Preview Day 1

South Africa v Mexico / Uruguay v France

Well, definitely not the most exciting of games in this pretty evenly balanced group but it'll be very interesting to see how Les Bleus react after their embarrassing loss to China. France still has deep talent even though they lack the quality of the great '98 and 2000 teams. If - and due to Domenech that's a big if - they somehow click as a team they're still good enough to win it all (bold claim, I guess). I'm not even going to pretend to know much about Uruguay other than that Forlan is a pretty good player outside of England. (Some count them among the dark horses, though.) If they can live up to their thuggish reputation they may piss of France just enough to squeeze out a draw.

South Africa's under a lot of pressure as they could easily fail to make it to the next round. Mexico usually gets there (and not much further). For some reason, people seem to think that all the African teams (other than Algeria) have home advantage and will therefore do pretty well. Questionable Pan-Africanism aside, my guts still tell me to go with the Bafana Bafana (which apparently, and somewhat disappointingly, simply means 'The Boys').

The French in '98 were truly one of the great World Cup teams of all time in that they had so many world class players and very few weaknesses. Many thought that this team somehow represented the new national identity of a postcolonial and multicultural France but these symbolic politics now seem rather naive and outdated. In this regard, Laurent Dubois has written a wonderful book about the relationship between French soccer and empire.