Difficult match for Mexico, they didn't played good at the first half, except for Salcido, Blanco and Juarez. Sabah missed 2 clear chances, but I still prefer him over Franco, at least he's more dangerous.

Second half they improved a bit, but it's clear the offensive is not the best thing the team has. Next match against Salvador in Mexico. Will be difficult but if we win we can move to first place :)

The Olympic Games doesn't matter much in the world of football.
The same goes for the Confed Cup, Club World Cup and the Intercontinental Cup.


And no I don't see Brazil being the strongest contender for the World Cup. The quality went down dramatically after the huge victory in 2002.
Spain is probably the biggest contender and the rest who have good chances are England (due to the good qualification), Italy & Germany.
Brazil is currently on the level of Portugal and France. All of them can play football, but they aren't showing it.

Brazil has had some great matches in the qualifying. Specially against Argentina, they had a rock solid defense and a pretty opportunistic play. Not like the usual Brazil, but they're serious contenders.

Brazil played really well against us, OK, we sucked, given, but it's not to remove merits from Brazil

They trump France and Portugal, those two are really sucky, Brazil is 2 goals above both teams

@CaptainPreferences: It's harder for Canada's men's team because the competition is much stronger in men's football. We especially see it in Europe where "small" (and young) countries like e.g. Bosnia-Herzegovina or Slowakia are getting stronger and stronger every year, because their best players are playing in Europe's top leagues. There are only few really non-competitive small countries left in men's European football nowadays (mainly countries with only few pros in their national teams like - say - Liechtenstein). I assume the same applies to other continents.

Women's football on the other hand is still a very young sport in comparison to men's football and that's why the countries who promoted women's football first (and more important: take it seriously) are still dominatiing today. Outside of USA and GER it was especially the Scandinavian football federations of Norway and Sweden who developed women's football early.

I somehow always forget the Netherlands.....

Brazil and Spain are currently the strongest contenders for next year's WC in my opinion, but let's not forget the African teams.

I hope an African team will win the World Cup next year for the first time - Ghana and Ivory Coast seem to be very strong at the moment.

Egypt ???????

Egypt is still strong, but it seems not as strong as they were when they impressively dominated African Cup of Nations in 2008.

Egypt is very close to not qualifying to the WC, as Algeria is beating them

Team v • d • e	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts
Algeria	4	3	1	0	6	1	+5	10
Egypt	4	2	1	1	6	4	+2	7
Zambia	4	1	1	2	2	4	−2	4
Rwanda	4	0	1	3	0	5	−5	1

Algeria	—	3 – 1	11-Oct	1 – 0
Egypt	14-Nov	—	3 – 0	1 – 1
Rwanda	0 – 0	0 – 1	—	14-Nov
Zambia	0 – 2	10-Oct	1 – 0	—

You seriously think Brazils performance dropped? Of course it did, but they are still the best team in the world. In 2002 they probably had the team of the decade with Ronaldo, Cafu, Ronaldinho Roberto Carlos and Rivaldo in their prime. Spain is an overrated team. Yes they won the European championships but the confed cup was a perfect example of their typical choking. Greece won Euro 2004 what did they do in the last 4 years or France after 2000? Can Spain send out a B or C team and beat teams like France or Russia? Brazil would smash france or Portugal. Remember when Brazil gave Portugal a 6-2 ass whipping last year? That waswhen they were playing "bad".

Also Italy being a strong contender is a joke. The squad tehy have is largely unchanged from 2006 and they players they brought in are average. They failed badly at Euro 2008 and Confed Cup. They need some fresh new blood. The strongest contenders are England, Germany, Brazil, Spain, and Holland.