The ULTIMATE 2006 FIFA World CupTM Predictions Thread

Alright, here is your opportunity to astound your fellow posters when at least one of your WCQ or WC predictions turns out to be half-right.

Okay, lemme start................

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1. Ivory Coast, Guatemala, Uzbehkistan, Ukraine and Guinea all qualify for the World Cup as debutants.

2. Guatemala win the final hex match at home and take the third spot, shocking the world and giving FIFA lots of photo ops for their program of spending lots of money to build soccer stadiums in the Third World. Sepp Blatter will wear traditional Mayan costume at said photo op. The Ticos (“we are not really central Americans, we are actually the Switzerland of the Americas”) never recover and are overrun by North Korea in the both legs in Saprissa and Pyongyang. However they get a reprieve and a spot in Germany when North and South Korea decide to send a united Korean team to the World Cup. Sepp Blatter is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. (creds, canso).

3. England fail to auto-qualify when they finish second in their group after losing to Poland at home 1-0, and then fail to qualify when Russia beats them in the second leg in Moscow largely due to a Beckham missed spot-kick field goal in early arctic conditions. Rooney, just along for a ride after a red card in the first leg, observes: "It's jussss like a foreign cunnnntry!" The other Owen, Whoregreaves, decides it's time to retire from his cherished-from-birth 3rd national team, his hopes at stylish WC glory and endorsement-bonuses thwarted, but no one notices except the Toronto and Calgary "expert soccer" columnists (none of whom have been to a Canadian MNT match) who announce it as the worst day for Canadian soccer ever ever and how we have been made so so proud by his career, especially when he scored for Bayern at the Skydome the summer before, when all Canada sighed as one in pride, and proven once and for all that he should have been named CBC’s "The Greatest Canadian" (sorry for the Canadian references, as if anybody cares, eh?).

4. In a hex match in Trinidad against Panama, Jack "Pops" Warner finally loses it and storms out onto the field, Alan Eagleson-style, after one of his beloved Socawarriorz gets a red card, and, like Eagleson, he later goes to jail for financial irregularities.

5. Australia again fails to qualify, losing to the Ecuadorian B team, flown into Sydney at the last minute for the last leg half-spot playoff due to suspicious vegimite poisoning of their A team which makes them all look like a cross between a kangaroo and a Ukrainian opposition politician. The revamped and thoroughly modernized Australian Socceroo-thingy Association wins a valuable concession from the receptionist at FIFA that the whole question of an automatic Australian, err, Oceania entry into the World Cup tournament will be revisited, by again referring to it's flawless Aussie logic that "this irrefutably proves once and for all that the en-tire qualifying system is unfair to us".

6. The Canadian Soccer Association’s Operating Director Kevan Pipe comes up with another brilliant sure-fire strategy, taken from the page of Veracruz club, to have Canada qualify for the 2010 World Cup. The strategy involves automatic qualification by hosting, by proving that South Africa will be too hot to have the World Cup. It is only when someone has the nerve to point out to him at the conclusion of his "well-researched" presentation to the pre-tournament conference in Munich that June is winter in the southern hemisphere does he concede that he has to "reevaluate" his strategy.

7. Arriving for the pre-WC conferences, Blatter loses it himself when he grabs the bottom of a lederhosen-clad fraulien cheerleader at the airport. His explanation that he was merely testing out the viability of more attractive ladies player shorts is not accepted, and he is voted out days later as FIFA president. Michel Platini is quickly drafted in his place after it is discovered that pretender Lennart Johansson can't fit in the president's chair.

8. In Germany, Freddy Adu will be substituted into every group match where the US have a two goal lead and will be loudly applauded and nominated as top tournament player...until a report surfaces that Freddy is actually 32 years old and born and grew up in Jersey! (creds canso).

9. At Klinnsmann's McDonald's/Budwieser (hey, they HAVE been granted the exclusive distribution rights at the WC stadia) German National Team Training Centre in Santa Barbara, California, a week before the opening match against Uzbehkistan in Munich, Oliver Kahn and Lehmann go berserk and toe to toe with free-wielding Tibetan prayer wheels during a stress relieving group enema session. Both are too injured to make the trip back to Germany, so the third string GK is drafted, but loses 1-0 in the opener when he falls asleep in injury time. Germany, as always, rebounds from the opener debacle, inserts a previously unknown teenage GK in the next group match who goes super-nova-wunderkind, and goes on to beat Holland (no, not Brazil, see below) in the Final of the Final in typical thrilling penalty kicks after a scoreless extra-time match.

10. Brazil again totally dominates the WC competition, setting new goal scoring records, until, after beating the US 10-0 in the quarter-final, the US team lawyer in a daring legal challenge, has the result nullified and Brazil suspended after it is proven that 2-time FIFA Player of the Year Ronaldihno is the first case of trans-species DNA doping. After losing in the semi against Holland, the US team lawyer tries a similar tactic against the entire Dutch team for marijuana-enhancement, but the challenge is dismissed for lack of interest. ABC-Fox follows Bush's dictum not to cover the rest of the tournament because of his declaration that FIFA is a terrorist organization and part of the eleven-pronged ("cuz eleven is a nice round even number") "Axis of Evil" along with Iraq (now with an elected Shiite government that nationalizes the oil industry and kicks out Haliburton), Iran, Afghanistan (now with the world's highest GNP with the drug cartel government), South Korea, North Korea, Cuba, Proctor and Gamble, Equatorial Guinea, Canada and an unknown country that remains unknown because Bush has yet to figure out how to pronounce it.