The Three Dads World Cup Wonderland

 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...

 Hands up who saw that coming? Exactly. If there was going to be a surprise last night, I'd have expected Japan to deliver it, not Paraguay seeing off Germany on penalties. In fact if you'd told me that was going to happen, I' have assumed you'd spent longer in the sun than Shearer and Mowbray clearly have. Did they run out of factor 50 or what? Japan started the night off vs Brazil. Their football is so neat, tidy, progressive and well-organised that I had a feeling they would go far. But the canary squad came on strong and ultimately deserved their late win. Japan's confidence seemed to drain as the night went on. Vinicius Jr was particularly lively and almost scored what would have been goal of the tournament. On paper the tournament will be better off for Brazil still being in it. But there's more to come from Japan. There is something pure in their stated ambition to have it won by the year 2050; and they seem to have a style, structure and culture where th...

 So its been 72 matches played in the world cup so far. And that mighty surge of games has the net result of us whittling things down to 32 teams, the size of a normal World Cup! That said - the group stages, for me, did provide enough excitement and upset to render it not a disaster. As a lover of the World Cup, more World Cup is not a bad thing; but it is fair to say that I am far more excited about the remaining matches than what has gone before.  Since I last posted, Scotland have had their few days in hell - waiting to see if John McGinn's deflected strike to nick a 1-0 win vs Haiti was enough. It wasn't. Iran had 10 minutes of sheer torture whilst Austria and Algeria faced off and exchanged goals that alternated their qualification status back and forth. A real shame, we know we'd all have liked to see a World Cup matchup of USA vs Iran, with the latter deploying their Strait of Hormuz formation to ensure no USA players pass. England played again, and dominated again,...

 The past 3 days has seen a nation galvanised. A single united purpose. One nation with one voice. IT'S TOO FUCKING HOTTTTT is what this voice says.  St George's crosses replaced with marathon runner recovery suits plastered across the nation's windows. Schools closed, public transport in pieces, internet flakey, and every aircon provider in the land laughing evil villain laughs. It's been a busy week for me, combining childcare with work and a work summer BBQ last night, all that whilst being mainly motivated to lie on the tile floor in my kitchen, the only place that ever dips below 30 degrees. This combined with some awful nighttime scheduling has meant the last couple of days has whizzed past in a bit of a blur. I'll try to round things up. First there was England - 'frustrated by Ghana'. I'd already hit the off switch on the telly before they'd uttered the words "we need to reset our expectations". What I saw was a game we dominated ne...

 The additional fixtures thrown-up by the 48 team competition is making the group game part of the competition absolutely relentless. If memory serves, we'd normally have 3 games per day at this stage of the competition, rather than the 4 we are getting. And they'd normally be in fixed time slots. This expanded schedule basically means that anything beyond work/footie/sleep needs to give, with the day 100% accounted for by those three things. It is definitely a World Cup where I wish I was still a student. Since I last wrote, the tournament has been rolling along nicely. My early comments about "zero jeopardy in the group stages" looks to be fundamentally wrong, as some of the token teams are proving to be far more relevant than that. Curacao grabbed a [genuinely] thrilling point vs Ecuador, the Iranian goalkeeper went into beast mode to deny the Belgium onslaught and grab a point in what was a fascinating game; attack versus defence in large parts, but Iran not witho...

 As the UK enters its second heatwave of the year, things stateside are also hotting up.  Mexico got a good win against South Korea who huffed and puffed but couldn't get the goal. They are left on 3 points with one to go, vulnerable - but group A is screaming out for Mexico and South Korea to qualify and the other two (South Africa and Czechia) to be knocked out.  USA beat a woeful Australia  - it is very hard to gauge whether they are as good as the two wins from two suggests, some knockout football will be the judge of scruffbag Poch.  There was much excitement for the Scotland game, followed by much disappointment. It was a bit of a no-show, as they were second best vs an energetic Morocco. This leaves Scotland in a super precarious position, on 3 points, but with a game vs an increasingly competent looking Brazil team to come. I fancy that goal difference could be the decider for them - avoid 2+ goal defeat and they might be ok. That's a horrid way to go in...

Who knew that by the time I made my seasonal reappearance, two out of three hosts would have enjoyed absolute spankings of comically inept opposition, and even more surprisingly - Birchy would have developed genuine English enthusiasm! I am typing having just witnessed a cagey and uneventful 45 mins of goal-less “action” between Mexico & South Korea, ending in the Mexico fans roundly booing their team at the HT whistle. Cue a goalie clanger 5 mins in to the 2nd half to gift Mexico the lead and those same fans are going BANANAS & lauding their 11 heroes on the field. Love it. So here we are, one week into what is a 5 week extended format marathon, and as I finally shake off my disappointment of Gianni pricing me out of my dream of touring the country for a month (never mind the ticket prices, FIFA wouldn’t even have let the RV in the car park due to their “hospitality” stations), it’s time for a recap of the action so far from the host country: Americana While it could take the ...

 I'm just off the back of watching two of the worst sides in the tournament (South Africa and Czechia) playing out a 1-1 draw. The result keeps their final round of group games potentially interesting, but in truth, neither team deserves to progress.  Today's post is really all about England. The handbrake is officially off. What a game and what a performance. After a slightly cagey first half, where we edged ahead and then sat back and then did so again; we came out like lions in the second half. Three of them. Proper full on, high tempo, attacking. Shot raining in, arms swinging aloft to gee up the crowd. It was lovely stuff. Bellingham completely justified the nod he got over Rogers (even from my clearly biased perspective), Kane was good - he seems to have really upped his game, and does that dropping back thing that was such a mess when Rooney did it, but to great effect now that we have pace alongside him. Not just pace, but pace with permission. I have spent much of the...

 Forty-eight hours since I posted and it feels like a lot has happened. This is when the tournament hits its stride. Games and goals a-plenty, and the relentless surge of the group games just rolls on and on. One thing that has struck me a lot about this tournament is the inconsistency of kick-off times. Where usually there are 3 set time slots for games, this one legitimately seems random. We've had 5pm, 6pm, 8pm, 9pm, 11pm, midnight, 2am, 3am and 5am games, at least. Those are the ones I remember. And it is playing havoc with my routine. Basically, the viewer needs to stay awake and alert at all times.  Cape Verde brought the tournament's first huge upset, holding Spain to a thrilling 0-0 draw, and that sparked a series of draws - Uruguay had a particularly bad tempered 1-1 draw vs Saudi, Belgium stunk the place out until a simply massive Lukaku came on and helped them to a draw vs Egypt and then Iran and New Zealand played out a really entertaining 2-2 draw. That flurry of ...

 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...

 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...

 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 ...