Soccer World Cup Group A

Review of Group A's action

Everybody knew that Germany would make it, the question was, who was going to come second. Equadore played their **ses off and earned them a deserving final 16 finish.

Here was all the scores for Group A's matches:

Germany 4 - 2 Costa Rica
Poland 0 - 2 Equador
Germany 1 - 0 Poland
Equador 3 - 0 Costa Rica
Equador 0 - 3 Germany
Costa Rica 1 - 2 Poland

Germany leave the group as the victor and Equador has the honour to advance ahead of the other. Germany will take on Sweden on Saturday, 24 June and Equador will take on England on Sunday, 25 June

First Kick-off - Germany vs Costa Rica

Okay, that was better!

What a great opening to the world cup. That is especially after such a boring opening ceremony. What the Germans lacked in cultural entertainment, they made up in sports entertainment!

The game was great. Especially the first 17 minutes. Germany scored in the first 6 minutes and Costa Rica equalized within the next six. Five minutes later the Germans scored again. The final score was 4-2 to Germany. In the last 12 years the opening games deliverd 6 goals collectively. The packed Munich stadium was cheering so loadly!

Back at the casino, we were all watching the game on the hard-fought for TV in my office. The Marketing department took those few hours as our extended lunch break and we kicked back... with coffee! It kinda takes the fun out of the game. Don't take me wrong: Soccer does not mean get sloshed, but having one or two beers is just the manly way of watching sports. What we lacked in beer, we made up in good company.

We were all ready, sitting in our little groups. Americans, French, Italians, British, South Africans, and the sole Japanese employee. We had a blast. The British explained the game's finer details like the stupid off-side rule to all of us. We had a blast making jokes, but it was the British's soccer songs that got the whole company ending up in my office to see what we were up to!

We had fun!

The Opening Ceremony: Totally Forgettable

The Opening Ceremony: Totally forgettable!

I sat there in awe! Not because it was so good, but because it was that boring! The world is looking. 1.3 billion people watching and all the Germans proved was that they do not know how to cut loose and have a party! After great opening ceremonies like the Greeks put up in 2004 at the opening of the Olympics, showing their great history in great song and dance. In 2000 Australia showed the world how they could light up the night with fireworks and pyrotechnics. We have all come to expect great musical and dance acts, coupled with the host nation’s history and culture: But not today. I’m sorry; I just did not like it.

The ceremony was held in Munich; The Bavarian capital. This city is the birth place of the golden liquid that most men thirst for after a long work week: BEER! The stadium was packed to capacity, most in the German white colors.

It started with traditional choir music from German composers sung by a youth choir while about a hundred drummers stood on the pitch and banged their drums in anticipation to the action. One nice element to this part was the whip-men; clapping their whips simultaneously to the beat of the drums. The rolled out the red soft carpet and played more traditional music. The funniest part was when a couple of the men in the traditional band had these over sized “cow” bells around there waists. To produce sounds from these over sized bells, they had to do “suspicious” pelvic movements! The traditional was broken with a performance by German hip-hop group Seed. Not an exhilarating song at all.

The German showed their diplomacy in grandeur when the brought in a precession previous champs of the world cup. Each country brought out their old hero’s of yester year; some as old as 90 years! First out was England, followed by France, Uruguay, Argentina, Italy, Germany and Brazil. This precession brought out some of soccer biggest hall-of-famers like Pele, Maradonna, Ronaldo and Sid Meyer.

The one thing that I did not appreciate, was the fact that the following section was solely presented in German. Seph Blatter, FIFA’s President and the German President and the head of the German World Cup Committee officially opened the World Cup. Although they kept the speeches brief, they did not even try to say anything in another language. This is a global audience of 1.3 million. Probably only 100 million of them speak German.

Okay, they ended it off pretty well with various performers performing the Germany 2006 official anthem: Celebrate the day. The dancers were entertaining while they brought in the flags of all the participating countries. They ended it off there and the great anthem kept resounding in my head…

Soccer World Cup Promo at Golden Riviera Casino

I don't know if you read any of my other blogs, but I work for a on-line casino and we all love soccer. Our marketing team is very diverse in culture: We have Americans, British, French, Germans, Turkish, Japanese and Spanish people in the team and we all have very diverse ideas of what is going to happen in this year's Soccer World Cup (Football for our British compatriots).

We all have one thing in common though: Interest in the world cup. So we have decided to brand our web site around the world cup fom the month of June. Giving our visitors the opportunity to Predict the score of every game. From the pool of those who predicted right, we will draw one name and he/she will be able to win $50. On July the 10th we will draw one big winner that will receive $3000 in gaming credits and 100 free spins on our new World Cup Slots Game. It is a big prize, since in those 100 spins, you stand the chance to increase your winnings to $73,000. That is the jackpot amount and that is what you could win on one spin!

As with this blog and all my other blogs, I will be updating all my soccer related news on the site. I will keep the group standings, results and fixures on the site. This will all be up on Monday, June 5th. Meanwhile, I will be updating all the blogs on a daily basis. Enjoy.

Quick thought on Germany in Germany

Ok. So how will the host do? Germany is a proud soccer nation and will have their millions supporting them. If The world cup of 1998 is anthing to go by, Germany, as host might win their own FiFA world cup!

Germany - Team info

Captain - Michael Ballack

Soccer World Cup participations: 15 (1934, 1938, 1954, 1958, 1962, 1966, 1970, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002)

WC honours: Three times world champions (1954, 1974, 1990)
Continental Titles: Three times European champions (1972, 1980, 1996)
First International: Switzerland 5 - 3 Germany (Basel, Switzerland; 5 April 1908)
Largest win: Germany 16 - 0 Russia (Stockholm, Sweden; 1 July 1912)
Worst defeat: England 9 - 0 Germany (Oxford, England; 16 March 1909)
European Championships Appearances: 9 (First in 1972)
Best result Winners, 1972, 1980, 1996

2006 World Cup Team:

Goalkeepers: Timo Hildebrand, Oliver Kahn, Jens Lehmann

Defenders: Arne Friedrich, Andreas Hinkel, Robert Huth, Philipp Lahm, Per Mertesacker, Patrick Owomoyela, Christian Wörns

Midfielders: Michael Ballack, Tim Borowski, Sebastian Deisler, Fabian Ernst, Torsten Frings, Thomas Hitzlsperger, Bernd Schneider, Bastian Schweinsteiger

Forwards: Gerald Asamoah, Thomas Brdaric, Mike Hanke, Miroslav Klose, Kevin Kuranyi, Benjamin Lauth, Lukas Podolski

Past Soccer World Cups - Hosts, Winners, Runners-up and Scores

I wanna equip you with info about the tournament before it actually begins. Here is some info on the past Soccer World Cups. Here is the years it was held, the Hosts, winners and Runners-up and the final's score.: Enjoy

1930
Host - Uruguay
Winner - Uruguay
Runner-up - Argentina
Score - 4-2

1934
Host - Italy
Winner - Italy
Runner-up - Czechoslovakia
Score - 2-1 (After Extra Time)

1938
Host - France
Winner - Italy
Runner-up - Hungary
Score - 4-2

1950
Host - Brazil
Winner - Uruguay
Runner-up - Brazil
Score - 2 (n/a)

1954
Host - Switzerland
Winner - West Germany
Runner-up - Hungary
Score - 3-2

1958
Host - Sweden
Winner - Brazil
Runner-up - Sweden
Score - 5-2

1962
Host - Chile
Winner - Brazil
Runner-up - Czechoslovakia
Score - 3-1

1966
Host - England
Winner - England
Runner-up - West Germany
Score - 4-2 (After Extra Time)

1970
Host - Mexico
Winner - Brazil
Runner-up - Italy
Score - 4-1

1974
Host - West Germany
Winner - West Germany
Runner-up - Netherlands
Score - 2-1

1978
Host - Argentina
Winner - Argentina
Runner-up - Netherlands
Score - 3-1 (After Extra Time)

1982
Host - Spain
Winner - Italy
Runner-up - West Germany
Score - 3-1