Well in 2002, there were still many remnants from the 1998 team. Big team players… the selection I remember and line up was uhuh… Canal+ criticised a lot if I remember well… Domenech was almost thrown out… How did he stay? And make such a comeback in 2006 (and the fall with Zidane)! It was a well motivated team…

Now he’s fallen again… You don’t put out a winning player in such a critical stage… Cause, like expected, it demotivated the team. It shows a lack of trust. Would Anelka just swear for no reason?!

Zidane agreed here:

http://www.latimes.com/sports/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-soc-wcup-zidane-france,0,2020632.story

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If you check the ranking for May 2010 from this site:

http://www.fifa.com/worldfootball/ranking/lastranking/gender=m/fullranking.html#confederation=0&rank=193

You’ll see that these top the list (rank, name, points)
1 Brazil 1611
2 Spain 1565
3 Portugal 1249
4 Netherlands 1231
5 Italy 1184
6 Germany 1082
7 Argentina 1076
8 England 1068
9 France 1044
10 Croatia 1041

I said, let’s try to make a forecast of the results in each group based on these rankings only. I have not followed the teams this year, so i don’t know how well each has been playing: so I’ll stick to the rankings only. If two similarly ranked teams are playing, I’ll give them a draw. If a team has barely won any match, I’ll assume that it’ll try harder in the third/last match of the group. These will give a ranking as follows:

Group A: Uruguay, South Africa (or France)
Group B: Argentina, Greece
Group C: England, Serbia
Group D: USA, Germany
Group E: Cameroon, Slovakia
Group F: Italy, Netherlands
Group G: Brazil, Chile
Group H: Spain, Portugal

I’ll skip the 8th finals, with the quarter finals as:
1. Uruguay vs Argentina
2. England vs Germany
3. Cameroon vs Italy
4. Brazil vs Spain

Well, I hope to get some half of the results correct. Then we’d have a final of Argentina/England vs Cameroon/Brazil/Spain? Argentina may be as a winner or if an African team to win…