2006 FIFA World Cup
The 2006 FIFA World Cup was the 18th World Cup, the international football world tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 and took place in Germany. There were 198 teams from all over the world that took part in the cup qualification in September 2003. Thirty one teams qualified including with the hosting nation, Germany.
I was in Saudi Arabia at that time and the people over there were totally in to this event. This was also one of the most watched events in the history of television, with an estimated 26.29 billion viewers. At that time, I loved France. It had all the star players in it and also the best player Zidane, who retired after the World Cup, Henry, the top scorer in the Barclays Premier League at that time. It had the best attackers.
Germany had 12 stadiums throughout the country for the World Cup matches. The stadiums are; Olympiastadion, Signal Iduna Park, Allianz Arena, which was the stadium for Bayern München, a five star German team, Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion, Veltins-Arena, AOL Arena, Commerzbank-Arena, RheinEnergieStadion, AWD-Arena, Zentralstadion, Fritz-Walter-Stadion and EasyCredit-Stadion. All of the German stadiums satisfy the need for at least forty thousand seats.
The squads for the 2006 World Cup consisted of 23 players. Each participating national team had to confirm its 23-player squad by 15 May, 2006. There were five Pots in this tournament. These were Pot A, Pot B, Pot, C, Pot D and the special group which had only two teams, Serbia and Montenegro. Pot A had Argentina, Brazil, which had won the past five FIFA World Cups, England, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico and Spain. Pot B had Angola, Australia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Ghana, Paraguay, Togo and Tunisia. Pot C had Croatia, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden and Ukraine. Pot D consisted of only seven teams. These were Costa Rica, Iran, Japan, Korea Republic, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad and Tobago and United States. The last special pot had Serbia and Montenegro.
The thirty two teams were then divided into eight groups of four teams each. The fixture was round-robin of six games, where each team played a match against every other team in the same group. Teams were awarded three points for each win, one point for a draw and zero points for a defeat. The teams that come first and second in each group qualify for the next Round of 16. The teams other than the first and second in the round-robin are knocked out of the tournament.
The final match of the tournament was France against Italy. Italy won the final math and claimed the record of 4th World Cup. During the final match there was an incident where Italian Defender Materazzi said something to the French Captain Zinedine Zidane, and Zidane head butted Materazzi and a small fight broke up between the French and the Italians. It resulted in a red card for Zidane and a yellow card for Materazzi. That was the last game for Zidane and also the most disappointing. He still believes that it was Materazzi’s fault and that he said something about Zidane’s family. This was the most enjoyable match for me in the 2006 FIFA World Cup.
