sad swedish fans
Pop giant Sweden failed to make the final 32.

We’re looking for people who want to manage a team in next year’s Pop World Cup.

If you don’t know the concept of the Pop World Cup, it’s simple. Tracks from participating countries go head to head in a tournament to decide which country is the champion of pop. As a manager, your job is to select tracks – between 3 and 7, depending how far your team gets – for the country you manage.

The game will start towards the end of January 2010, and you’ll know who you’re managing on December 5th, so you’ll have plenty of time to find songs. That really is all you need to know!

If you want to take part, leave your name (and some kind of contact – Twitter name, email, whatever) in the comments box. This time we’re going to give you some degree of choice as to which team you get. So please either put the word RANDOM next to your name, indicating that you’ll take whatever country you’re given, or pick FOUR countries you wouldn’t mind managing. (Country selection after the cut)

The countries taking part in the Pop World Cup are the same as those taking part in the football world cup. So if you don’t want a random choice you can pick from:

Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Cote D’Ivoire, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Holland, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, North Korea, Paraguay, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, United States, Uruguay

The draw (matching countries with managers) will take place at the start of Poptimism on the 4th December. We’ll allocate teams to the managers who’ve taken the random option first, then draw teams for people who named preferred countries.

That’s enough detail. This will be awesome and it is very fun to do (if sometimes heartbreaking and nerve-wracking).