Because international soccer is not my strong suit, I turned to former MPS soccer expert Eamonn Brennan for some anaylsis on the US’ pool for World Cup 2010 in South Africa. By all accounts, the US had a very favorable draw. Outside of England, the US should be able to handle the other two teams — Algeria and Slovenia. And, at least on paper, should advance to the next round.

Some thoughts about each team from Mr. Brenann:

First, England:

It’s better than playing almost any other great club, but England is good. They belong in the elite. I don’t think they’re a great matchup for the US. They have a recent history of choking in World Cups, but they are really good top to bottom and probably have the best midfield in the world. Their back line is bad for Landon Donovan because John Terry and Rio Ferdinand are both like 6′4″ and strong. They will own him.

Algeria:

Good draw. They have no real high-level club players to speak of. it’s a lot easier to qualify out of Africa; there are good African teams but they are not among their best. It should be an easy win.

Slovenia:

Great draw. We don’t have to even worry about England at this point. Because England should finish with three wins (nine points). We’ll likely lose to England but beat both Algeria and Slovenia (six points).

Slovenia and Algeria should lose to both us and England, and one will beat the other, or draw, or whatever. So three points and zero points, or one point each, if they draw.

Last night, U.S. soccer closed CONCACAF qualifying with a pretty thrilling tie with Costa Rica. Non-soccer fans probably consider the previous phrase an oxymoron, but when you score a goal deep in extra time to draw the game at 2 — especially when that game’s major purpose for the U.S. was to honor injured teammate Charlie Davies — that’s a thrilling tie.

But it really didn’t matter for the U.S. Their place in the World Cup was secured. It did matter for Costa Rica, who needed a win to qualifying, and Honduras, who needed to beat Ecuador last night (they did, 1-0) and the U.S. to beat or tie Costa Rica to sneak into the World Cup. This is what happened. Hondurans were pleased by this development. Notice the love for the U.S. at the end:

Forget soft power and diplomatic common sense. This is how the U.S. improves its international standing. If our soccer team gets really good and starts beating everybody, at least half those teams will love us, right? There is literally nothing wrong with this theory.

It wasn’t so long ago that the primary reports out of South Africa — the site of the 2010 World Cup — were wildly discouraging. By January, the cost of the event had ballooned to about $1.2 billion, four times the amount initially designated when South Africa won the bid. The primary cause for that skyrocketing cost? What else: corruption. (An official was murdered in his home by two masked men after blowing the whistle on manners of new stadium-related corruption.) Then the global economic crisis hit, throwing attendance into jeopardy. And THEN a South African Minister of Something Or Other started speaking in derogatory tones about “these English.”

Really, how many more reasons do you need to not go to a World Cup?

But! That was then. This is June. Things are looking decidedly up, at least according to the Guardian, which claims the corruption and stalled projects of late last year are an afterthought now. The biggest hurdle: getting South Africans interested in the sport in the first place.

South Africa is like a giant building site with roads and airports being upgraded, new stadiums being built in all the major cities and undersea cables being laid to bring greater broadband connectivity with 97% of the population not having access to the internet. It is costing some £30bn while police forces from around the world are advising on security and 41,000 officers are being recruited.

Jordaan said the pessimism thatgreeted the decision to give South Africa the World Cup had dissipated with everything taking shape and that there was no more talk of Fifa needing a contingency plan. All they need is a decent national team.

“We have a dud for a coach,” said the Cape Times after Sunday’s Confederations Cup 0-0 opener against Iraq. “Some fans arrived at the venue (Coca-Cola Park in Johannesburg) lamenting the time spent in traffic and outside the stadium not knowing which entrance to use, but that was nothing compared with the torture they endured from Bafana.”

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It’s official: There is no sport that Barack Obama doesn’t at least casually pay attention to. The NBA. The NFL. College football. College hoops. The Olympics.  Killing pirates with fricking sniper rifles. Oh whatever. You know that last one is a sport. And Obama is as proficient at it as any president in the past 100 years, as this handy Internet meme chart shows:

See? Sports — including violent standoffs involving hungry, deranged Somalian teenagers — rule everything around B.O.

Soccer is no different, apparently, as Obama has already begun to throw his support behind the idea of a World Cup coming back to the U.S. in either 2018 or 2022:

“As a child, I played soccer on a dirt road in Jakarta, and the game brought the children of my neighborhood together,” the president wrote in a letter that was hand-delivered recently to Joseph S. Blatter, the president of the world soccer body, known as FIFA. “As a father, I saw that same spirit of unity alive on the fields and sidelines of my own daughters’ soccer games in Chicago,” the president added.

This would be handy, because as much as I would like to attend the World Cup in South Africa next year, knowing it will come back to the U.S. in the next decade or so might make me think twice. Why go out and get food if you can have it delivered to your apartment? The World Cup is just like that, minus British soccer hooligans loosed into Africa.

There are all sorts of potential problems for World Cup 2010 in South Africa, not least of which is the rampant corruption causing huge delays in stadium building across the country.

But that’s just one issue. The South Africans are also concerned about the always-intertwined prostitution and human trafficking. I wish I could say the supply of such services would dwarf demand during the World Cup, but, well, stealing a human and forcing him or her (usually her) to pleasure tourists for money isn’t the sort of venture one usually undertakes unless he’s guaranteed a healthy profit.

That’s not all, though. There’s the little matter of “these English,” too (HT: Spencer):

Komphela said that measures had to be in place for when “these English people come” to a city. He said they were known for partying in the streets and shops would be plundered while the police stood like a guard of honour. He said there were also times when South Africans behaved badly in the streets.

Ah, well, if he’s willing to admit that South Africans also occasionally loot and plunder, that makes it better. Though it’s not as if “those English” don’t deserve the reputation. Hooliganism is as English as repression, or so I’m told by that dude who wrote “Slumdog Millionaire.”

The U.S. has been itching to re-host the World Cup for some time — the 1994 Cup was a huge success, but it failed to kick-start a U.S. interest in soccer beyond its already rabid niche. Today, they “officially declared interest” in either the 2018 or 2022 World Cup. Either? Why not both?

The entire bid process will span 16-months, with FIFA setting May 2010 as the deadline for countries to submit their final paperwork. FIFA’s 24-man Executive Committee will then review each bid and name the two hosts for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups in December 2010. “I’m pleased to announce we have submitted our interest to FIFA to host either the 2018 or 2022 World Cups,” said Gulati.

A declaration of interest is one-sided, and there is no guarantee that it will be reciprocal (I have a lot of experience with these sorts of interactions, so you can trust me on this). But it would be pretty sweet to have the Olympics in Chicago in 2016 and then the World Cup soon thereafter. Would I grow to hate the people of the world for clogging my streets? Probably. But still: it would be sweet.

In a totally idealistic way, pegging South Africa to host the World Cup in 2010 is a stroke of genius. The continent is booming with interest in the game; Europe is being flooded with African talent; and the national teams from Africa can compete with any in the world. Bringing that home to South Africa — long one of Africa’s most stable countries, but not one without its own share of problems — is, in the most abstract of ways, heartwarming. Africa needs a lot of things and major, first-world economic events are one of them.

That said, the 2010 World Cup in South Africa is experiencing some nearly disastrous early returns. Costs for the event have skyrocketed to around $1.2 billion, four times the amount designated when S.A. won the bid, and for that money, four stadiums with December 2008 deadlines are still only half-built. What’s worse is the corruption: Early in January, a South African whistleblower who ratted on the corruption surrounding one of the stadiums was shot and killed in his home by two masked men. Add the global economic crisis to the fear that people wouldn’t show up in South Africa in the first place, and you’ve got what Spencer at TSB is calling a “stillborn affair.”

It might be a little early for that designation, but FIFA president Sepp Blatter — no stranger to corruption either, that FIFA — has long said he has a backup plan if S.A. can’t pull it off. That would be sad, not just because South Africa has a legitimate chance at a monolithic choke-hold on the world’s attention, something it desperately needs, but also because it would strike right into the heart of most Westerners’ already-ugly views of the continent in general. Oh, Africa again. AIDS and diamonds and corruption, that place. Can’t get it together over there, can they? If what Africa needs is a World Cup (as opposed to, say, the World Bank forgiving some countries’ debts), what it definitely doesn’t need is that World Cup to fail.