank you, you have to respond “You’re Welcome”. Player with best nickname: Julio César de León is sometimes known as “Rambo”. Qualification: Took the third and final automatic CONCACAF qualifying spot with some impressive results, like a 3-1 win over Mexico in April 2009 and a 4-0 win over Trinidad & Tobago in August 2009. However, qualification was ultimately possible thanks to Jonathan Bornstein’s 94th minute equalizer for USA vs Costa Rica’s in the final round of games, a goal which secured third place for Honduras and also made Bornstein a hero in Honduras. Interesting: Maynor Figueroa is married to Sandra Norales, who plays handball for both the Honduras national team and English team Sheffield. National Anthem: Himno Nacional de Honduras (The National Anthem of Honduras) World Cup History: Expectations: Honestly, I don’t know. Honduras won’t expect to beat Spain, but then, who does? Honduras might they might fancy their chances against both Chile and Switzerland though. Coach Rueda is not so quietly confident: “We can take advantage of being tournament unknowns,” he says in this World Soccer Unofficial Guide to World Cup 2010 that I just found under some bills on my desk. “It will not be the case come July.” Squad: Honduras World Cup squad. Blog: Join X-ino and SpartaX on Honduras World Cup Blog. - More World Cup 2010 Team Profiles.
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| Daily Dose: 2006 to May 14th, 2010. Posted: 14 May 2010 05:40 PM PDT The BBC montage from WC ‘06.
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| Changes to Commenting on World Cup Blog Posted: 14 May 2010 03:57 PM PDT
Using Disqus means we’ll be able to better handle the army of spammers who seem intent on selling us jewelery and Air Jordans via grammaticality questionable comments. We’ll also be able to take decisive action should anyone attempt to ruin discussions with racism, homophobia or any other sort of trolling. Once we’ve worked out all the kinks and gotten used to the new system, we’ll be implementing it across the team blogs as well. For readers and commenters, using Disqus means access to all kinds of new features. You can sign in via your Facebook or Twitter accounts, which gives you the option of sharing your comments with a wider audience (should you wish) or you can sign up for a Disqus profile, which is a pleasantly simple process. All you need is a valid email address. Once registered, you can set your display name to anything you like via your profile page, and link to any site you want to. You’ll be able to add an avatar to your posts. You can also – and I suspect this will be popular – edit your own comments after they’ve been published. So no more embarrassing spelling mistakes. Or at least, no more permanently embarrassing spelling mistakes. The new system will also enable you – the lovely readers and commenters – to do a little community policing. If you spot a spam/racist/trolling comment that’s slipped through the net, then you just flag it (by clicking the “flag” button) and we’ll be alerted to its presence. Plus, if enough people flag the same comment, then that comment is automatically removed. Power to the people.
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| Official World Cup Preliminary Squad Lists (Plus: First Signs of “Unorthodoxy” From North Korea) Posted: 14 May 2010 01:38 PM PDT
Some, like Fabio Capello, announced a list of 30. Others, like Dunga, first announced a list of 23, and then announced a further seven names. But that’s really just Dunga being confident (and/or sticking it to Roaldinho). The Brazil coach’s official list that’s been submitted to FIFA is 30 names long. For all intents and purposes, the list of 23 is just in Dunga’s head. We’ve assembled as much accurate information as possible on our World Cup squad page, and we’ll be doing our best to update that information whenever anything changes. But even we have to hold our hands up and say that the only official source of information here is FIFA. Fortunately, football’s governing body has made the actual list of preliminary rosters available as a PDF. Interestingly, FIFA lay out in the document exactly how many players each team actually named to their preliminary roster. Dunga really did submit 30, as did mos teams. But – for some reason – five teams did not. Here’s a list of the super-confident teams who submitted a list of less than 30 players: Germany – 27. I think Jogi Löw did that just to underline to Kevin Kuranyi how little he was wanted. Also according to FIFA: Deadline for final 23 man squad is June 1st at 24:00 hours Central European Time. I know 24:00 hours doesn’t exist, and so do they, but it’s probably the only way to say midnight without people getting confused about which day you mean. Final list of 23 is limited to players named in the 30. Injured players can be replaced up to 24 hours before the team’s first World Cup match, and replacements for injured players do not have to come from the original list of 30. Which is good news for North Korea, eh?
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| If International Transfers Were Allowed, Which National Team Would Cristiano Ronaldo Sign For? Posted: 14 May 2010 09:40 AM PDT
No Ronnie, no! Everyone knows you don’t say that. Even if you’re thinking it, you don’t say it out. Don’t you remember Luis Figo and the severed pigs head? Is that what you want? Ronaldo was apparently booed at the Madrid Open tennis tournament for his poorly chosen words. But as WorldCupBlog business manager Ian said when sending me the above story: “I guess loyalty which can be bought once…” Which got me thinking… I know Ronaldo is loyal to the Portugal national team. But maybe that’s only because he has to be. So imagine for a moment a world where passports and citizenship can be bought and sold, and Cristiano Ronaldo could leave the Portugal national team and sign for the highest bidder.
Which national team do you think he would join?
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| What Will David Beckham’s Role at World Cup 2010 Be? Posted: 14 May 2010 08:55 AM PDT
I want to keep this respectful, because I can’t help but like Beckham as an individual. But I’m curious as to exactly what Beckham can contribute. He’s not really a coach, and has not shown any inclination that he ever wants to become one. Plus there’s the fact that he’s still limping around with that injury.
(That’s physical therapy, not head doctor therapy, before anyone cracks an easy joke.) So what exactly will Beckham be doing? I suspect that a massive clue came today, when Beckham delivered England’s (gigantic) official World Cup 2018/2022 bid book to Sepp Blatter in Zurich. Whatever you think of Beckham the player, he’s now a bona fide world class ambassador/spokesman.
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The political situation in Honduras right now is, shall we say, 
Coach: The alliteratively named Reinaldo Rueda Rivera. Though he goes by just Reinaldo Rueda. He’s Colombian and a former university professor.
Hopefully you’ve noticed already, but… we’ve recently upgraded the comments system here on the World Cup Blog front page. We’re now using the shiny new 
We knew going in that the World Cup preliminary squad announcements this past Tuesday would be a bit messy. The various squads were announced by various media outlets, and things weren’t exactly uniform. As a result there’s some conflicting information out there. Especially because not all coaches played by the same rules.
Cristiano Ronaldo gave the world one very poorly worded quote this week. When the Real Madrid player was asked about the possibility of one day joining Barcelona, he responded:
As we all know, that | You are subscribed to email updates from World Cup Soccer - South Africa 2010 To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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