Previewing the 2010 World Cup Final Four

It is hard to believe that the 2010 World Cup is already winding down. The truth of the matter is that we are already three weeks into the tournament. Now just three matches are left to decide who is going to be the 2010 World Champions.

The exciting thing about the remaining teams is that there is a great chance that there will be a new first time champion. This will be guaranteed if Germany are defeated by Spain and Uruguay by the Netherlands.

The Netherlands flew under the radar coming from an easy group and then only needing to defeat Slovakia to make the final eight. Suffice to say this isn’t the case once they defeated Brazil. All live betting was favoring Brazil especially after they raced to a 1-0 win. This changed though when they equalized and then once they took the lead. The Brazilians imploded and panicked and paid the price.

Now they face a resurgent Uruguay. Uruguay haven’t been this far in the World Cup since 1970. They came from another light group because of a failing France and then got by South Korea. They should have lost against Ghana but survived a penalty and then the shoot-out. The two time winners are dreaming of returning to an era of their previous dominance.

Coming into the tournament, the favorite was Spain. This changed after their loss in their opening game to Switzerland. In hindsight, this could have been the best thing that happened to them. They regrouped, topped their group and then got by Portugal and Paraguay with a pair of 1-0 wins. Now they face Germany in the semi-final.

No doubt that Germany has the experience but Spain know they beat them in the final of the 2008 European Championships. For Germany it has been another solid tournament. While everyone else has been losing their head, they have kept theirs. They made the final in 2002 and lost in the semi-finals four years ago. They would love to keep going.

With so much on the line, they should be two fantastic semi-finals. One only hopes that the games are marred by refereeing controversies. There have been too many in this tournament to date; too many wrong red cards and penalties. Too many cases of players trying to con the referees and them falling for it.

Darren Albert writes for this blog. He also writes about betting online.