World Cup 2010 Blog: “Google Gets In On The World Cup Excitement” plus 8 more |  |
- Google Gets In On The World Cup Excitement
- Soundoff: Your World Cup Group F Predictions…
- Daily Dose: June 7th, 2010; 4 Days To Go.
- The World Cup Hasn’t Even Started And Wayne Rooney’s Already In Trouble
- The Men Who Will Decide World Cup 2010
- The Referee Who Might Save Football
- The Giant Vuvuzela From Hell
- Soundoff: Should Players Receive Big Bonus Payments for Winning the World Cup?
- South Africa Stadium Stampede is No Reason for World Cup Pessimism
| Google Gets In On The World Cup Excitement Posted: 07 Jun 2010 10:44 PM PDT
For the World Cup, Google has made some minor changes to search results for football-related terms. For example, if you search for “world cup”, you’ll find (aside from us, right there on the front page) a little widget with each of the 32 participating nations’ flags and a few upcoming match times. That’s handy. On the less practical side, if you scroll to the bottom of the page, the regular “Goooooogle” page links have been replaced by an oh-so-clever “Goooooooal!”. Well played.
Personally, I’m pleased that Big G is starting to take an interest in the biggest sporting event on Earth. Surely, if a pill-swallowing yellow ball with a taste for fruit in a haunted maze deserves their attention, this is the least they can do for the big show.
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| Soundoff: Your World Cup Group F Predictions… Posted: 07 Jun 2010 09:46 PM PDT
No prizes for guessing who finishes top either. Even with the problems Italy currently faces, like Fabio Cannavaro being a retirement league signing shadow of his once great self and Andrea Pirlo’s calf muscles being more dangly than his hair, Italy still finishes top of this group for me. No way they fail to do so. Forget all the myths about slow starters. A team coached by Marcello Lippi and containing Gigi Buffon and Daniele DeRossi can’t fail to finish in first place here. He said, possibly jinxing the Azzurri with his certainty. Last place is New Zealand I fear. They’re not a horrible football team, and they’ll be many people’s second favourites (or at least they should be). But – especially with vice captain and star midfielder Tim Brown carrying a shoulder injury – New Zealand simply isn’t as strong as Paraguay or Slovakia, and exist on a different, much less talented planet to Italy. Which means it’s Slovakia or Paraguay for second place. Paraguay would appear to be the stronger team, and are stacked up front with Roque Santa Cruz, Lucas Barrios, Nelson Valdez and Oscar Cardozo. But the more I learn about Slovakia, the more I like them. In Marek Hamsik, Vladimir Weiss (Jnr. Jnr.) and Miroslav Stoch they have a young, pacy and very very dribbly midfield. So it’s more in hopes of seeing that trio set the tournament alight than anything else that I pick Slovakia to take second place. My final prediction for Group F: 1. Italy Anyone agree? Disagree? Please share your Group F prediction in the comments. - Want to try some serious predicting? Then put your mouse where your mouth is and enter our World Cup Bracket.
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| Daily Dose: June 7th, 2010; 4 Days To Go. Posted: 07 Jun 2010 07:13 PM PDT
[Daylife]
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| The World Cup Hasn’t Even Started And Wayne Rooney’s Already In Trouble Posted: 07 Jun 2010 05:40 PM PDT
It’s been such a marvelous season for Wayne Rooney, one filled with goals and mature play and more goals, that some of us have forgotten Wayne Rooney is actually still Wayne Rooney. Which means in between the goals he’s liable to find himself on the wrong side of good judgment, likely involving the referee and any of the various (two) colors he’s got itching to jump out of his pocket. Like today, during the ultra serious friendly against local side Platinum Stars, when he nearly got sent off for mean words yelled at the referee.
This isn’t wholly surprising, and that it’s against a South African club side means just as little – Rooney family reunions probably sound more ‘Guy Ritchie film’ than ‘evening at the Royal Opera House’. But maybe it should be, since the very last action of the boy’s World Cup career involved a red card, thus maybe he should’ve learned a thing or two. And with a reputation like that, you’d have to think anything less than a butler’s polite servitude will see ‘10 end in a similar fashion to ‘06.
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| The Men Who Will Decide World Cup 2010 Posted: 07 Jun 2010 04:01 PM PDT
Not the players, silly – the men in black. Or orange. Or morally gray day-glo bright @#$%ing yellow. The Guardian put out a list of the referees for this year’s World Cup, which is rather pedestrian as lists go (at least until the game starts and people are looking for the address of Public Enemy No. 1’s auntie’s summer home). But accompanying that list are their “real” professions, the ones which don’t involve sweaty men yelling at them, overzealous fans threatening their nonexistent sisters, and the lone requirement of utmost perfection. Because admit it – you want to know what they do, don’t you? Martin Hansson, Sweden, Firefighter Howard Webb, England, Referee Stéphane Lannoy, France, Video games distributor Viktor Kassai, Hungary, Travel agent Roberto Rosetti, Italy, Physiotherapist Olegário Benquerença, Portugal, Insurance agent Wolfgang Stark, Germany, Bank employee Massimo Busacca, Switzerland, Managing director Oscar Ruiz, Colombia, Lawyer Marco Rodriguez, Mexico, PE teacher Jorge Larrionda, Uruguay, Clerk Carlos Amarilla, Paraguay, Electrical engineer Alberto Undiano Mallenco, Spain, Sociologist Frank De Bleeckere, Belgium, PR manager Hector Baldassi, Argentina, Businessman Pablo Pozo, Chile, Auditor Carlos Eugenio Simon, Brazil, Referee Khalil Al Ghamdi, Saudi Arabia, Teacher Ravshan Irmatov, Uzbekistan, Instructor Subkhiddin Mohd Salleh, Malaysia, Teacher Yuichi Nishimura, Japan, Referee Koman Coulibaly, Mali, Financial inspector Mohamed Benouza, Algeria, Businessman Jerome Damon, South Africa, Teacher Eddy Maillet, Seychelles, Referee co-ordinator Joel Aguilar, El Salvador, Teacher Benito Archundia, Mexico, Lawyer Carlos Batres, Guatemala, Bachelor of science Peter O’Leary, New Zealand, Teacher Michael Hester, New Zealand, Naval officer [link]
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| The Referee Who Might Save Football Posted: 07 Jun 2010 02:50 PM PDT
A few weeks back there was an uproar down in the land of football and samba over Carlos Eugenio Simon and his mere participation in the planet’s most prestigious football gala. Now FIFA have done the complete opposite of what you’d expect any sound organization to do, as is their custom, and given him one of the biggest group games for this World Cup, and he might be the sword that FIFA finally falls upon. At best, he’s a bad referee; at worst, he’s horribly corrupt. But the real problem, the underlying problem, not just with Carlos but all referees, is that he’s human. Thus he, like every other referee due to take part in South Africa, is prone to errors in judgement, be it via the mind, the eyes or the wallet, and those judgments, though difficult to swallow now, are the key to video technology. While those ‘incidents’ – those involving Simon, Thierry Henry (the timing of which, less than a year to the tournament, was even worse than the offense), or this year’s Champions League – may hurt the game in the short term, they can only be inching us closer and closer – and they are – to the next step in football which is so desperately needed and FIFA is so adamantly fighting. It has to come sooner or later, and if Carlos Eugenio Simon is the man to do it then ride his poor decision making right to the final – for the good of the game’s future.
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| Posted: 07 Jun 2010 01:10 PM PDT
While we tick the four days down to the World Cup, we also tick four days down to our worlds being flooded with the soundtrack of incessant buzzing, something which will haunt us for months to come. Which means either acclimation, insanity, the mute button or a shoe through the television will be soon to follow. Being the good hosts that they are, South Africans (and Hyundai) have done best to help lessen the inevitable blow of the vuvuzela by doing the only thing possible: building the vuvuzela from hell in Cape Town. After hearing a 35m vuvuzela blow, the little one will sound like the aria of the angels.
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| Soundoff: Should Players Receive Big Bonus Payments for Winning the World Cup? Posted: 07 Jun 2010 11:05 AM PDT
Spain captain Iker Casillas (who, along with vice captains Xavi and Carles Puyol, negotiated the deal with the the Royal Spanish Football Federation, has defended the payments:
Reuters are reporting that the Spanish player’s potential pot of gold is “the largest win bonus among major contenders”. That qualifier is needed because the team on the biggest World Cup win bonus is actually – as we posted on Friday – the USA team, who’ve been offered the biggest cash bonus of any team in World Cup history at $895,131 per man. The catch there is that the USA almost certainly won’t win the World Cup. So as Chris said to me when that story broke, the US’s bonus is “kind of like me saying I’ll donate tomorrow’s lotto when I don’t win it.” But because the Spanish bonus is a very possible reality, people are angry. So, as the question in the title asks: Should players receive big bonus payments for winning the World Cuo? I’m going to go ahead and Soundoff first. I say yes, they do. Many people complain that it’s unseemly for players to be offered cash as motivation for a World Cup win. Players should want to win it anyway, no matter the money. And so on. I agree with that. But I’d also argue that the players agree with that too. I’ll guarantee that not a single member of the Spain squad will go into the World Cup thinking [in Spanish, obviously] “I’d better try and win this game, I’d really leave an extra few hundred grand.” They’ll be thinking about the World Cup. The bonus payments are a reward for a job well done, not a motivational factor. The payments are literally a bonus. A little something extra to say thank you, taken from the World Cup prize money the Royal Spanish Football Federation will earn for Spain’s hyopthetical World Cup win. And if that hypothetical becomes a reality and Spain wins its first ever World Cup in July 2010, I’ll guarantee that every Spanish fan will be too busy celebrating to complain about their heroes receiving a bonus payment.
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| South Africa Stadium Stampede is No Reason for World Cup Pessimism Posted: 07 Jun 2010 08:41 AM PDT
Unless World Cup 2010 is a complete disaster, we won’t be knocking the hosts during the next month. We’ll just be enjoying the event. But before we begin, I want to share the potentially pessimistic news about the South African stadium stampede in which 16 people were injured yesterday.
The game was a friendly between Nigeria and North Korea, in Makhulong stadium in a township near Johannesburg and the stampede was apparently caused by ticketless fans trying to enter the stadium. The good news is that no one was killed. The bad news is that this looks very bad for South Africa less than a week before the big kickoff.
I’m just about buying that. Obviously FIFA’s security protocol will be tighter than at the above game. There’s a world of difference between the lack of security and preparation at the Makhulong stadium on Sunday and what will happen in the 64 World Cup games. So there’s no need to panic. At least not yet anyway. We’ll know much much more after the opening game on Friday, but I both hope and suspect that very very soon we’ll be able look back on this stadium stampede as an unfortunate pre-tournament incident rather than a sign of things to come. Photo: AFP
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Aside from making heaping loads of money and secretly taking over the world, it must be said that the folks at Google do like to have a good time. They have all of those things in common with FIFA, and so it’s only natural that the world’s biggest search engine would put some extra effort into World Cup 2010. This is, after all, the company who destroyed world productivity last month by replacing their logo with a playable version of Pac Man. Take that, economy.
Time for our World Cup 
Many have likely heard that 
There’s a swirl of controversy in Spain today, surrounding the potentially hefty bonus payments the Spanish players could earn for their World Cup performance. Apparently Spain’s players will each receive €600,000 (about £495,206 or $716,825 US) if they win the World Cup in South Africa. And – predictably? – the peasants are revolting.
I like to think that World Cup Blog has been very positive about South Africa hosting World Cup 2010. For example, when the whole thing was a little questionable in early 2009 we shared our | 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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