In earlier articles I highlighted three of elan’s favorite teams to keep an eye on in, the elan favorites, throughout this year’s World Cup those teams being Algeria, the Ivory Coast and Nigeria. Unfortunately for them, all three teams have been eliminated.

Nicolas Anelka, one of the top Muslim soccer players in the world, was recently kicked off the French team after a disagreement with coach Raymond Domenech. The situation started when Anelka, after a poor initial performance, was benched for the second half of Thursday’s Mexico-France matchup. He did not react well to this benching, supposedly embarking upon a profanity-laced tirade against his coach. It’s unclear just how audible Anelka’s tirade was - initial reports suggested that Anelka was shouting at Domenech, while subsequent reports have suggested that Anelka was speaking quietly and under his breath.

In my introduction to the World Cup last week, I briefly mentioned Spain, Argentina and Brazil as favorites in this year’s tournament. That conventional viewpoint took a bit of a hit after Spain was upset in their opening game against Switzerland. This puts Spain’s ability to emerge from their group, which looked like a shoo-in a week ago, seriously in doubt. But some of our favorite Muslim teams - mainly Ivory Coast, Algeria and Nigeria - had mixed results during their first week of World Cup play.

The 2010 FIFA World Cup is now underway, and while there are a number of majority-Muslim countries in this year’s tournament, many of the best Muslim players don’t in fact play for these countries. Here’s a break down of some key players who are openly Muslim:

As the FIFA World Cup kicks off tomorrow, Algeria, which has been called by some the toughest team at this year’s games, is one country that is less likely to be on any lists of World Cup favorites. In Group C along with England, Slovenia and the United States, Algeria will be a heavy underdog to even make it out of there group. Still, as one of the few Muslim-majority countries participating in the tournament today, we are keeping an eye on them as a personal favorite.