World Cup - South Korea

Of all the teams from outside the Europe-South America axis, South Korea may be the one with the best chance to advance deep into the tournament.

First of all, they have done it before, reaching the semi-finals as hosts in 2002.

Second, they have a relatively easy road through the first couple rounds. Argentina should walk this group, but neither Greece nor Nigeria are particularly scary opponents. If they do qualify in the second position, they will face the winner of Group A, which will probably be Mexico or France. As I mentioned in earlier posts, both of those squads are talented, yet vulnerable. Beyond that, The Three Lions of England, who tend to become lambs somewhere around the third week of major tournaments.

Third, South Korea has some talent. Everyone knows about Park Ji-sung, but they have several other players who have been successful in Europe. Lee Young-pyo, Cha Du-ri, Ki Sung-yong, Kim Nam-il, and Park Chu-young have all played in European leagues. But the best of the bunch is Lee Chung-yong, the young winger who just completed his first season with Bolton Wanderers.

Lee is still only 21, and it was expected that he would need at least a season to acclimatize to life in England. This seemed to be confirmed during his first appearance on the subs bench, when jet lag caught up with him and he fell asleep. But he scored a game winner early in the season against Birmingham City, and looked really impressive in his first significant playing time. By October he was starting every match, and by January he was Bolton's best player.

He is comfortable on either wing, has pace as well as technical ability on the ball, and can cross the ball from the touchline or cut inside and shoot. At times he even played through the middle of the park, and was a threat to run behind the defense with his pace. There are already rumors that big clubs such as Liverpool are interested in buying Lee, and if he has a good tournament, that list could grow much longer.

Given his experience and ability, Park Ji-sung is still South Korea's bets player, but Lee Chung-yong is not far behind. If both perform well, the Red Devils just might surprise some people.

World Cup - Argentina

Anyone watch the Champions League Final? There was this midfield pairing for the winners, Javier Zanetti and Esteban Cambiosso, that was really impressive, and they represent the same country internationally, so they should be really fun to watch at the World Cup, oh, wait...

Diego Maradona is a legend, he may the greatest player in the history of the beautiful game. The English will call him a cheat, but they are forgetting his second goal against them. That is irrelevant to his coaching ability though. And he may be the worst manager in the entire World Cup. Most of the others have some identifiable strength, or history of achievement, that allows at least some justification to their presence at the largest sporting event in the world. But not Maradona. He has precious little management experience, and most of his results have been disastrous.

The rumor mill is overstocked with reasons why Zanetti was not included in the squad. The most convincing is that during Argentina's crucial final qualifier, he told the squad to forget Maradona's asinine tactics and just play how he told them to. They won the match and managed to qualify, but reports are that Maradona has not forgiven Zanetti for undermining him and actually wanting to win the match. Cutting off your nose to spite your face not being an endearing quality among managers, one has to assume this decision will come back to haunt Argentina.

Off the field drama aside, this is still an incredibly talented squad of players. Just on the front line you have Diego Milito, who was second in Serie A with 22 goals, and had 32 in all competitions, and Carlos Tevez, who was fourth in the Premier League with 23 goals, 29 in all competitions. Also Gonzalo Higuain (27 goals in La Liga) and Sergio Aguero (12 goals in only 24 matches), not too mention the young man whom many consider the best player in the world, Lionel Messi. He scored 34 goals in La Liga, 45 in all competitions.

The defense is solid and experienced, with Javier Mascherano in a holding midfield role, right in front of Nicolas Burdisso, Walter Samuel, and Martin Dimechellis along the back line.

Argentina's first match will be against a Nigerian side that is not as strong as it once was. They will meet South Korea second, and Greece in their final match. I think this will be a hard fought group as far as second place is concerned, but Argentina, even with Maradona calling the shots, should easily walk away with first position.