World Cup 2006, nearly here!!!

[rocky56709]

my personal first choice by miles for top scorer is luca toni currently plying his trade in serie a for forentina he has banged in 28 goals in 35 appearances this season including 16 in his first 13 matches. before that he had scored 50 in two seasons for palermo first helping them to promotion from serie b to a and then to a highly unlikely uefa cup spot the following season. As you can imagine the combination of these fantastic 3 seasons have seen him rise into the ranks of the italian national team and rather rapidly too. Through the downfall of many of his counterparts through many demeanours such as age, injuries and being paid to dam much (mr vieri!) he was given a chance late in the world cup qualifying campaign and he grabbed it by the scruff of the neck. In 5 appearances he has scored 5 times. Including a hat trick against Belarus and individual goals against Holland and germany proving not only can he score bagfulls but he can keep his cool against the bigger sides. So why on earth is he still priced up a rather massive 25/1!?!

Probably due to the fact he is a rookie in terms of real international experience and coupled with the fact that forentina are nowhere near the biggest team in italy although they’ve a very good chance of playing champions league football next year, but looking at the betting above him hardly conspires a reason against backing a striker who has just broken gabriel batistutas record number of league goals in a season for the team from Florence.
Market leaders are as you would expect Brazilians and we have ronaldo and Adriano at the forefront, single figures in some places!!! This is quite simply astounding to myself for quite a few reasons.

One: both have had highly poor campaigns with Adriano starting well but having a fall out and barely featuring on the score sheet for inter in the last 5 months and ronaldo having a terrible season with real Madrid and is a mere shadow of his 8 goal world cup scorer in 2002

Two: even if they were in form such as hot as tonis remember there playing with each other and ronaldhino and considering he’d hit all penalties likely then you’re splitting most of brazils goals between the 3.

With them out of the way we come to the likes of van nistlerooy, rooney(injured now)henry and owen(should be back) all around 16/1 and apart from henry ,who in my humble opinion is playing for a highly over rated French team(they got beat 2-1 at home to slovenia/slovakia one of them recently and struggled through qualifying), the others have been plagued with injuries and spells on the bench. Yes people may argue its a different game entirely with your national team but can you honestly say you think van nistlerooy is going into this world cup on top of his game and himself and crespo go into a group against not only each others countries but also ivory coast(African cups finalists) and Serbia, the rightly entitled group of death…….
And slightly below toni you’re talking the likes of very second rate strikers in my opinion on a world stage such as torres of spain, fringe forward players and therefore likely to score less goals such as robinho and messi so it only strengths tonis case for the top prize.


Ok the negative except for lack of experience…….well you could say italy have a tough group we’re talking united states, Ghana and the Czechs. However on closer inspection this isn’t all that true. Usa were recently thumped 4-1 by germany in a friendly(whom italy beat 4-1)and although you cant read too much into friendlies it still speaks volumes to myself, Ghana are an unknown force but I think they’ll struggle in their first world cup and the Czechs are overrated and can defiantly leak goals at the back. Over the qualifying campaigns and warm up games to the world cup italy have also changed from their defence defence defence approach to a more smooth and slick attacking team exciting to watch, this can even be seen in the Italian league were goals have been flying in every week their game has simply evolved. I myself fancy them to leave germany at least semi finalists and toni will be a big part of this, he was avaliable at 33s back in december but that’s been nibbled down due to a few reports being published on the net. But I felt id give everyone my thoughts on him and why he still represents such good value.



Rocky

[manchestermurph@fsmail.ne]

cheers for the info sounds like a good bet,think ill have a couple of £ on him.

[BingoWayne]

With Rooney's broken metatarsal there's no way England are going to win the World Cup, unless Brazil crash into the Atlantic on their way over.

However, I think because of Rooney and Owen's injury doubts, we may well see England go 1 up front with Peter Crouch as target man. I bet he will surprise alot of teams with his height and skill on the ground.

My tip for golden boot!! COME ON ENGLAND!!

*He's big, he's red...his feet stick out the bed, Peter Crouch, Peter Crouch!*