JustChelsea.com

It has been widely reported that Chelsea were keen to make a £50m bid for the former World-Player-of-the-Year Kaka as it seemed he had fallen out of favour at Real Madrid. The incoming manager Jose Mourinho was believed to want to sell Kaka to raise the funds for him to bring in his own targets, but the Portugese manager has announced that he wants Kaka to stay at the Bernabeau, and he believes he can restore the confidence of the Brazilian star.

The biggest bit of Chelsea transfer news this morning is the report that the Blues are now favourites over Man City to sign the brilliant Valencia and Spain star David Silva.

It is thought that, although Man City could certainly offer Silva a bigger paypacket, Chelsea can offer him the chance to play Champions League football, and possibly even win it!

It is being reported today that the out-of-contract Chelsea midfielder Michael Ballack is to be given a Premier League lifeline by the Man Utd manager Alex Ferguson.

The Sunday Mirror says that United are to offer Ballack a one-year contract with an option of another year. The Germany captain has been linked with a return to his old club Bayer Leverkusen, but Man Utd are one of the few teams that could afford to pay Ballack the wages to which he has become accustomed. Leverkusen director of sport Rudi Voller admitted that they would like Ballack to return, but he also said they couldn’t afford his wages!

South Korea (or the Korea Republic, as it prefers to be called), have become a regular at the World Cup Finals over the last 20 years, and proved yet again their international credentials in this comfortable win against the Greece team that has been underperforming lately.

Korea attacked from the start, and once they got their head in front they never looked like being beaten, in fact the had enough chances to bury Greece completely.

Diego Maradona’s Argentina team were very unconvincing in the qualifying matches, but with the talent at their disposal, can never be written off at a World Cup Tournament.

Nigeria are always considered to be one of the stronger African teams, and on their home continent were hoping to give a good account of themselves, but Argentina just proved to be that little bit stronger.

Although this German team has been labeled as the weakest team for decades, you don’t need to go to the experts to see who the clear favourite is in this match. The Germans are expected to win this win even with the absence of Michael Ballack.

In their match against the USA, the Australian defense appeared weak and will find it hard to restrict the Germans from scoring. That being said, stranger things have happened in the game of football.

England came into their first World Cup fixture as hot favourites against USA, and when the new England captain Steven Gerrard put them 1-0 after just four minutes it looked like they were going to cruise into the knockout rounds.

But although England pressed and pressed, they couldn’t find a way past Tim Howard in the USA goal, but that was mostly due to ineffective shooting rather than any special skills from the ex-Man Utd keeper.

Argentina fans were not let down as their team put up a superb performance in their opening game against Nigeria. The score line in the end only read 1-0, but that’s only because Nigeria’s goalkeeper Vincent Enyema had an outstanding match and kept the ball out of the net.

Players from both sides looked extremely tense as they walked on to the field. Nigeria started slowly and that’s probably the biggest reason why the conceded a goal very early in the match.

This had all the hallmarks of a brilliant opening game for the 2010 World Cup, and south Africa and Mexico didn’t disappoint.

Bafana Bafana were unbeaten in 12 games before this one, and Mexico had looked exciting in their wam up game, with Giovanni Dos Santos and Arsenal’s Carlos Vela leading the attack. Most of the early action came from Mexico as South Africa looked nervous, but the home side gradually found their feet.

France came into this competition in disarray, and with a terrible run of results that ended with a 1-0 defeat by China last week, but they were still hot favourites to win this group.

Uruguay only qualified via a play-off against Costa Rica after finishing fifth in the South American group, but with Diego Forlan up front were always going to be a danger going forward.