Word: south
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...There are many terrific teams and no clear favorite South Africa 2010 is already shaping up to be one of the more unpredictable World Cups in recent memory. As many as 10 of the 32 teams arguably have the talent and experience to win the tournament, and a host of others have the ability to cause upsets. There are no runaway favorites for the trophy, either. Few would pick the defending champion, Italy, to repeat next year, and neither Brazil nor Argentina are anywhere near their scintillating best. All of Europe's leading football nations - France, England, Germany, the Netherlands...
...have good stories Take New Zealand, probably the worst team heading to the World Cup. While the country has excelled at cricket and rugby - its "All Blacks" team is a perennial powerhouse in the latter - it has had far less success in soccer. The New Zealand team traveling to South Africa may feel uncomfortable not just because they're known as the "All Whites." In a tournament filled with millionaire, jet-setting athletes, the bulk of the Kiwi squad is made up of journeymen who toil in obscurity in lower-tier leagues in Europe and others who until recently were...
...odds to win the trophy, its team shocked the world by reaching the quarterfinals, beating Italy along the way and capturing the hearts of the English public. The current North Korean team lacks flair, but has shown a dogged resilience in qualification matches. A latter-stage match-up against South Korea, though unlikely, would be epic...
...host is unpredictable South Africa Following the sleek, well-organized World Cups hosted by Germany in 2006 and co-hosted by Japan and South Korea in 2002, South Africa has been beset by difficulties from the beginning, including construction delays, labor strikes and questions over adequate transportation links and security for hundreds of thousands of fans. But the tournament's organizers are confident these problems will be resolved in time. Since the end of apartheid, the country has hosted successful cricket and rugby World Cups, and the country hopes the soccer tournament will mark a new moment of unity...
...than football?" It has more followers than any one religion and is more universal than any one language. Even Americans - some of whom still sniff at the sport's low-scoring games - are coming around: they are among the largest groups of fans to have already purchased tickets for South Africa. "Around half the planet watched the 2006 World Cup final," writes Goldblatt. "Three billion humans have never done anything simultaneously before." And they won't again until the summer...