Sports Blogger Live: June 1, 2006

I will be getting interviewed at 6:45pm EST on Sports Bloggers Live today. Since Bob is in flight from London to Berlin, I am doing the report this time. Here is the podcast of Bob getting interviewed last time.

Here is the link to the actual interview

After the jump, the questions they are supposed to ask me, and the answers I have written down as notes.

Keep in mind, this is not editted or spell checked - I just spammed my thoughts down. Rip me a new one in the comments…

Sean Keener, World Cup Blog 12:45:00PM
Is there any reason to play this tournament seeing how stacked Brazil is?
I would say there definately is a reason to play. One of brazils most experience, though not most popular player, Edmilson just got injuryed and replaced. As you know, anything can and will happen. The underdawgs and unknowns frequently come out and upset. yes, Brazil are the odds on favorites, but just 2 years ago, Greece, no-name in World Soccer stunned Europe and won the European Championship. A team like that could surprise again. Isn’t that why we love sports so much?

The U.S. is in the hardest opening-round group. Will they advance over CR and Italy?
the Odds makers are against the US advancing - though it is definately not impossible. Italy is in the midst of a huge match fixing scandal - you know the mafia and stuff is all into Footie in Italy fixing games - and the manager of Italy’s World Cup team is implicated…so the are a lot of factors and reasons that they could flop and open the door for the Yanks. Remember - they were big time underdawgs in Korea 4 years ago and beat Portugal…funny to think of the Americans as underdawgs, eh?

Adriano thinks he has the best shot to win the Golden Boot. Who do you think will? (Andriy Shevchenko, Ronaldo, Thierry Henry are favorites)
We had a great thread on this exact topic on WorldCupBlog this week. It almost always goes to a player on a team that advances quite far. So with that in mind, I would bet on players from Brazil, Germany, Czech…thing is one of the hardest predictions in my book - I would have chosen Rooney if he were fit - but I am gonna go out on a limb and pick Ronaldo again - he won it in 2002 with 8 goals, and despite looking pretty chubby these days, he is gonna have a lot of chances to score.

How does the impact of injuries on major stars like Wayne Rooney and Claudio Reyna affect England and US chances?
Well, I would say that is impacts both England and USA in a negative way. Probably England more so….Rooney is so young, so explosive - he is the type of player that could carry England. England’s other strikers have not been preforming so well - so the potential to struggle in the scoring dept ofr England is there. As for Reyna - yeah he is experienced - but he seems like an old git to me…it will hurt them a bit, but the USA plays excellent team/hustle ball. Not sure who they are gonna throw in behind him - but he could outpreform him.

This is Zidane Zidane last World Cup, do the French have a shot to send him out a winner?
According to a post on WCBlog about chances to win, the French have like a 5% chance to win. which is better than most so, Yes, they have a chance - but France has not been playing that well, Zidane has not been that fit as of recently and he is an old man. Not often to old me preform well at the World Cup. Yes, there are cases…but it is not an old man’s game.

What’s the craziest bit of World Cup-related hype that you’ve seen so far?
This website - it’s called WorldCupblog.org. Another group, called FIFA is really good at it as well. But seriously, the stores, everything here in Germany is hype and hysteria ridden. One bratwurst company came out with soccer ball shaped sausages for the World Cup. Isn’t that what they call a meatball? I went shopping in a berlin grocery store yesterday and 50% of the labels had footballs and WC related hoopla on it. For a sucker like me, it worked…I bought all the brands that had the footie stuff on it cuz I couldn’t read the german on the boxes anyway.

Not sure how much of this I will use - listen and find out! - I’ll post the podcast link when ready

PS: Just did the interview - I used some of this - and some I didn’t.