The Three Dads World Cup Wonderland

 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...