Copa America

I'll be the first to admit, I used to hate soccer. The lack of scoring, questionable refereeing and over dramatic injuries turned me off for a long time. Over the past couple of years however, I have come to enjoy the sport more and more because of the pace of the game along with the fact that at any moment, a single shot can change the complexion of a match. There are highly competitive leagues all across the world like La Liga, and the English Premiership. The best part about the sport is there are huge tournaments going on each year whether it's the FIFA World Cup, Copa America, Gold Cup, or the Confederations Cup. In essence, these highly competitive international tournaments act like championships in the soccer world.

Now to the task at hand, the Copa America tournament. I was a little surprised that Brazil was eliminated as early as they were, but I'm more surprised by the way Peru and Venezuela have played throughout the tournament considering how poorly they played in World Cup qualifying last year. While many won't believe me, I actually predicted the final would be Uruguay vs Paraguay. I predicted Uruguay because of their talented frontline combination of Luis Suarez and Diego Forlan along with their defensive minded play from head coach Oscar Tabarez. Both Suarez and Forlan are great off the first touch, can shoot a variety of shots from both feet and can set teammates up for goal scoring opportunities. I also predicted Paraguay because of their very physical, methodical, defensive minded play. While they may not look pretty offensively, they still get the job done with a timely goal at critical moments. They have a clamp down defense that throws opponents off their rhythm, which causes them to make mistakes that they don't normally make like bad passes and yellow cards from frustration.

Prediction- I believe Uruguay's combination of tough defense with stylistic offense gives them the advantage over Paraguay in this match. It will be a hard fought match, but I believe Diego Forlan will be the difference maker and contribute in some way to the games only goal. Uruguay 1 Paraguay 0.