One thing we’ve learned from watching Brazil’s World Cup training camp on television is that practices are pretty darn boring. Sure there are some fun moments when the players get to show off their skills, but there’s also countless minutes of standing around, stretching and more standing around. If you are a fan [...]

The Socceroos had a successful send off match in Melbourne, beating Greece 1-0 in front of 95,000 or so fans. Josip Skoko’s goal in the 16th minute proved to be the game winner for Guus Hiddink’s boys. If you are like me and you missed the game, you can read the blow-by-blow account [...]

Ah, the life of a World Cup football player. Not only do you get to play in the world’s greatest sporting event, but you also get to have some fun during training. For the French team, the fun involved a three-hour hike on an alpine glacier Wednesday. I find it hard to [...]

Ivan Klasnic scored a pair of first half goals to lift Croatia past Austria 4-1 in a friendly played in Vienna. Marko Babic and Bosko Balaban added the other goals as Croatia looked solid in a tune up for the World Cup. The 79th-ranked Austria team was short on experience and mustered a [...]

What a let down. We were all excited when we heard that John Travolta offered to help pilot Australia’s flight to the World Cup, but alas that offer turned out to be little more than a rumor. Travolta, a Qantas airlines ambassador who like many of us fell in love with Australia when [...]

There is a pretty funny MasterCard commercial posted over on our Argentina blog featuring Carlos Tevez who plays for Corinthians in Brazil, at least for now. The punch line being that it is priceless that the guy named the top player in the Brazilian league is an Argentine. I love this kind of [...]

The small Swiss town of Weggis is going out of its way to make Brazil’s national team feel welcome as they prepare for the World Cup. In addition to building a training ground with a pitch built perfectly to World Cup specifications, the town has removed more than 300 pigs to prevent the tournament [...]

We’re not regular Ebay shoppers in these parts, but occasionally the crazy things people put up for auction do catch our eye. Today there is the story of a hotel in Switzerland that is offering you the chance to stay in the same hotel rooms as Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Kaka, Roberto Carlos and Adrinao just [...]

We’ve presented you with our infallible predictions and we’ve showed you how they compare to Google’s selections. Now it is time for you to be the smartypants and to tell us how you think things will play out in each of the groups. Today you get to predict the outcome for Group F. [...]

Everybody is getting into the predictions business. Brazil coach Carlos Alberto Parreira said on Thursday that if it comes down to his team playing Germany again in the World Cup final, he likes his team’s chances. “It would be excellent, really good, if they had the chance of a rematch, but we would [...]