Word: tournaments
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...World Cup in Italy. Before then, Sub-Saharan Africa hadn't made much of an impression on the global soccer stage beyond the occasional embarrassing episode, such as when a Zaire defender tried to pre-empt a Brazil free kick by booting the ball away in the 1974 tournament. But since the early 1990s, the stature of African football has only grown: top African players are now superstars in the world's flashiest leagues, while players of African descent are increasingly competing for spots on Europe's best national teams, including once homogeneous squads like those of Germany and Italy...
...African teams participating, the host nation is perhaps the weakest, though it'll be buoyed by fanatical home support. Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon - traditionally the dominant teams of West Africa - all have the talent to shake up the tournament. Ghana and Ivory Coast, in particular, bristle with confidence and star power. The dark horse of the African field is Algeria, which qualified only after a tense playoff match with bitter rival Egypt on Wednesday in Sudan following outbursts of violence by both teams' fans in Cairo and Algiers. The victory has catapulted Algeria into its first World...
...feel like I wrestled well in my first four matches,” O’Connor said of his run through the tournament. “But in the final, I wrestled a little conservatively, which is something I’ve been trying to work on for the past two years...
...sure he’s thinking about [the loss], but he will make every change he needs to make come March,” O’Connor said. “[Caputo] wrestled really tough in the toughest weight class of the tournament, and he wrestled pretty damn well, so he’ll be back to where he needs to be soon enough...