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 [...]
Portugal promised a festival of football and so it was delivered although probably not the football they would have wanted to showcase. Firstly to the Ivory Coast who play North Korea with the only hope of qualifying from the group coming in the Africans putting over half a dozen goals in and hoping that Brazil [...]
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 second game presents a problem for Ivory Coast – and teams in a similar position – in this World Cup with the change from count back to goal difference giving significance to the scoreline that was not previously there. Ivory Coast take on Brazil with Sven Goran Eriksson putting out two lines of four [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Injury has become the metronome of the run up to the World Cup. Famously it was David Beckham who had the nation praying for a small bone in his foot to heal but latterly every nation has a Beckham – England’s include the man himself ruled out and his partner in deadly play Michael Owen. [...]