And so, just like that, we’re a fortnight into this World Cup. Today’s games weren’t overly inspiring, save for Lionel Messi versus Nigeria. Without much fuss, actually none at all, Messi has carried his team into the knock-out stages. Argentina hasn’t looked fantastic so far but, like the Belgians, that could be the way to play it. Some of the other big favourites – Brazil, the Netherlands, Germany...
Read MoreIt must take a special, maniacal, sort of stupid to do what Luis Suarez did today. Biting a player. Again Luis? Really? Social Media lit up almost immediately with jokes, bombast, incredulity and you’ll have seen all that by now to the point it’s already yesterday’s news. All I can sit here now and do is shake my head. I don’t understand it. I can’t. I don’t live in his world and I didn’t come...
Read MoreI 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...
Read MoreHow 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...
Read MoreIf 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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