I have no idea who will win the World Cup, never have. Group play is where it's at. Clashes of playing style, fan style and that element of surprise make it far more interesting than the "don't lose" attitude of the elimination rounds. When the World Cup is not in your time zone, here are some ways to keep it even more interesting.
Food
Aside from air and water, there is nothing that unites people quite like the necessity of food. My wife knows this. She decided in 2010 that for each day of the World Cup, we would eat cuisine from one of the day's victors one week later. We discovered some of the best stew ever thanks to Belgium. I learned what arepas were from Venezuela. And the list goes on. It's a tradition that we keep to this day.
Unknown Teams
Since teams come from all over, the odds that any given fan is familiar with all of them is nil. Since every criteria is as arbitrary as every other, I have decided to choose who to root for based on how much higher ranked the women's team from that country is compared to the men. FIFA ranks both the women and the men. For this particular day, I have chosen Japan (6 vs 61, +55) over Senegal (82 vs 27, -55), currently holding a half-time draw.
Ok, that was perhaps one of the least "don't lose" sets of elimination games in World Cup history. Congratulations, France! While they did pack it in defensively, they were certainly enterprising when opportunities arose, as evidenced by their final goal tally.
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