I was lucky enough to attend the last two FIFA World Cups and, while there, I wrote a series of articles for my local rag, the Matamata Chronicle. (Germany here and South Africa here, if you’re interested.) These articles became known as DB’s World Cup Diary.
DB’s World Cup Diary won’t be back this year, at least not in it’s traditional form. As the World Cup in Brazil is about to kick off I’m sat at home waiting, like most everyone else, for the first game to appear on my telly. I don’t want the ‘DB’s World Cup Diary’ concept to die, however, so I’ve revived it and will attempt to post something World Cup-related every day for the next month.*
Both Germany and South Africa were spectacular. Germany because it was probably the best ever World Cup and South Africa because New Zealand was there. Brazil will be amazing too because it’s a World Cup. In Brazil.
But I won’t be there even though I always said I would be.
I’m not going for a couple of reasons. New Zealand not being there is a biggie. If there’s one thing I learnt from my last two cups it’s that there is a big difference when you have a team that’s yours to follow.
Mainly, though, I’m not going because two and a half weeks ago my wife and I had our third child, a little girl we named Siena. And children are expensive, particularly when we’re a one income family for a while.
As an aside, Siena is something of a World Cup baby. She’s named after the Italian city of the same name, which my wife and I visited en route to the 2006 World Cup. We had a great ten days or so in Italy, before heading off to watch a World Cup that was ultimately won by Italy, and which included us watching a game involving Italy (versus Czech Republic in Hamburg). And I love pasta. And espresso. Okay, enough.
So family won out over football this time. That’s okay, though. I now have a fantastic opportunity to ramp up the football indoctrination of my two boys. This means football will win out in the end.
That’s enough from me for now, apart from a couple of things. 1) I think Brazil will win the tournament, mainly because they’re at home. 2) Every day I’ll make predictions for the following day’s games. Both these things will more than likely expose how truly crap I am at picking football results but I just can’t help myself.
Pick for tomorrow: Brazil 2-1 Croatia (Paulinho to head the winner home from a corner).
*This is more challenging than it first looks, given I’ve been hopeless at posting regular updates here for a number of months now. So we’ll have to see how it goes…