Chile

Chile - an unknown quantity. Well, half accurate. The quantity will be 23, as that is the maximum amount of players a country can bring to the World Cup. As for being unknown, it is true that with only Gonzalo Jara playing in the UK (for West Brom), it is hard to evaluate the South American’s chances. However, if the stats from their qualifying campaign are anything to go by, this team is going to be as exciting as their misspelt peppers are spicy.

The Chileans qualified second behind Brazil in the South American qualifying, having scored 32 goals in 18 games, once more, finishing one behind the leaders Brazil. However, La Roja’s conceded 22 goals on their way to the finals, evidentially showing a weakness in defence.

Chile is led by Argentinean Marcelo Bielsa, who, as the above suggests, focuses very much on free-flowing, attacking football. These adjectives are easily overused but with a preferred formation of 3-3-1-3, Chile really do deserve such accolades.

Bielsa’s first move when he became the manager of Chile was to drop Marcelo Salas, the country’s highest ever goal scorer, in favour of younger talents, many of whom helped Chile to finish 3rd in the Under-20 World Cup in 2007. This was a brave move, but one which is paying dividends. With the likes of Alexis Sanchez, Udinese’s 21year old, being one of the youngsters to watch out for. Sanchez plays on the right of the front three and was snapped up by the Italian Serie A side at the tender age of 17, where he has become a crowd favourite due to his trickery.

Spearheading the attack however, is Humberto Suazo. The Real Zaragoza striker scored 10 of Chile’s 32 goals in qualifying and was the top scorer in the South American qualifiers.

If the opposition want to prevent Sanchez and Suazo from giving Chile a chance of winning matches, then it is playmaker Matias Fernandez that they need to stop. Fernandez plays the pivotal “1” role, in the formation otherwise occupied by the number “3”. He was, unsurprisingly, born in Argentina, however, his dad is Chilean and he moved back to his father’s homeland aged just 4, and so has legitimate reason to call himself Chilean. Despite struggling at Villarreal, most of Chile’s play will be directed by him.

Chile find themselves in Group H, along with Switzerland, Honduras and, tournament favourites, Spain. Honduras should just be proud to be at South Africa, and realistically, will not be making it past the group stages. Which means the second place spot should be between Chile and Switzerland. Anybody who remembers watching Switzerland in the last two previous tournaments will surely hope for their own sanity, that Chile’s attacking flair overcomes one of the dullest teams in the tournament.

If Chile do win their first two games in the World Cup, this should set up a Latino party with Spain on the 25th of June. Spain, if they have any real aspirations to win this tournament, should certainly have qualified by this game, hopefully creating uninhibited, box-to-box football which the world waits to witness from two of the most attacking teams in South Africa.

If Chile make it through the group though, they face a second round match against the winners of Group G. Unfortunately, Group G includes Brazil, Portugal and the Ivory Coast. Whoever wins that group will have started the tournament in a more than spritely fashion, so even if Chile have shown us the gripping football we anticipate, their lack of quality defence may prove all too easy to breach against such accomplished opposition.

Chile may be an unknown quantity before the World Cup begins on the 11th June, yet come the end of the second round, some of their players may well be on the tip of the tongue of schoolchildren across the country, as they all imitate their new found idols in the playground.