Soccer World Championship 2006 in Germany

One week is over now, here the first resumee. Besides some annoying aspects like

• poor organization of ticket sales, e.g. only 30% of the tickets for free sale (for the fans!)
• ridiculous greed for money of the FIFA, leading to marketing that nobody, nobody understands
• the omnipresent "Emperor" Franz Beckenbauer, the chief of the organizational committee

the Soccer World Championship 2006 in Germany seems to be a success so far.

I'm in Italy and therefore I can look it from abroad with the neccessary distance. We get some information from our friends and families at home:

• Nuremberg is on of the game hosting cities. It offered Mexico vs. Iran and England vs. Trinidad-Tobago. There were 40.000 Mexican and 60.000 English fans in town. Huge parties took place, no riots as far as we know.
• Thousands of teenagers camp in Nuremberg and turn the night into day.
• Interesting and fair matches (no penalty so far!) with nearly sold out stadiums

We had the chance to watch almost all the games here and enjoyed this. Germany has won the first to matches against Costa Rica and Poland. In the round of sixteen probably England or Sweden will wait for us. That's hard enough.
Sweden is my favourite besides Germany. They have beat Paraguay yesterday in an unbelievably fast and technically outstanding game. We can start to pray already.

No success for Africa up to know, but this can change soon. We saw Trinidad-Tobago fight, maybe the biggest outsider.
None of the favourites started very convincingly. Even Brazil hat its problems.
Looks like some thrilling weeks lying before us. I will stay tuned.