Orangemen surrender on 11th night

A goal of Iniesta-mable value

Not the greatest ever World Cup, but at least there’s a new name on the trophy.   The irony is that the only team who remained unbeaten throughout the tournament were New Zealand.

Those who thought the quality of the games played was well below the expected standards may well think FIFA stands for “Football Is Fucking Awful”.

Any regular readers who have been bored by the amount of World Cup stories in this blog of late can now take consolation from the fact there probably won’t be any more for another 4 years.  Now it’s time to concentrate on something else. 

Apparently there’s some kind of bike race on in France at the moment…

One things for sure is that one group of Orangemen won’t be celebrating on the 12th of July!  (And it isn’t Armagh).

The octopus gets it right again - if you put money on Spain your squid's in

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Don’t cry for me Vuvuzela (A selection of short snappy vignettes on the world Cup)

The World Cup just wouldn’t be the World Cup without the Brazilians…(no pun intended)

If Carlsberg did irony…

Another glorious summer, another World Cup.  And as usual the supermarkets, off-licences and pubs hope to make a killing – maybe quite literally in some cases – by a heart attack or cirrhosis of the liver. 

Yes, during every World Cup we’re inundated with special offers on crates of beer, wine, pizzas, crisps and countless other junk foods to consume while we watch the football.

 How ironic it is then that as the world’s elite of fit, athletic young men participate in a noble, healthy pursuit, many of those watching and cheering them on indulge in unhealthy, ignoble pursuits, guzzling beer by the can and stuffing their faces with crap.  As the horizontally rich but follically poor comedian Alexei Sayle might say “It’s a funny old world”.

Don’t cry for me Vuvuzela

Up until a couple of weeks ago I thought Vuvuzela was an oil-rich South America country with a fat loud-mouthed clown as president whose team never qualifies for the World Cup. 

 Now it’s as if  the football stadia in South Africa have been invaded by swarms of angry bees.  Love them or hate them they’ve certainly created a buzz in the air at the World Cup.  It’s not just Wayne Rooney who has a bee in his bonnet.

The president of Vuvuzela?

Carry on World Cup

Having been following the World Cup quadrennially since I was a wide-eyed 8-year old back in 1982, I’ve noticed that in almost every tournament there’s at least one player with a funny name – ie one that would amuse a schoolboy or a “Carry On” film scriptwriter.  Purely from memory I’ve compiled a selection:

 1982 – Lopez Ufarte (Spain)

1986 – Cha Bum Kun (South Korea)

1994 – Stefan Kuntz (Germany)

1998 – Stefan Effenberg (Germany)

                                                                                                               2002 – David Seaman (England)

                                                                                                               2010 – Danny Shittu (Nigeria)

I’m splitting my sides just thinking about them.

Life is cruel – get over it!

The GAA comes to Paris

It would be churlish of me to use the old cliché “it’s only a game”, but to quote a popular expression “shit happens”.  OK, I was disappointed with the outcome (more for the supporters than the players though, who always have their big mansions, Porsches and trophy wives to go back to) , but wouldn’t go so far as to say gutted.  We all know that on occasion no matter how hard we try we don’t always get what we want.  A great a many things in life aren’t fair and this is simply one of them. 

What those who demand a replay fail to acknowledge is that even if the goal had been disallowed, France probably would have won on penalties anyway.  And if Ireland had taken their chances properly they would have won.  As Twenty Major points out:

I mean, did FIFA fix it for Kevin Doyle to miss a great chance with a header? Did FIFA fix it for John O’Shea to be found free at the back post only to hoof the ball over the bar like a GAA player? Did FIFA fix it for Damien Duff to be clean through on goal only to miss a great chance? And did FIFA fix it for Robbie Keane to be one on one with the keeper only to fuck it up by trying to be too clever?

And as someone on Slugger O’Toole pointed out, England won the World Cup in 1966 by a wrong decision when the ball clearly hadn’t crossed the line, but got their comeuppance 20 years later with the infamous Maradona “hand of God” goal.  What goes around comes around.

If it’s any consiolation, it was an achievement in itself for a bunch of journeymen from Hull, Preston and Wolves to take a team of Champions League players to the wire.  Yes it was unjust, scandalous and all the rest. 

But  that’s football.

That’s life. 

Welcome to the real world. 

Get over it.