Latest World Cup Blog Updates |  |
| World Cup Kits go High-Tech. And Female Fans Rejoice Posted: 02 Dec 2009 10:00 AM PST
How high tech, you ask? Well, according to the official Adidas press release:
Power increase of 5.3%? Wow. But wait. There’s more.
(Or, y’know, so I’ve been told.) And I’m surprised that nobody’s mentioned this, but given that these kits can do in one layer what it used to take two to accomplish? Goodbye base layers. Which is great for the players because…uh…compressions shorts and shirts under a kit add weight and…um.. Oh, who am I kidding? What I’m really saying, ladies, is that they’re taking away the undergarments, which means shirt swaps just got interesting again. (And that giant crashing sound you hear is the internet collapsing under the collective weight of Kickette readers rushing to send a million fruit baskets to the good researchers at Adidas.) But the good news for players of a certain body type is that this skintight fit is apparently not the only option.
I haven’t seen photos of this one, but I believe it may be known as the “Brazilian Ronaldo” option. Oh, what? I’m only thinking about his comfort.        |
| FIFA Announces World Cup Seeds; Karma Announces French Retribution. Posted: 02 Dec 2009 06:52 AM PST
Going into today’s meeting it was undecided which methodology FIFA would use to determine the seeds for Friday’s draw. It could’ve been the most recent FIFA rankings, it could’ve been the whims of the committee members or, and this one had to be considered the likeliest, it could’ve been whichever countries gave the biggest timepiece to Sepp Blatter. In the end they went with none of the above, instead using the all too rubbish October 2009 FIFA rankings when teams had played an equal number of qualifying games. * – Yeah, yeah – FIFA Rankings criteria spreads back aways. South Africa as the host team gets a free pass. Based on their friendly form, so too will the other clubs in their group. Hopefully they’re merely the sleeping tiger ready to pounce once the cage is opened. Otherwise, all standard. Pot 1 (Seeded teams): South Africa, Brazil, Spain, Holland, Italy, Germany, Argentina and England. Pot 2 (Asia, Oceania, North/Central America): Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Mexico and Honduras. Pot 3 (Africa, South America): Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Algeria, Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay. Europe will, obviously, be the only continent allowed to two teams in the same group, simply based on numbers. And from there on it’s simple: pick one from each pot. Now, if we were to be totally original and peg a Group O’Death on the back of this it would likely be: Brazil, Japan, Ghana, France. Or just as easily swap in Ivory Coast for Ghana should you so desire. France are by some margin the biggest losers, and while the karma angle is easy, it’s really just down to the fact that they haven’t been very good for about two years now. Euro 2008 was a slight disaster and, by keeping that same astrologist on the sidelines, World Cup qualifying didn’t go a great deal more smoothly. You could even say it went less smoothly, given the backlash of the manner in which they qualified. (Notice I managed to avoid “manner in which they handed in their qualification”. Please pass this along to every announcer, journalist and boob assigned to next summer’s tournament.) So basically, it’s down to no one but themselves. But if any Irish fans ask you, tell them France got their just desserts.   |
World Cup 2010 kits have gone high tech. Seriously high tech. 
Female fans, if the recent French look is anything to go by, the performance maximization requires that these jerseys be extremely tight-fitting. As in: second-skin-tight. 
The seedings for the World Cup draw were announced today and there were a | 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 |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
There’s been a lot of crazy talk about World Cup qualification this week. Including Ireland putting in an impressively optimistic 
Posts
