by Ashley Smith

Created on: May 09, 2010   Last Updated: June 11, 2010

The football World Cup is one of the biggest sporting events there is, at least on par with the Olympics in stature and importance. Although it has one sport as opposed to the multitude that the Olympics has, its interest is felt in every country in the world that has a national team. The qualifying stages encompass teams from every continent and countries that vary in size from thousands of people to many,many millions. All strive to be among the select few that will contest the finals, then when there they aim for the ultimate goal of winning the coveted trophy.

The finals are arranged so that the best countries are spread between groups and the next based are equally spaced out. This is done to try and ensure all the best teams can progress towards the final matches and there fore maintain interest in the countries no longer competing. The revenue from the fans attending the games and the facilities around the hosting cities is worth many millions to the economy. The biggest teams don't always bring the biggest amount of fans as the biggest countries aren't always the ones that supply the best teams.

There are a small number of teams that have qualified that you expect the winners to come from. Sometimes the top teams fail the group stages and smaller teams get through to latter games, but it's almost unheard of for an un-fancied team to win the whole event. The most successful world cup team of all is Brazil who have won the trophy five times. They have the flair players and are learning to have players who can do the hard work. They are ones who also seem to be able to replace retiring players with player's quality and the success carries on. This also applies to the very successful Germans, they have not always had the flair but a strong and disciplined side. The side could hold firm and then catch teams out on the break or with a well crafted set piece. I believe this year's winners could well be from this pair.

There are though plenty of other teams that could do well in the tournament and could conceivably do well. Teams such as Holland, Argentina and England are probably the next most likely along with Spain and Portugal. This is a fair size list, but it would only take one failed game to knock any one of them out of the tournament. Also as the tournament progresses the top teams will meet and begin to knock each other out. There is a lot to do to win the tournament but I believe the winners will come from my list, with Brazil a very likely winner.

Learn more about this author, Ashley Smith.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.