Blog 27

As I mentioned in my last blog, I am going to write some more about soccer. In this blog, I will write about the A Match. A Match stands for a match between countries. Even though all of the players have their club teams, they should play for their countries. Players are proud to play for their countries even though they do not get paid for playing for their countries. There are two kinds of A Matches: Friendly matches and matches for the tournament. Friendly match is a match between countries which two countries appointed to have a match. Match for the tournament is also an A Match. However, it is for the competition. There are lots of competitions for A Matches. But, the most popular competition is the World Cup. Almost all countries are playing for the World Cup, the largest sport festival in the world. Only 32 countries can play in the World Cup. So countries are divided to continents and playing to get the assigned tickets for the continent. When all of 32 countries are selected for the World Cup, then there is a draw for the group in December, a year before the World Cup. World Cup is holding in even year between two Olympics in the summer. There are 8 groups of 4 countries and only 2 countries can join for the next round. Then, it changes to knock out stage until the final match. For the next blog, I will write about 2010 World Cup and my country, Korea.