not very adventurous, I admit

[ADDENDUM: This post is now rendered null and void by the fact that I was using group pairings from a website that apparently had them wrong. So, some of the matches mentioned below are not even possible.]

I just went through and picked all the winners in the World Cup, and found that my picks weren’t risky enough to be very interesting. I did pick all the (Sub-Saharan) African teams to advance, because we saw with France in 1998 and South Korea in 2002 (as well as an overachieving USA squad in 1994) just how important regional adrenaline can be to team performance.

That said, Cameroon is the only African team I have making it to the quarterfinals. Ivory Coast is probably the best of the Africans, but unless they can shock Brazil, the best they can hope for is probably squeaking by Portugal for 2nd place in their group, which would put them up against a powerful Spanish team in the round of 16.

From the quarterfinals on, I’m picking this…

Brazil defeats The Netherlands
England defeats France
Argentina defeats Germany (most questionable, I know, but European teams often struggle in World Cups outside Europe)
Spain defeats Cameroon

Brazil defeats England
Spain defeats Argentina

England defeats Argentina for 3rd place

Brazil defeats Spain for 1st place