Paraguay 2-0 Brazil, US 8-0 Barbados. World Cup Qualifying is ON

By: Laurie | June 15th, 2008

A shock result in Paraguay today as a ten-man Paraguayan team demolished Brazil 2-0 in World Cup qualifying.

Not-so-shock result in Los Angeles, as the US men took down Barbados, 8-0, after opening the scoring in the 55th second. (Yes, second.)

Damn, I love being in CONCACAF.

World Cup qualifying is underway, and everybody wants to be one of the thirty-two teams heading to South Africa in 2010. Qualifying is now in progress in Africa, Asia, South America (CONMEBOL), Oceania and CONCACAF. European (UEFA) qualifying won’t get going until August, after the Euro championships, but the rest of the world is now battling it out. And today was a big matchday for a number of teams.

The US strolled to victory with a hat trick by Brian Ching, a brace by Clint Dempsey, and single goals by Landon Donovan, Michael Bradley and Eddie Johnson. (Only one each? The slackers.) For more on this game, check out our USA blog.

Canada also had a good day, winning 3-0 over St. Vincent & the Grenadines. (Which is a country, not a rock band. Just fyi.)

And Mexico struggled a bit before coming on to beat Belize 2-0.

Meanwhile, down in South America, a surprisingly strong Paraguayan team beat Brazil 2-0, despite going down a man early in the second half. I’m not all that surprised by this. Paraguay played France in a friendly recently and they were extremely good. And I saw Brazil play Canada a couple of weeks back, and even though they won 3-2, they played lackluster, boring futbol. When half your team suffers from Brazilian Superstar Disease, it makes it that much harder to win against motivated teams. Maybe this will be a wakeup call and we’ll start seeing that beautiful Brazilian game again soon.

And Argentina managed to get a 1-1 draw with another underrated team, Ecuador, after the Argentinians finally managed to score in the fourth minute of stoppage time.

We’re going to be covering all of World Cup qualifying over at our sister site, World Cup Blog, which covers the international game. If your country isn’t being covered and you’d like to give it a go, email Daryl at daryl[at]theoffside[dot]com. These aren’t paid positions, but they’re a lot of fun, and a great way to support your team.

Full CONCACAF results from FIFA.com.

FIFA match recap, Brazil-Paraguay.

Argentina liveblog at World Cup Blog