The Draw for the 2010 World Cup, Politically Explosive Ties
The draw’s in the bag, and obviously as an England fan, being drawn against Croatia again has just made my day. But there are also a number of other interesting matchups, for non-footballing reasons. Here’s a few that spring to mind:
There’s Cuba-U.S.A. I bet the guys at USSF are excited about organising that trip (at least I think they’re playing each other, if I understood correctly the ridiculous CONCACAF region set-up).
There’s North Korea against South Korea. At the moment, it looks like it could actually be good timing for a furthering of the reconciliation between the two halves of the peninsula that’s been slowly progressing in recent times.
There’s Iraq versus Australia. Would have generated more controversy if John Howard, who took Australia into Iraq, hadn’t been booted out of office just last week, with new PM Kevin Rudd expected to withdraw Australia’s remaining troops. I wonder where the game will be played.
Edit (as noted by ursus): Turkey plays Armenia. Blimey.
Below are the rest of the matchups, anything else that should be highlighted? And more importantly for my sanity, will England be humiliated again by Croatia’s technically superior team?
Asia:
Group 1: Australia, Iraq, Qatar and China.
Group 2: Oman, Thailand, Bahrain, Japan.
Group 3: North Korea, Jordan, Turkmenistan, South Korea.
Group 4: Lebanon, Singapore, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia.
Group 5: Syria, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iran.
CONCACAF:
Group 1A: USA v Dominica or Barbados
Group 1B: Guatemala v Turks and Caicos Islands or St Lucia
Group 1C: Trinidad and Tobago v Bermuda or Cayman Islands
Group 1D: Cuba v Aruba or Antigua and Barbuda
Group 2A: Mexico v Belize or St Kitts and St Nevis
Group 2B: Jamaica v Bahamas or British Virgin Islands
Group 2C: Honduras v Dominican Republic or Puerto Rica
Group 2D: Canada v St Vincent and the Grenadines
Group 3A: Costa Rica v US Virgin Islands or Grenada
Group 3B: Guyana v Suriname or Montserrat
Group 3C: Panama v El Salvador or Anguilla
Group 3D: Nicaragua v Netherlands Antilles
Europe
Group 1: Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, Albania, Malta
Group 2: Greece, Israel, Switzerland, Moldova, Latvia, Luxembourg
Group 3: Czech Republic, Poland, Northern Ireland, Slovakia, Slovenia, San Marino
Group 4: Germany, Russia, Finland, Wales, Azerbaijan, Liechtenstein
Group 5: Spain, Turkey, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Armenia, Estonia
Group 6: Croatia, England, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Andorra
Group 7: France, Romania, Serbia, Lithuania, Austria, Faroe Islands
Group 8: Italy, Bulgaria, Republic of Ireland, Cyprus, Georgia, Montenegro
Group 9: Holland, Scotland, Norway, FYR Macedonia, Iceland
Africa:
Group 1: Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Tanzania, Mauritius.
Group 2: Guinea, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Kenya.
Group 3: Angola, Benin, Uganda, Niger.
Group 4: Nigeria, South Africa, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone.
Group 5: Ghana, Libya, Gabon, Lesotho.
Group 6: Liberia, Algeria, Senegal, Gambia.
Group 7: Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Botswana, Madagascar.
Group 8: Morocco, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mauritania.
Group 9: Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Seychelles.
Group 10: Mali, Congo, Sudan, Chad.
Group 11: Togo, Eritrea, Zambia, Swaziland.
Group 12: Epypt, Congo DR, Malawi, Djibouti
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Turkey – Armenia should be rather interesting.
To say the least, ursus. Can’t believe I missed that one first time over. Definitely the most likely to result in real trouble.
I think the real question is whether the matches will actually be played.
The Armenian-Azeri precedent is not encouraging, though the Turks need the points and can’t just blow off the matches the way the Azeris did.
It will be very interesting to see how this develops; UEFA and FIFA cannot be happy.
I’ve seen that Armenian-Azeri precedent mentioned before elsewhere, but what happened exactly?
I’ve never seen a definitive account (like virtually everything to do with Nagorno Karabakh, the two sides’ versions of the “truth” cannot both be right), but the story that seems to have the most evidence in support is that the Armenians were willing to play the Azeris in Yerevan, but that the Azeris refused to host the Armenians, due to being “unable to guarantee their security”.
The Armenians didn’t see any reason to play both legs at a neutral site given that they did not have a problem with hosting, the Azeris insisted that neutral sites were the only possible compromise, and UEFA punted by canceling both ties.
You’re correct, Thomas. It should be Guatemala, Trinidad & Tobago, Cuba & US if all goes to form. I think it would be a great story if a couple of the US players sought asylum while passing through Havana.
That would be superb — Taylor Twellman might make the most incongruous asylum-seeker in history.
Pretty easy group the U.S. got, compared to Mexico, and their northern neighbours are also complaining about the FIFA rankings that lumped them in that group.
Turks and Caicos Islands
St Kitts and St Nevis
St Vincent and the Grenadines
Netherlands Antilles
I think CONCACAF is just making countries up now, haha. What’s with the subdivided qualification groups?
Also, this may not be politically grounded, but the Sweden-Denmark matches could get a leetle interesting — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXewqTwXBXc
Re: Armenia-Azerbaijan. What Urs said, except there’s some suggestion that the Armenians didn’t want to play the tie either, but they took the better PR route by offering to host once it became clear that the Azeris would refuse to do so. There was a story about this in the WSC-before-last.
I hope Turkiye ‘ll take the ticket for world cup… but not an easy group and I ‘m happy for getting Armenia in the group…
We also have, in one of the Africa groups, a matchup between Chad and Sudan, which is a bit sensitive because of the refugee/rebel crisis on their border.
Excellent spot, Dubya. Oddly enough, I was just reading about that today; it’s certainly an exceedingly complicated situation.
I was really looking forward to the world cup too. There always seems to be some political issue with everything..
I think last world cup didn’t the USA play Iran? With a cup of so many nations theres always bound to be a couple of countries facing each other which have historic reasons to hate eachother. The beauty of football is that very often everyone just gets together and enjoys it. Football has the power to bring people together.
It was really good world cup..but I was dissatisfied that Brazil didn’t made it to final…I am also thinking till now what was said to Zidan dat he did things like this…
I was thinking that south america world cup would be a good place to celebrate my birthday (40th) but i am not really into football – do you think it would still be a good place to go?