Oisin:
Maradona has done a poor job as a coach! Brazil has been acting like Italy (a team of prima donnas). Both teams have remarkable talent and a great propensity of playing poorly as a team. Germany usually plays very well as a team in major international competitions. England's style of football tends not to stack up well against teams with more controlled midfields and defenses. Spain and France are simply unknown as to how they will present themselves at the World Cup. Both have the potential to go far. US looked good one-to-two years ago to finally make it past round one. Lately, they have not been looking good at all. Africa can field some good teams but they do not play enough together to gel as solid teams. Most of the good players from Africa leave that continent as quickly as they can and only go back to their countries for as brief a time as possible. That leads me to discount any of the potentially better squads coming out of Africa.
Germany, Brazil, Spain, France appear to be front-runners in my book. My vote tends to go to Brazil, if not for the players, then for the female fan
!
Marc