Blogdom's Best: The World Cup

It's hard to believe that the World's Biggest Sporting Event is but one rotation of the earth away (or maybe it's already here; international time confuses us). Come with us now to the far reaches of the blogosphere, as we survey the playing field just hours befor the big kickoff.

• U.S. Soccer.com is covering the World Cup like nobody's business; you'll be able to watch all U.S. matches over on their site, plus they'll hit you with various interviews and features on daily podcasts. (UPDATE: You can't actually watch games there. Sorry. They're still pretty cool.) Sweet. Their first report? Someone is going around Hamburg covering the city with smiley faces. To the Germans, of course, this is just a notch below terrorism.

• Thanks to the New York Times World Cup blog, we finally got to see this; Colombia goalkeeper Luis Enrique Martinez scoring from 100 meters on Poland's goalkeeper, Tomasz Kuszczak, in a friendly last week. Ha. By the way, The New Republic's World Cup blog, "Goal Post," should provide all kinds of intelligent commentary, if you're into that type of thing.

• Over at RivalFish, they're comparing World Cup teams to their American sports team and individual counterparts. England is Derek Jeter, for some reason. Enjoy the fun.

• If it's time for the World Cup, you know what else it's time for. That's right; poetry. A fine selection over at FootballPoets.org, including Socceroos Singalong, and World Cup Haikus.

• The World Bank Group's World Cup blog estimates that 80 perecent of all humans will be watch some or all of the World Cup. That's even more impressive when you factor in monkeys and very smart dogs.

• Also worth checking out: World Cup Fevah.

• Hastily researched, partially unfounded World Cup predictions over at Trivial Pursuit. Just what we've been looking for!

• And of course you can't go wrong with Mike Cardillo's That's On Point, pretty much the definitive soccer blog IOHO.