Out of the Bowl and Into the Fire

As the 32 participating teams were finally determined by late October, players settled into the routine of their club seasons, awaiting December's draw for the eight groups that would compete in South Africa. The FIFA World Cup draw is quite an event unto itself, and was televised, live to the US, on ESPN.

As the eight seeded teams were drawn into their groups, the next drama was who would be next out of the bowl as the second team in each group, establishing the first match of the "round-robin", which is Group Play. Groups A & B were host South Africa and seeded Argentina, respectively. Group C was headed up by England. In order, the seeded teams in Groups D-H were: Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Brazil, and Spain.

First-match opponents drawn for Groups A & B were Mexico and Nigeria. The drama for the USA was next. First out of the bowl to play their mother country, England, were our team. Through the remainder of the process, Algeria and Slovenia were drawn as the other members of the group. A complete copy of the  final draw can be found at http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/matches/index.html

For the promoters of the game, the US-England first match was a dream, and so much too for Fleet Street, where one headline after the draw read:

    England

  Algeria

    Slovenia

Yanks

The match-up immediately brought back recollections of one of the World Cup's biggest upsets, when a group of part-time Americans beat England, heralded then as the world's best team, 1-0, in Brazil. This time around, however, the home team are not part-timers, but rather seasoned pros themselves, many of whom ply their trade on English soil in the Premier League and with some of the world's best.

Easy? We'll see.
That's why the match is played, 'lads'.
June 12th in Rustenburg. Live on ABC at 1:30 EDT.

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