World Cup 2010 update - who's in the lead???

The group stage of the tournament has now finished.

There have been lots of upsets, including 2006 world cup champions Italy and 2006 runner-up France both finishing last in their groups!!

One of the best European qualifiers Serbia is also heading home early along with another strong European team, Denmark.

Some interesting things and a quick summary of our picks so far ...

• everyone picked Italy to go at least as far as the quarter-finals!!! a costly mistake for all of us in terms of overall points as it turns out
• most of us picked England and USA to advance and finish in that order. No one however picked the USA to finish ahead of England as it actually happened
• kudos to Meliss and Linds in Group D, the only two to get their Group D picks spot on
• commiserations to Dad and Jordan, who both thought we had a perfect Group C (England and Slovenia in that order and the only ones not to pick the US to advance) until the last minute dramatic US goal against Algeria completely ruined that order and put the US in first
• Japan was the only team of the 4 teams in Group E that did not get a pick from anyone in the pool to advance! it turns out however that they did advance to the next round
• our most successful Group was probably Group H - we all picked both Chile and Spain to advance from that group
• but the prize so far for most unorthodox pool (that is still doing pretty well) is ... Char!! Char was the only one in the pool to correctly pick Uruguay to advance (while also correctly predicting Mexico to advance at the expense of France, as France was also picked by many of us) and was also the only one to correctly pick S. Korea to advance. She also has one of the very few picks seeing Paraguay to the quarter-finals, which isn't looking like such a bad pick at this stage either.

So the results of the group so far ...

1. Goo and Mom (tied for first place) 155 points

closely followed by

3. Char & Rico (tied for 3rd place) 150 points

5. Beej 145 points

6. Ian 140 points

7. Woozie 135 points

8. Dad & Jordan (tied for 8th) 125 points

10. Melissa 120 points

but as it's early stages and more points are awarded for later in the tournament, anything could still happen. all of the winners we picked are still in the tournament so will keep everyone posted.