After a long wait, the United States' soccer team knows who will be their opponents in the upcoming World Cup in South Africa. The group consists of England, Slovenia and Algeria. The U.S. team needs to prove the advances in the sport over the last years, which began with the hosting and organization of the World Cup in 1994. Since the World Cup in 1994, the U.S. National Team has shown major results in important tournaments, such as their participation in the Confederations Cup, where they beat the #1 ranked country in the world, Spain, in the semi-final of the tournament. Finishing the tournament in second place after being defeated by the powerful national team of Brazil should be considered a major achievement. The biggest adversary for the U.S. team will be England, who showed a very calm front after the draw through manager, Fabio Capello. This will be a solid opportunity for the U.S team to demonstrate the development of soccer in the country and to start to be treated as one of the key players in the future of soccer. However, to prove that they have to play their best game to advance to the second round  of the World Cup, and become one of the top 16 teams in the world. 

SoccerTiger.com, as part of our agreement with the Ardmore Group, is happy to announce that the schedule for 2010's Americas Summer Camps has now been released. Ardmore, as you may recall from last year's campaign, provides dual language and sports camps for youths around the world. The programs are geared towards youths between 8 and 17 years of age and split the time spent between sports training and language courses. Accomodations and camps are available at multiple colleges across the United States and Canada. Accomodations are included for all United States camps, and are available at extra cost through host families for Canada.

In a move reminiscent of Diego Armando Maradona's "Hand of God" goal in the 1986 FIFA World Cup Quarter Finals, the French team's Thierry Henry has managed to qualify his team to the FIFA 2010 World Cup by playing handball, at the expense of Ireland's team.

While we are aware of the saying that all's fair in love and war, soccer should be held to higher standards. FIFA's refusal to move into the 21st century and allow instant replays to be used by judges, as they are in other sports, e.g. American Football, clearly sets the atmosphere for shameful events like these.