Skip to main content

Thirsty for more

By

Here we go again! The quadrennial celebration of all things football that unites the world. A beacon of all things great in the world where billions of people excitedly gather to watch sporting history. 

Sadly this time around, the only thing the world is united on is a feeling of meh. There’s no debate to be had, this stinks. The corruption, the sportswashing, the human rights. It stinks for the players - what should be their crowning professional achievement and all they’re hearing is they’re either saying too much or not doing enough. It’s a no win situation. And in that vein, I finish the final episode of FIFA uncovered on Netflix and take 3 showers and hunker down to try to just focus on the football. After all, this is what it’s supposed to be about, so let’s make a start on this blog to take our game back!

It’s been an eventful 4 years since last time. Certainly the last host venue didn’t age well….dang, focus on the footie… let’s talk Gareth. This might be a continuation of the feeling of meh. Amazing gradual progression in major tournaments has been forgotten on the back of a long winless streak and a defence including Harry Maguire who despite becoming a professional internet meme,  doesn’t have a viable replacement to put him out of his misery. But, hope springs eternal. As I try to figure out who is going to win groups including Spain & Germany, and France & Denmark, it’s clear that England have a very winnable group. With the preparation run up to the start of the tournament being shorter than Sepp Blatter’s list of life regrets, a team playing themselves into form during the group stage will surely be the profile of the successful team, and England have a great chance to do that. They also have an equally plausible chance of failing to score against an Iranian defence which was miserly in qualifying, and freezing under pressure against the US and Wales who will be fired up to beat their over-hyped opponents. Here’s hoping for the former. 

The other thing working in England’s favour is the volume of distractions off the pitch. Usually we’d be subject to extensive analysis of England’s failings, Phil Foden’s WhatsApp messages, or Jack Grealish’s pre match partying. So far Ronaldo is England’s player of the tournament, taking away the tabloid column inches with his Man Utd hissy fit. Well played Ron!  

And that’s about it for now. Ready to get started… Panini album slowly inching towards completion, with my boys still desperately seeking Jordan Pickford (let’s hope he turns up both figuratively and sticker-wise), winter World Cup schedule has been entered into the work calendar (week one being a holiday week here in the US certainly giving us something to be thankful for!), and wallchart has taken pride of place. 

Let’s just hope FIFA disappear into the background… although I have about as much confidence on that as Grealish might now have on securing his pre-match vodka..  as I sign off, a last minute beer ban and Infantino’s cry for help as a repressed ginger. Oh my. 

It all leaves me thirsty for more. More football, less FIFA. Let’s play. 


 



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

One bar of 4G

By
 I'm back, within close proximity of World Cup telly. For a while (after discovering a remote cidery), there was a chance that I'd miss more of this tournament - but after an unexpected sleep in a field, my camp trip has finished without further incident. The footy gods seemingly smiled upon me, as the one bar of 4G reception, whilst often unable to load a web page, did somehow manage to give me solid BBC sounds audio. And with that, I have largely kept in touch with proceedings.  The biggest challenge has been sleep to be honest. Last night, in a cider-induced fever dream, I managed to take in the first half of Morocco v Brazil, which then spliced itself together with the second half of Scotland v Haiti - which was weird. What was more weird was that in between , I had a dream about Tyrone Mings, on horseback, making a rash challenge that managed to destroy both his own knees and the horses existence. But this is something I should speak to a therapist about, rather than leav...
Post a Comment
Read more