Soccer: Confederations Cup Preview

I really do not have the expertise to give a full preview of the 2009 Confederations Cup, but I wanted to at least write a short preview.

Just to briefly explain, the Confederations Cup is now held once every 4 years based off of who is the current champion from each of the confederations. The Confederations are (with current champions listed in parentheses):
1) Africa (Egypt),
2) South America (Brazil),
3) Europe (Spain),
4) Asia (Iraq),
5) Oceania (i.e. New Zealand),
6) North and Central America (United States).

The 7th team is the host country for the Confederations Cup (this year it's South Africa), and the 8th team is the defending World Cup Champion (Italy), though in other years, if the World Cup Champion has already qualified, then its the runner-up or even the 3rd place team that receives the berth in the Confederations Cup.

This year's groups are completely lop-sided: there is an "easy" group of: South Africa, Iraq, New Zealand, and Spain. The other group is immensely difficult and has: USA, Italy, Brazil, Egypt.

While it does not appear that past winners of the Confederation Cup necessarily succeed in the World Cup, this tournament should demonstrate whether this latest USA team has the talent to compete on the same level as Italy and Brazil. One columnist on Yahoo! has stated that the US soccer coach is under some pressure, and has basically been playing it safe (as opposed to playing to win?) by playing an unorthodox 4-2-2-2 formation. If you want another pessimistic view of the US soccer team, just check out ESPN's columnist which basically details how the US is still playing older players, many of whom were not only on the 2006 team, but also on the 2002 World Cup team. Please note that in soccer, I am of the opinion that it's better when you have fresh talent and fresh legs out there for the most part unless you have a superstar who can still contribute (i.e. David Beckham, or in the US's case Claudio Reyna). In both 1994 and 2002, the US's two recent successes, they relied heavily on younger, sometimes even unknown players. Granted, one could say that those teams have young talent... and perhaps that's something that's missing from the current team (or at least the coach hasn't played enough of these players). Nonetheless, it should be interesting to see how team USA performs at the Confederations Cup against other solid teams.

The Confederations Cup starts June 14th with semifinals on June 24th and the finals on June 28th.

In other soccer news, I always find European qualifying for the World Cup extremely interesting - only because it's designed to be difficult and leave out many quality teams because there are only 13 bids. There are 9 "final" groups, where each 1st place team gets an automatic bid to the World Cup. The 8 best "2nd place" teams fight it out in an insane home-and-away aggregate winner-take-all format, taking place November 14th and November 18th. The 2nd place playoffs are conducted by lottery. Yowsers! This year's European final groupings, has an insane Denmark, Portugal, Sweden group (group 1). Both Portugal and Sweden are well behind the leader Denmark at this point. Group 5 also looks to be rather interesting with Spain well ahead, a surprising Bosnia in 2nd place, with Turkey AND Belgium in 3rd and 4th place.

In other news, North Korea and Saudi Arabia will be playing each other in a winner take all game this coming Sunday. The game is at Saudi Arabia. I think it will be a very interesting World Cup if North Korea is there. I wonder if there is a fear by the North Koreans of their players defecting to other countries, as happens to Cuba when they enter international competition???