Day 15: And then there were 16

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Well that’s it. Time to bid fond farewell to a highly entertaining series of group matches and move on to the ‘business end’ of the tournament.

At this juncture it’s hard to look beyond Argentina, Spain or (despite what the critics say) Brazil when predicting an eventual winner. With the latter two scheduled to meet as early as the ¼ finals, however, one should not ignore an Italian team who would reach the semis by (‘merely’) beating Australia and the winner of Switzerland v Ukraine. Italian domestic football may currently be in considerable turmoil, but having emerged (intact) from one of the ‘groups of death’ the national team have been handed a reasonably straightforward path to the last four.

So…if I were to stick my neck out and use my (not very finely-tuned) powers of prognostication, I’d say that a final between the winner of the (possible) Spain/Brazil ¼ final, and the winner of the (possible) Argentina/Italy semi-final, looks (currently) to be the most likely scenario.

Having said that there’s a resurgent Germany (with home advantage) to consider…not to mention a Dutch side who might find the requisite spark…

And then, of course, there’s always England…*cough*…

Spain 1 Saudi Arabia 0

Tunisia 0 Ukraine 1

France 2 Togo 0

Switzerland 2 South Korea 0

June 23, 2006

Posted in World Cup.