England – where it all went wrong Following Brian Moore’s wise advice, this is intended to be an analytical, dispassionate view in an attempt to assess where it all went wrong for England. I have counted to 10, lots of times. I have mostly managed to ignore the sledging of Australian friends and the […]
TEAM OF THE TOURNAMENT The team of the tournament can only really be selected from teams who have progressed deep into the competition. So it is virtually impossible to make the cut unless you have played in a team that has reached the semi-finals at least. There will be a few honourable mentions for others […]
The first instinct of many sports afficionados, after watching Japan's epic 34-32 win over South Africa, was to describe this as not only rugby's greatest ever upset, but the greatest in any sport. Perhaps it was; the giants of South Africa humbled by Japan, a nation without a World Cup win for 24 years in a […]
Preview – THE FINAL All logic points to a win for New Zealand. Consistency, experience and flair are there in abundance and they would win this match up probably 9 times out of 10. Indeed they have only lost 3 matches since the last final 4 years, to South Africa, England and most recently to […]
A dodgy old geezer named Blatter Thought that football’s best interests don’t matter “If you bung me a note I’ll deliver the vote That will take the World Cup off to Qatar”. FIFA has a rep called Chuck Blazer Who’s known to be quite the hell raiser “A million dollar fee For me and mini […]
Quarter Finals Preview Brazil v Colombia: This will be the first meeting between these sides in the World Cup. Normally logic would dictate that the best team in World Cup history, at home, against a team that has never before made it to the quarter final, would win and with something in hand. But Brazil […]
So, that was the group stage, and for the most part it was pretty good. Let's have a run down of the 8 groups and see what we learned from what happened. Group A: I said Brazil would have a 100% record and Mexico would get past Croatia for second place. Ok, so Brazil only […]
Menu 1: Osso Buco ("bone with a hole") This is an Italian dish favoured by Luis Suarez. The plain Osso Buco is usually seen on the club menu, and is particularly popular at Ajax and Liverpool. For the World Cup, the recipe has been lifted to a whole new international level, and has been renamed Osso […]
So, the World Cup is over, and we all have our views on who should be in the team of the tournament. Here are my choices and honourable mentions. GK: This is a very competitive position with several stand out performances. Mexico's Ochoa led the way in the group stages with those amazing saves to […]
So, the World Cup final is over and the goal-fest of the group stage did indeed peter out There were 171 goals in 64 games, at 2.67 per game, below of the Nirvana of 3.00 goals per game, last exceeded in 1958, needing a further 21 goals overall to hit the magic number! But how did the clubs do? 34 clubs scored more than 1 goal, […]
