The World Championship is Starting © EuroFootball.com

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or football enthusiasts, the four-year wait is over. On Friday, June 9th, in Germany, the biggest sporting event in the world will kick off – the 2006 FIFA World Cup, attracting the attention of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The national teams of 32 countries will begin their 31-day battle for each footballer's dream – the right to climb onto the championship winners' podium in Berlin on July 9th and be called the strongest in the world for four years.

Undoubtedly, the defending champions Brazil should be considered the favorite of the tournament. However, history has already shown that there are no unbeatable teams, and in competitions where a single mistake can decide everything, predicting is certainly not easy. Especially knowing that it is always harder to defend the trophies won, and many teams will do their best to prevent the Brazilians from doing so.

The host country Germany will try to perform in front of their spectators as best as possible. After not very successful performances in recent years, Italy, Spain, and Argentina will seek to return to the football elite. Many of the French players who won in 1998 have the last chance, strong teams like the Netherlands and Portugal also have, and teams like the Czech Republic, Sweden, Ukraine, or one of the African countries may surprise.

One thing is clear – the connoisseurs of the most popular sport on the planet will witness a month-long, unforgettable, colorful football spectacle, full of tears, pain, disappointment, joy, anger, dramatic, tense, intriguing episodes, and other indescribable and unforgettable things. We invite you to experience all this together with us here, in the EuroFootball.com fan community. We will keep you informed about the latest events from Germany and provide detailed analyses of all matches.

Before the battles in the stadiums begin, we suggest taking a look at all the participating national teams in the tournament.

Group A Overview

Group B Overview

Group C Overview

Group D Overview

Group E Overview

Group F Overview

Group G Overview

Group H Overview