The second round of the World Cup was the round in which football, politics and footballing politics smashed together. It started well with Uruguay and South Korea playing out an interesting game and Ghana’s win over the USA being the highlight of what turned out to be a poor round of games. Poor for performances. [...]
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 [...]
At times it seemed that Abou Diaby was playing against Uruguay on his own. The towering Arsenal midfielder making his sixth appearance for the 1998 Champions played a holding midfield role that broke the South Americans attacking pressure sitting and controlling the very area in which Uruguay would have looked to play. Uruguay qualified poorly [...]
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 [...]