World Cup draw brings golden tickets, tough luck, riveting storylines

The hosts have a fairly easy passage through Group A (the winner and second-placed team of each group go through to the knockout phase), facing Mexico, Cameroon and Croatia. The latter matchup, of course, presents the potentially delicious irony of the Brazilians being hurt by one of their own — Croatia striker Eduardo Alves da Silva, who was born in Rio but moved to Zagreb as a teenager to play for Dinamo Zagreb in the Croatian league, and eventually took citizenship. Eduardo is hardly an anomaly — there are Brazilian players in a number of national soccer teams of other countries, reflecting Brazil’s export of talent and the FIFA rules that allow a player to represent a national team after five years in that country.

Hard to pick a second place between Mexico and Croatia; it’s up for grabs. 

Group B is the first of the proverbial “groups of death,” featuring defending champion Spain, the Netherlands (the team the Spanish defeated in the last World Cup final) and Chile, one of Latin America’s strongest teams. Australia won’t present much of a challenge, but all the teams in this group will have to play every game as if it were their last at the tournament. The Dutch will want revenge for 2010, but the Spanish are so much stronger. Great spectacle for neutral fans, though.

Cote d’Ivoire, in Group C, has been blessed with a group it could win, facing Colombia, Japan and Greece. This could be the best shot at World Cup glory yet for the Ivoirians’ aging golden generation — Didier Drogba, Emmanuel Eboue, Yaya Toure and his brother Kolo — as well as providing a platform for such talented youngsters as striker Lacina Traore. The bad news, of course, is that if they do win the group, they’d face the second-place team from Group D — either Uruguay or Italy, which in both cases could be a bridge too far.

Group D is a lesser group of death, if only because the victims are quite obvious: Barring a major upset, Italy and Uruguay will get past England and Costa Rica. And, as if an opening game against Italy weren’t hard enough, it will be played in the Amazon humidity of Manaus — the venue that England manager Roy Hodgson was desperate to avoid.

France has been handed the golden ticket, being drawn against Switzerland, Ecuador and Honduras in Group E, while Argentina is unlikely to be troubled by Nigeria, Iran or Bosnia-Herzegovina in Group F.

It’s Group G that may the deadliest of all, pitting Germany against Portugal, Ghana and the U.S. Any of those teams could best any of the others on a given day, although the form book requires that Germany and Portugal go through. Lots of crackling fixtures for the neutral fans here, with the added Cain-vs.-Abel bonus of Ghana’s midfield general Kevin-Prince Boateng facing off against his brother, Jerome, who plays for Germany. Another riveting storyline will be U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann facing his native Germany, for which he scored 11 World Cup goals over three tournaments and hoisted the trophy in 1990.

Belgium is good enough these days to beat most teams at the tournament, but that proposition won’t really be tested in Group H games against Algeria, South Korea and Russia.