Skip to main content

Tshalabalalalala

By
Martin Tyler had some kind of seizure this afternoon Stateside as he disappointingly tried to spring into a song as he announced one of the more memorable opening goals of a world cup finals....... I agree Birchy, not quite Cameroon v Argentina, but lets not burden the lowest ranked hosts ever with such lofty standards......

It does seem that we've both been watching the same games today, and I'm in agreement with a lot of your observations...

South Africa:

  • The most nervous and apprehensive start to a football game since Graham told Carlton not to do that

  • Brilliant opening goal

  • Less than sublime offside trap and the appearance that they had never defended a set piece in their lives

  • Khune the goalie - I can't make my mind up. He treated the football as if it was made of molten lava, yet his hasty distribution would turn out to be the best defence splitting pass of the day

  • Stevie P very quiet. Maybe that puts him closer to signing that Everton contract.
Mexico:

  • A very dodgy keeper

  • Lots of nice passing but not a lot of substance

  • Mr Blanco - you beat me to it Birchy, this was spectacular. An inspiration to ageing immobile would be footballers the world over....
Uruguay:

  • Commentators Ian Darke and Ally McCoist (is there anyone left in England covering the games?!!?!) mentioning a million times that Suarez scored a bucketload this season..... this was not the best advertisement for the Dutch league.... he was terrible

  • Diego Forlan.... should have buried that 2nd half chance, and thus filling my pockets at 33/1 to be first goalscorer and Uruguay winning 1-0

  • A South American team playing to their stereotype

France:


  • Four words. Franck. Ribery. High. Definition. I may not sleep tonight.

Ok, Mr Lalas is telling me that England are "ripe for the picking"..... I must go.

One last thing though.... with the benefit of the US sports coverage, we were able to cut straight to the World Championship of Basketball, where I caught a vision of Timmy Cahill's corner flag celebration, with a twist.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjgK6YHse-o

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Azteca

By
 Well, this one has crept up on me hard! I've barely had time to recover from Villa's Europa League win a fortnight ago; distracted all the while with SkySports trying to sell off our squad to The Big Six and reading stories of the thunderstorms and the visa complexities facing fans, players and referees of countries that Trump doesn't like today - and yet now here we are, listening to Gary Neville self reflecting on his own career as a scene setter for the World Cup. This one is a weird one. The expanded format and cruel time-zone scheduling mean that I go into it with no ambitions to 'watch it all'. The group stages are, on paper, almost devoid of any real jeopardy. The bloating of the tournament means there are now more groups than realistic winners, and with that, of course, no groups of death. And to cater for the stupid total number of teams which has to be 8,16,32 or even 64 dammit - just no other actual number; we have the awful spectacle of most  3rd place ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Geography lessons

By
 I'm writing this as Cape Verdi's masterplan is 9 minutes in, versus the mighty (but missing some players) Spain. They are the second nation (after Curaçao) that I didn't even know was a nation - and I have a degree in geography. So, let me share my learning. Curaçao, a Caribbean island has been a country in its own right since 2010. Prior to that, its the usual depressing story of European colonisation, abandonment (when the Europeans realised it wasn't stacked full of precious metals), reinvigorated interest (slave trade) and finally a degree of independence.  Cape Verdi on the other hand is a country (Island nation off the west coast of Senegal) that is older than I am, so I feel I should know better in their case. Again it has history of being a European colony and is another epicentre of the slave trade.  With this in mind, the needle matches to look out for later in the tourney are Curaçao vs Netherlands and Cape Verdi vs Portugal. After Curaçao's outing last...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pacing

By
 The teams that win this thing tend to pace themselves, or so the narrative goes. By that logic, France will burn fast and burn bright but ultimately fall short. Anyone watching their front four might disagree. My group chat were discussing the relative merits of Henry vs Mbappe last night, with the score at 0-0 vs Sweden. I declared for Henry and then over the course of 30 minutes he proved me emphatically wrong. He is so fast, hits the ball so cleanly, and a new thing at this tournament, actually seems to gel with team-mates. Whether you can do anything but gel with Olise remains to be seen. They certainly seem massively equipped to go all the way. Proper full backs, a dependable goalie, solid CD and CM options and the crazy front four with the likes of Doue and Cherki in reserve.  Another team surely doomed by being too good too soon are Mexico, who are playing with that lovely abandon that hosts usually do. They've been fun and I'm annoyed that all their games have been at...
Post a Comment
Read more