I fear a Game of Thrones ending for this World Cup. The heroes, the good guys, Brazil, the team most of us want to win at what as been an almost perfect World Cup, appear to trusting and naïve. They are the Ned Stark of this tournament. In a football sense, they are great going forward and in Neymar have a solid gold star, but that defence, those full-backs, those strikers (Neymar excepted)… Someone much better than anyone...
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How the hell are you supposed to get any quality work done during this World Cup? I’m struggling at the minute and I expect it will only get tougher this week as the group phase enters it’s final round of games. Before I look at that let’s just reflect on today’s matches. Belgium and Russia stunk up one of the world’s greatest sporting venues, the Maracana, but the tournament’s ‘dark...
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If anything, today’s results raised more questions over a couple of the favoured sides, rather than providing anything definitive about who’s actually going to win this thing. Neither Argentina or Germany lost, but the Argies struggled to get past Iran while the Germans were teetering for a while during the maniacal second half of their match against Ghana. If we’re honest we could probably just about write off the...
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What an extremely decent day of football that was! The World Cup, yet again, was immaculate. A supposed upset, followed by a flogging, then completed with an emotional, even sentimental win. It was probably just about the most perfect day so far for the neutral, which is what I am. Yeah, pretty perfect. Saturday being Saturday, meant that interspersed amongst all this was some local football too. Coaching in the morning and a couple...
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I’m surprisingly indifferent about England’s fate in this World Cup. As my surname would suggest, I can trace a significant part of my ancestry back to old Blighty. The team I’ve followed for all but about a decade of my life plays in England’s top league. I identify with England. But their loss to Uruguay? Meh. The 2-1 defeat to Uruguay, or more accurately Luis Suarez, this morning probably wasn’t...
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Gooooooone! A week in and we’ve lost our first teams. You would have expected it of Australia and Cameroon, but Spain? Spain?! After two games and two defeats the strongest international footballing dynasty of the last decade is gooooooone. All three teams exited in slightly different ways. The Aussies were a little unlucky to lose to the Dutch, as they were against Chile, but maybe their play is just a tiny bit immature to...
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Today was the day many of us were waiting for. We finally got the opportunity to have a good look at Belgium. Are they genuine contenders? Yes and no would be the answer. Today’s performance was certainly dominant in terms of possession but they were both anaemic (1st half) and cutting (2nd half) in attack. That has got to be concerning. This article (a really good analysis) was spot on with it’s pre-tournament assessment...
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After the euphoria of the opening few days at the World Cup we’re now into a solid routine of early starts and working on the laptop in front of the telly. It’s a good routine to have. I didn’t post yesterday as I actually spent much of it away from my laptop. After getting up for the France/Honduras game, school drop-offs and then the Argentina/Bosnia-Herz… game I hit the road to the Bombays for a meeting with...
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Every Sunday should be like this. Wake up. Football. Shower. Football (upset result). Breakfast. Football. Football. Lunch. Football. Write DB’s Diary. Football highlights. Dinner. Football preview for tomorrow. Bed. Perfect. While it’s way too early to be sure, it appears this World Cup may well go down as one of the best. I know. Three days in and all that. It’s certainly got off, without a doubt, to one of the...
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Well, I didn’t see that coming. Nathan got grumpy when Theo got a player of the day certificate and he didn’t. Oh yeah, and the Netherlands beating Holland 5-1. Didn’t see that happening either. I love the first couple of weeks of any World Cup. There are loads of games on every day and some of them are pretty good, too. It’s before we get to the business end and teams are generally playing to win rather than...
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