World Cup Fever

[DoubleDown]

its heating up (referring to soccer, not baseball)

Seeding, draws, and ties will be simulcast live across the world this Friday. Many soccer authorities have the U.S. ranked as high as #8 in the world. Will this be enough to propel the U.S. to their 1st-ever #1 seed? I doubt it, since their poor showing in France 1998 will surely knock them out of favor with many World Cup Seeding officials.

What're some juicy match-ups that you'd like to see?
List of Qualifiers

here's one i'd like to see:
U.S. vs Iran
-this would be a great rematch of these bitter political rivals who last played in WC1998 in France, where Iran came out on top. the current team of americans is more experienced & deep than the '98 team, but the iranians play with pure heart and will be tough to beat in an emotion-packed match

another question i have that some euro posters may have better insight on. what type of home-field advantage is there in a Euro-site WC compared with a non-Euro site?

The US did better than expected in WC1994 in america. South Korea went well deep into the tourney in the last WC as well. Does Germany have as big of a home-field advantage as the US & S. Korea did in past world cups given the fact that it is so easy for european fans to travel to germany from other european nations which will be heavily represented at the WC? i realize that france recently hosted the world cup ... and won; and that fact may, in & of itself, be a simple answer to my question. but, couldnt it be argued that france would have fared well in that WC despite the home-field due to them fielding arguably one of the best players of all-time (Zidane)?
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