The third round of games in a World Cup makes decisions. It does it quick – sixteen games in four days – and it does it without pity. The wheat is separated from the chaff and before the first game in the second phase teams will be home, managers will have left and the World [...]
The World Cup is the biggest event on the planet and that the pressure has got to some of the players is perhaps understandable. Until Jesus returns – not Navas but the Biblical one – there will be nothing that has so many pairs of eyes on it. That the pressure gets to some players [...]
The first round of games has been marked by fear and the results of giving into that fear. If one moment summed up the opening sixteen games it was New Zealander Winston Reid heading home in the last minute against a Slovakia side who feared adding to the one goal they had and were punished [...]
Algeria are a good team, so are Slovenia, but the North African nation of Algeria is often overlooked. Not typical of the idea of African football and the excitement of Roger Milla et al but not aligned to the European or South American games the achievements that are are overlooked. Many of the players Algeria [...]
The best thing about the World Cup is its elusiveness. Try as they might in forty four years England have yet to catch up with the thing again – in a winning sense at least – and they are not alone in this near fruitless quest. The list of countries to have tried and not [...]