World Cup 2026

 

 

Well that's the World Cup over for another 4 years.

Spain totally outplaying the cheating Argies, only surprise was it took till extra time to score a winner.
The most one sided World Cup final I can remember.

England and France playing out one of the best games of the tournament for the 3rd place, don't think anyone expected that.

Overall a lot better than expected, I thought it might be half empty stadiums due to the exorbitant prices for match tickets, travel, food and drink etc. But obviously there are a lot of rich people in the world.

Not a fan of the Americanisation of it, turning the game into 4 quarters for added advert breaks, the lame 30 minute half time show in the final.
The FIFA, Infantino, Trump, Argentina sideshow was annoying.
But most of the stadiums were brilliant especially Dallas and Atlanta.

The Mexico v England game was incredible, the atmosphere and obviously the result made things memorable.

Cape Verde the shock team, played brilliantly when most expected them to go out with a whimper. Norway showing they are more than just Erling Haaland.
France were looking like winners until they met Spain who just make the game look simple with excellent ball control and passing.
England still a long way short of being World Champions, some great moments but lacked ideas in many of the games.

TV coverage was pretty good, I think BBC win it due to not having adverts or whiny Gary Neville.
So my TV Awards are (in my opinion)
Presenters - (Best) Gabby Logan, Mark Chapman (Worst) Mark Pougash, Kelly Cates
Pundits - (Best) Duncan Ferguson, Jobi McAnuff (Worst) Benni McCarthy, Wayne Rooney
Commentators - Not a lot of difference, Guy Mowbray kept giving the wrong names to players.
Co-Commentators - (Best) Alan Shearer, Andros Townsend (Worst) Lee Dixon, Martin Keown
Reporter - (Best) Kelly Somers (Worst) Adam Richman

The next World Cup in 2030 is being played in 6 countries

Mostly Spain, Portugal and Morocco with single games in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay supposedly to celebrate the centenery of the World Cup.

Being cynical it might be because FIFA rules about hosting  mean that with the 2034 in Saudi (AFC) and the 2030 games covering EUFA, CAF and CONMEBOL it would leave only the OFC and CONCACAF nations to bid for the 2038 edition.

Meaning as Australia is now classed as an Asian country it's more likely to be America again?

World Cup 2026 (Part 7) Semi Finals

World Cup Semi-finals on Tuesday and Wednesday.

France through in a low key game against Morocco.
Spain having a harder game against Belgium with a late winner by supersub Merino.
England making us all sweat in the heat of Miami against Norway.
Kept Haaland quiet but had to rely on Bellingham's two great strikes to see us through in extra time.
Argentina also scraping through in extra time against the ten men of Switzerland, after Embolo's two dumb yellow cards. Great winner by Alvarez but less than impressive overall and again aided by some more dubious officiating.

I think England on a good day should be able to beat Argentina, although injuries and fatigue and FIFA's love of Argentina could go against us.
Rice and Saka nowhere near their best, Kane looked shattered against Norway but hopefully 3 days rest will see them recovered.
France still looking the favourites, although Spain who haven't really been in top gear will make it tough.

France v Spain
England v Argentina

Prize Time

Here you go Biopunk :)

Saving The Best Till Last

Well Spain certainly proved me wrong tonight, in most of their other games in this tournament they seem to have been content with a lot of possession without much of an end product.
But straight from the off they seem determined to kill off Italy having more shots on goal in the first 15 minutes than they managed in the whole game against Portugal.
Italy found their feet in the next 20 minutes and looked like making a game of it but as soon as Jordie Alba put Spain two up with a really good breakaway goal the game was over.

Italy had some bad luck with Chiellini's early injury and Cassano still not fit enough to play the entire game so he went off at half time, then Motta was brought on and within minutes had pulled a hamstring leaving Italy with ten men for the last half hour.
But Italy looked tired from the beginning and just couldn't cope with Spain this time after looking really good in their first meeting a few weeks back.
Spain brought Torres on and it was just a matter of time before they scored again, Torres scored and laid on a goal for late sub Mata to finish it.

Useless fact - Despite 10 of the 14 players being used by Spain being from Barcelona and Real Madrid, the 4 goals were scored by the 3 English based players and Alba who I think is still a Valencia player although he will sign for Barcelona after this tournament.

Bogey Team

The Germans have never beaten the Italians in a major finals and that record continued tonight.
Another quality performance from the Italians putting the highly rated Germans to the sword, a performance which makes England's effort look slightly better because John Terry and Lescott surely wouldn't have made it so easy for Super Mario score his two unchallenged goals.
Balotelli looked very good mainly because the Germans didn't frustrate him like we did, although they did make it slightly harder for Pirlo but forgot that the Italians have other players capable of quality passing.

Joachim Loew must have scoffed more than his usual amount of bogies trying to figure out what he could do, he replaced the frontmen at half time but it didn't really make a difference as one thing the Italians were always good at was defending.

Looking forward to Sunday where hopefully the Italians can turn it on again and beat the dull Spaniards.

A Rare Treat

England friendlies are usually pretty dull affairs and I expected this to be the same.
Odds were that Spain would play the ball about and probably snatch a winner after England had given the ball away on countless occasions but it ended up as a really good contest.
The first half was pretty even and a bit predictable, but the second half was probably England's best performance for a long while.
Lescott, Jagielka and Cole looked solid at the back and Parker despite him being a money grabbing judas was excellent.

The World Cup Final 2010

That's it all over for another 4 years, the result everybody expected - Spain 1 Never Never Lands 0.
As it turned out it was an "interesting" game with the Dutch cloggers (there's a joke there somewhere) trying to kick Spain off the field in the first half and managing to make Spain look like the victims despite some of the cynical Spanish tackling during the game.
Best moments were De Jong's kung fu attack on Alonso, and the display of synchronised diving by the Spanish at the start of extra time.
Howard Webb managed to book 13 players and red card Heitinga, while missing most of the worst stuff that was going on, he could easily have sent off Van Bommel, De Jong, Puyol, Iniesta and Sneijder before Heitinga saw red.
Holland had 2 great chances both for Robben, and Spain's best chance fell to Fabregas before Iniesta finally scored 4 minutes before the end of extra time.
Holland were right to complain about our ref's performance at that time as he had just awarded a goal kick for a clearly deflected free kick then missed a blatant foul in the lead up to the goal, but if he'd been on top form they would have been down to at most 9 players at that point so swings and roundabouts as they say.

As for the English based players Torres made a brief appearance from the bench at the end and managed to injure himself again, so that's him out for the first month of next season I guess. Fabregas looked good after coming on and must have added a few millions to his transfer fee from Arsenal, Heitinga got sent off, De Jong should have been sent off, Kuyt ran around a lot before being taken off and Van Persie was on the pitch I believe.

I see Diego Forlan won the Golden ball for being best player of the tournament which I agree with, Alex Ferguson must still be scratching his head over him.

Overall it's been a reasonable World cup, the vuvuzela's annoyed the hell out of me at first but you get used to them eventually, Germany were probably the star turn of the teams with their win over Argentina being the performance of the competition, England were even worse than we could have dreamed although the French were worse, Brazil and Argentina failed to live up to the hype, and apart from Ghana the Africans probably had their worst showing in recent memory, Spain proved they weren't a flash in the pan and can do it in the big championships despite being incredibly dull to watch.
Roll on 2014, it's supposed to be in Brazil but from what I've read the Brazilians might not be ready so we could be off to America again? hopefully England might make it and they get all our hopes up again :)

The Final

Only 17 hours to the World cup final and everyone I talk to seems a bit underwhelmed by it all? The common consensus appears to be we want Holland to win, but expect the Spanish to win 1-0 in a dull game, so hopefully we're all wrong and it's a goal bonanza with a penalty shoot out :)

Will Torres play to please the Liverpool fans (and give the dutch a better chance) or will Spain play the 4-6-0 formation of the semi-final? I see Liverpool have slapped a £100 million price tag on him which should be more than enough to scare off anyone willing to take a punt on an injury prone striker who might get them a few goals in the odd game he plays.
The rest of the Spanish team should should have the technical ability to snuff out the dutch their midfield of Chavvy, Iniesta, Shabby Alonso, Pedro, Bisquits and David Villa certainly have the ability to hold the ball for 90 minutes while hoping for a defensive mistake or a set piece chance.

As for the Dutch will Van Persie actually look like the top class striker he's supposed to be or just flit around like he has in previous rounds, will the Spanish let Robben play as he looks the class of this team when he's got the ball, Sneijder has impressed, Kuyt always tries his best and clogger Van Bommel should be able to take out a few Spanish stars before getting on the wrong side of the ref.
Talking of the ref at least we've got an Englishman in the World cup final, Howard Webb is one of our best although like all English refs he's prone to the odd cock-up but hopefully he'll have a good game.
So as I write the 2009/10 season has about 20 hours to run and then we can start looking forward to another season of domestic drudgery where all those world cup flops will suddenly look like world beaters again.

I'm Gonna Support?

Don't think I'm the only one, but always have to support a team in any televised match I see but tonight's game causes a dilemma.
For historical reasons I am obliged to dislike the Germans, but for some reason I have always hated the Spanish as well so this has turned out for me as the international version of Tottenham v Liverpool, the easy option would be not to watch the match.
But I have been won over by the Germans who are looking really good and their current style is appealing, I love the counter attacking style they are using so tonight I am hopeful of a German win, it's also made easier by the fact my boss at work is part Spanish and gave me a lot of shit when we lost to the Germans.
So a 5-0 win to Germany would be something great to take to work tomorrow :)

Edit: Well that put the mockers on the Germans!!
Spain bore their way into the final in less than impressive style, c'mon the dutch.