San Diego Suburban Soccer

After a sabbatical of over six weeks, mainly due to the World Cup, the top South American tournament is back live via FOX sports. Earlier this week, we saw two great matches for the first leg of the semi finals. On Tuesday July, 27, Mexican icon “Chivas” from Guadalajara hosted a very fierce and disciplined Universidad de Chile from Santiago, Chile. While the game was even regarding ball possession, the Mexican team generated more shots on goal, but unfortunately for them, at no avail. Previously in the tournament, “Chivas” was able to score several goals against their rivals in their home turf, and even though they lost all their away games displaying very poor performances, they were able to advance due to goal differential. This time the Chilean side managed to get a 1-1 tie in the height of Mexico City, and will wait to receive the Mexican squad in Santiago. This will more than likely be the end of the Mexican teams in the South-American tournament, since “Chivas” has not been able to make a single point away from home since the beginning of the tournament.

The second match, played on Wednesday July 28, brought us an all-Brazilian clash. Two international titans, International from Porto Alegre vs. Sao Paulo, from, of course, Sao Paulo faced off in an exciting match that was dominated in the most part by the reds from “Inter,” whose dashing, fast, and rhythmic Brazilian-style game was barely enough to beat the “Paulistas” by 1 goal.

The second leg of the semifinals will be as exciting, so look out for them on 08/03 and 08/05 respectively. Although the games, and therefore, the classification to the finals is still wide open, the Chilean team seemed superior to the Mexican, and will likely dominate and win the game in their home turf. Also, Internacional seemed more aggressive and effective in the first match against Sao Paulo; thus, all things equal, I predict them going on to the finals.

On Thursday, July 22, 2010, Italian Serie A team Palermo rejected a 25 million euro offer for their creative midfielder, Argentinean Javier Pastore, made by the Spanish powerhouse Real Madrid.

We saw Pastore play a few minutes in South Africa for Maradona’s team. He made the ranks of the Argentinina squad thanks to his extraordinary appearances for Palermo in the Serie A. Before Palermo, Pastore became well known while playing for Huracan, a modest team from the Argentinean capital, Buenos Aires, where his talents allowed this humble team to clinch the runner-up spot.

According to an Italian newspaper, Palermo’s president stated that Javier Pasotre is worth “twice as much,” and although Pastore likely leave the team in the near future, he affirmed that “the player understands it’s better to be a starter in Palermo that a sub in Real Madrid.”

I guess is not necessarily true that what “Real Madrid wants, Real Madrid gets.”

As expected, Spain climbs back to the first position after winning the World Cup. The Netherlands clutches the second position, and Brazil fall from first to third. A happy surprise in the ranking was Uruguay, which gained 10 positions and is now ranked as the best sixth team in the world.

The Executive Committee of FIFA will decide the host countries for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups at the same time, in exactly 134 days. The hopeful hosts, and therefore bidders, for the 2018 OR the 2022 World Cups are Belgium and the Netherlands (jointly), England, Russia, Spain and Portugal (jointly), and the USA; similarly, but only presenting a bid to host the 2022 and NOT the 2018 edition of the World Cup are Australia, Japan, Korea Republic, and Qatar.

The big difference in the decision-making process, is that the FIFA committee will decide, on the same day, the host nations for both editions, 2018 and 2022, of the World Cup. According to FIFA officials, this would allow for better “planning, ” allowing for a better “economic result for FIFA.”

After we find out who the hosts are, it is necessary to remember that one of the FIFA statues clearly states that ” a continent cannot host the FIFA World Cup twice in a row.”

Lucky bidding to all of these countries:

FIFA.com recently released their South Africa 2010 “dream team.” Not surprisingly, this dream team is dominated by Spanish nationals.

Here’s the lineup:

Read the official FIFA article. It includes a brief explanation of why each of these players were chosen for the 2010 dream team.

After the end of another amazing World Cup, FIFA released some dashing statistics about the first ever cup played in African soil:

-         A record for the second most ever goals in World Cups was reached by Miroslav Klose with fourteen goals, reaching Gerd Muller’s record, only second to Ronaldo. However, it’s important to note that in Gerd Muller’s era only 16 teams qualified to the World Cup; therefore there were less games played in a world cup.

-         Only 145 goals were scored in this world cup. This is the least-ever goals scored in a final tournament since FIFA adopted the 64 match format in 1998. Is it the ball?

-         The final this year had the honor? of being the one with the most cards (yellow and red) shown ever with a total of 14.

-         Switzerland now holds the record for the team that kept a clean sheet the longest in the final stages of a world cup @ 9 hours and 19 minutes without conceding a goal. (This is a combination of Germany 2006 and South Africa 2010).

-         One of the jaw-dropping facts of South Africa 2010 is that the all whites of New Zealand were the only team who finished the tournament undefeated. Yet, they did not make it pass the group stage.

-         Spain became champion scoring the least amount of goals for any FIFA world cup champion EVER. They manage to win the competition scoring only 8 goals.

-         The 2010 world cup proved to be the worst tournament ever for the Italian squad. They had never finished last in any world cup, and they had always managed to win at least one game.

For a complete list of the statistics compiled by FIFA, click here: SOUTH AFRICA 2010 STATISTICS