World Cup Round Up: Euro 2008, South America Qualifying, South Africa on Target

Wednesday is a good day to be alive if you are an international football fan, which you better be since you are visiting this little ol’ site of ours. In addition to some crucial Euro 2008 qualifying tilts, the teams in South America will be back at it again in round 2 of their journey towards the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. If that isn’t enough to get the blood flowing, there is a qualifier in Africa, as well as a slew of international friendlies.

Let’s start with Euro 2008. Some People are on the Pitch has a solid breakdown of where things stand in each group and who can punch their tickets to Austria/Switzerland this week. Nervous times ahead for some of Europe’s biggest footballing countries and for women in places like Georgia.

One guy who isn’t nervous is Franz Beckenbauer. His country’s team has already clinched a spot in the Euro 2008 competition and along the way they have impressed the heck out of the Kaiser. “The German team is currently the best and most consistent team in Europe,” said Beckenbauer. Hard to argue with that. Joachim Loew has done a masterful job building upon what Jurgen Klinsmann did in 2006. The scary thing about the German team is that it is still very young and has room for improvement.

The second World Cup qualifying match in Africa will be played on Wednesday when Sierra Leone plays host to Guinea-Bissau with neither side likely to even sniff South Africa 2010. Let’s hope that it at least turns out better than the recent African Cup of Nations match between Mali and Niger, which ended with fans attacking the players and one another. Scary stuff that we will probably be reading about again in the future considering the inadequate security situations at many African venues.

As for the country in which the 2010 games will be played, FIFA has once again proclaimed that everything is on track in South Africa. That is excellent news. Still a long way to go, but I am increasingly confident that South Africa is going to get the job done despite the wishes of the naysayers.

One thing that FIFA cannot do is resolve the disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In fact, the world’s football body can’t even force the two countries to play one another so instead it will simply do its best to make sure their names don’t appear next to one another on the fixtures list.

Despite what you might have heard and what you might wish if you are a fan of Italy, Marcello Lippi is not angling for his old job. Instead, he’ll simply get it if the Italians continue to play in lackluster fashion.

Spanning the Blog
* The lowdown on the match against Venezuela (Argentina World Cup Blog)
* A ‘b’ squad for The Don (Italy World Cup Blog)
* Ready for a European road trip? (Mexico World Cup Blog)
* Someone will need to be the man in the middle (USA World Cup Blog)

Hey, we’ve got a new look to World Cup Blog and the capacity to add more blogs. If there is a national team that you are passionate about and you think it would be fun to blog about them, get in touch.

Results
Croatia 3-0 Slovakia

Upcoming games
Wednesday, 17 October 2007
European Championship Qualifying
Albania v Bulgaria, G, 19:45
Azerbaijan v Serbia, A, 17:00
Belgium v Armenia, A, 19:45
Bosnia-Herzegovina v Norway, C, 19:30
Denmark v Latvia, F, 19:00
FYR Macedonia v Andorra, E, 19:00
France v Lithuania, B, 20:00
Georgia v Scotland, B, 18:00
Germany v Czech Republic, D, 19:45
Holland v Slovenia, G, 19:30
Kazakhstan v Portugal, A, 15:00
Liechtenstein v Iceland, F, 19:00
Luxembourg v Romania, G, 19:15
Malta v Moldova, C, 18:30
Rep of Ireland v Cyprus, D, 19:30
Russia v England, E, 16:00
San Marino v Wales, D, 19:15
Sweden v Northern Ireland, F, 19:30
Turkey v Greece, C, 18:30
Ukraine v Faroe Islands, B, 17:00

International Friendlies
Austria v Ivory Coast, 19:30
Estonia v Montenegro, 15:00
Finland v Spain, 18:30
Italy v South Africa, 19:50
Japan v Egypt, 11:30
Morocco v Namibia, 19:00
Poland v Hungary, 17:00
Switzerland v USA, 19:30

South American World Cup Qualifying
Bolivia v Colombia
Chile v Peru
Paraguay v Uruguay
Brazil v Ecuador

African World Cup Qualifying
Sierra Leone v Guinea-Bissau

Oceania World Cup Qualifying
Fiji v New Zealand

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