Since the most popular sporting event in the world begins today, the FIFA World Cup, let's take a short sabbatical from ETF trading and give you some analysis on who we think will win. To keep it relevant we'll include the associated country ETFs if you have interest in trading the world cup. Enjoy the analysis from all our analysts.
The event this year is being held in Africa for the first time, hosted by South Africa. Every game of the tourney will be shown live in the U.S., with starting times of 7:30 am, 10 am, and 2:30 pm est. The first 3 games of the tourney are "group play", after that half the teams advance to a "knockout" phase, which is 1 and done.
For the novice American fan, some of the more exciting and popular group play games to catch should be U.S. v England, Holland v Denmark, Portugal v Brazil, and France v Mexico. If you aren't normally a soccer fan, give this tourney a try during some of the big games, and take note of the passion, the 45 minute halves with no timeouts or commercials, and the skill & speed of the players.
The 2010 tourney has been marred a bit by injuries to many of the world's top stars, many of whom either won't compete or will be far less than 100%. For example, basically the best players of Germany (Ballack), Netherlands (Robben), Ivory Coast (Drogba), Ghana (Essien), England (Ferdinand, Beckham) have all been injured recently — which is a bit frustrating to the die-hard soccer/futbol fan as it dilutes to the quality somewhat.
So who to pick? Well, there is a group of 9 or so teams that are usually in the top tier of world soccer, and the winner will emerge from these in my view — from Europe: Italy, Germany, France, England, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal — from South America: Brazil, Argentina. My semi-dark horse in this tourney to take it all was Netherlands … however the recent injury to Arjen Robben just in the past week may put a damper on their chances. Another one of my favorite underdogs to make the FInal 4 was Ivory Coast … but the unfortunate injury to Didier Drogba right before the tourney cannot be discounted.
Something to remember is that a European team has never won the World Cup when it was held outside of Europe. This does seem to bode well for a Brazil or Argentina victory — but remember that this tourney is only every 4 years, so that isn't a huge sample size. Based on this, the already overwhelmingly deep Brazil squad has to be considered the favorite to win … remember that they emerged victorious in the 2002 Korea/Japan World Cup, not a European team.
So with all the major injuries, tough conditions/travel and tough draws, I don't see a major upset team making the Championship Game (or even the Final 4). Focusing in on the top 9 teams, England and Portugal are the teams I would say do not have much chance of making the Final 4 or beyond. Would I be surprised if France, Spain or Italy make the Final Game? … absolutely not. Those 3 would have to be in the second tier of favorites in my view, behind Brazil. Then Germany, Netherlands and Argentina.
I can't justify making any other team outside of these big 9 favorites as likely to make the Final Game. If you do want some lesser teams to root for who may make a splash in tourney, keep an eye on Mexico and Australia — as well as the African teams such as Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Cameroon, one of whom should make a decent run.
Picks below based on the actual groups and brackets.
Moby Waller:
Final 4: France (EWQ), Brazil (EWZ), Argentina (LATM), Netherlands (EWN)
Final Game: Brazil over Netherlands
Bob Lang:
Final 4: Brazil (EWZ), Spain (EWP), France (EWQ), Germany (EWG)
Final Game: Spain over Brazil
Scott Downing:
Final 4: England (EWU), Portugal (IEV), Greece (SEA), Spain (EWP)
Final Game: Greece over Portugal
Andrew Hart's World Cup Picks:
Enjoy the World Cup!
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