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Originally Posted by azzarish
...Surprise team: AUSTRALIA (After South Korea in the last World Cup I think it's their turn to spring a few surprises in Germany.)
Dark horse: SPAIN (After a number of big tournament flops maybe the waiting is over for Spain. This could be the tournament where it all comes together for them. Bucketloads of talent but can they play as a team is the big question?)
Dissapointment: ITALY (There could be a number of teams who disappoint, Germany included, but I think Italy are going through a rebuilding phase right now, and as always there will be too much pressure on them.)
Runner Up: ENGLAND (To many they seem light on the exterior in terms of talent, but they are solid all around. Rooney, if he fails to recover from his broken foot will me missed immensley, but I think they will compensate for it. They still have Gerrard, Owen and co.)
Winner: BRAZIL (How can you bet against these guys? With players like Ronaldinho and Kaka who can turn games within seconds they are frontrunners again. Only grey area is defence, but we will see if it matters.)
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Surprise Team: I would have to agree with Australia being a surpirse team. They have enough talent to do something in the WC and they certainly have the motivation to do well against the defending champs.
Ghana and Togo could also surprise many this year, specially after taking the place of two past surprise teams...Nigeria and Cameroon.
Dark Horses: Portugal. I Feel that this squad should have won the Euro Cup. They have a lot of talent all over the pitch, wiz kid C.Ronaldo has the ability to decide games with his genius play, and they have defenitely improved quite a bit with Scolari at the helm. Their loss to Greece was a huge dissapointment and I think they will be out to prove themselves.
Czech Republic, very strong team.
Dissapointment: England. France. Spain. Italy. Teams this good should do better at the WC but always for some reason fall short after the group stage. England could have a better tournament if W.Rooney is fit to play, I don't think that M. Owen has enough talent to lead England's attack. I would like to see England do well but I honestly can't see that happening.
Runner Up: Argentina or Germany. Argentina has one of the strongest sides they've had in years and were very dominant in the South American qualifiers. Germany not only has a strong team they also have home advantage...their players are going to be pumped and not wanting to dissapoint from game 1.
Winner: Brasil. Out of the last three World Cups, Brasil has been to the finals of each of those tournaments winning the cup two times, '94 and '02 and IMO this is their strongest side yet. Ronaldihno is arguably the best player at the moment and he's at the top of his game right now.
Brasi could also turn out to be the biggest dissapointment this tournament because it would be a shame not to see them make the finals here considering the amount of talent they have. I think their biggest challenge is going to be themselves. They know they have the talent, they just can't get over-confident.