007 non so niente di futbol

(for some reason this post failed yesterday, it may show up twice, if so, sorry!)

The World Cup finals start tomorrow. I have never watched soccer before, but I am going to give it a shot. The finals are in Germany, so since it's the same time zone I don't really have an excuse. Plus, apparently, when Italy's playing there's not much else to do around here besides squeeze into a bar and watch the game.

First of all, I had to do a Google search to find a webpage with the schedule. Embarassing. Then I had to read about it to find out how it works. Here's what I learned. 32 teams made the finals, including Italy and the US. In the 1st round, the teams are divided into 8 groups of 4. Each team plays the other 3 teams in the division. Then the top 2 teams in each division move on to the sweet 16 round. From then it's single elimination: a round of 8 teams, a round of 4 teams. Then the 2 losers of the final four play each other for 3rd place. And finally, the championship game on July 9th.

The other interesting part is that Italy and the US are in the same 4-team group along with Ghana and the Czech Republic. They play each other on June 17th.