North Korean Explosion

Good news for planet Earth: Kim Jong-Il may finally have a reason not to blow up the world. When next year’s FIFA World Cup takes place in South Africa, the North Korean team, for the first time since 1966, will be suiting up to play in the finals. They’ll join Japan, South Korea and Australia as last of Asia’s automatic qualifiers for the 2010 event.

In a match that never lit up anyone’s radar outside of the respective diehards for each club, South Korea and Iran finished their qualifying match in a draw. This left the door wide open for North Korea. With a win over Saudi Arabia, they would be in. Although the game ended in a draw, North Korea claimed their second-ever berth in Group 2 due to a goal difference.

In a move that shocked most people, North Korea actually played solid defense instead of going on the offensive. Perhaps it’s lucky that the coach, Kim Jong-hun, isn’t Jong-Il after all.

North Korea has a long road ahead of them. With a year left to go, the training begins now. If we know anything about North Korea, it’s that they don’t like to lose. Their players will be more than ready to go. But with defending champs Italy, France, Spain, Japan, and even the USA in the mix, North Korea’s odds are a little slim at the moment.

They’re currently ranked 106 in the world according to the FIFA rankings. For North Korea to even make it out of the first round of the finals would be a shocker. Undoubtedly, they’ll be one of the event’s largest underdogs. If you’re a fan of the underdog who loves betting on a long shot, North Korea is your team.

Brazil is the prohibited favorite to date, with Argentina, England, Germany and Italy close behind. This event is watched by over a billion people around the globe, and all told, it generates more betting revenue than an entire decade of Super Bowls. That’s not chump change!

To give you a perspective of the lines here, take a look at two teams and how they stack up on the betting sheet. Brazil is 4-1 to win, while American Samoa is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000-1 to win. Imagine a roulette bet or a regular sporting bet that held those kinds of odds. Although the line isn’t fixed on North Korea yet, they’ll end up closer to American Samoa than Brazil.