Confederations Cup heating up nicely

The Con­fed­er­a­tions Cup is in full swing now in South Africa and after a fairly slow start the tour­na­ment has got into full swing.  The group stages are now over and the two semi-finals fea­ture USA Vs Spain and Brazil Vs South Africa.  It is a bit of a weird tour­na­ment in all fair­ness, to qual­ify you have to win a FIFA Con­fed­er­a­tion Cham­pi­onship (such as the Copa Amer­ica or Euro­pean Cham­pi­onship) or the World Cup or be the host coun­try of the next World Cup.  It is a bit of a rehearsal for the nation who will host the World Cup and so far the South Africans are doing a decent job, which should set us up nicely for an excel­lent tour­na­ment in 2010.

The moment of the tour­na­ment so far has to be the USA’s vic­tory over Egypt.  The Amer­i­cans needed to win and over­turn a six goal deficit after los­ing their open­ing games to Brazil and Italy.  Their 3–0 vic­tory over Egypt cou­pled with Brazil’s 3–0 defeat of Italy meant the USA went through to the semi-final at the expense of the Ital­ians.  The decid­ing goal came cour­tesy of Clint Dempsey, of Pre­mier League side Ful­ham, who rose to meet an inch-perfect cross from Jonathan Spec­tor in the 71st minute with a pow­er­ful header.

Spain are the favourites to win with the Con­fed­er­a­tions Cup bet­ting odds and they’re yet to con­cede a goal.  They’ve also picked up the record for most con­sec­u­tive inter­na­tional vic­to­ries, their record-breaking and fif­teenth con­sec­u­tive win came against South Africa with the score 2–0 to the Span­ish.  Assum­ing they don’t lose their semi-final against the USA they will have also beaten Brazil’s record for the longest unbeaten run, Brazil and Spain are cur­rently tied on 35.

South Africa man­aged to progress to the semi-final thanks to a vic­tory over New Zealand and a goal less draw with Iraq.  From what I’ve seen of the teams so far they’re the weak­est left in the com­pe­ti­tion and I doubt many will be bet­ting on them get­ting past Brazil.  The Brazil­ians are start­ing to get into their stride now and they made Italy look dis­tinctly aver­age in their 3–0 victory.

With every­thing taken into con­sid­er­a­tion we should have a final con­tested by Brazil and Spain, unless there is a major upset, and that should be an excep­tional tie.  For me (and prob­a­bly most peo­ple) these sides are the best teams in inter­na­tional foot­ball and it could be a pul­sat­ing encounter.  The Brazil­ians have per­haps looked the bet­ter team so far and have played some decent flow­ing foot­ball.  Spain on the other hand are so well organ­ised and hard to break down and it will be tricky for Brazil to get through.  I think Spain might just edge it per­son­ally, they may be miss­ing the ever influ­en­tial Andres Ini­esta but they still have plenty of qual­ity.  Before all that can hap­pen though, the Span­ish will have to get past the USA on June 24 and Brazil will have to defeat host-nation South Africa on June 25.