The Joys and Hurts of the World Cup

It only comes about once every four years, but when it does, a football feast and fan frenzy obviously ensues. The World Cup has, over the years, provided its fair share of frills, spills, drama and excitement, and the South African edition of this seems to be no different - not for the abundance (read: 'lack') of goals that its producing, as a general rule, but because of the various storylines developing both on and off the field.

Of course, while the French continue to hog the headlines for being the most dysfunctional team of the whole tournament (judging by the way things are going at the moment, coach Raymond Domenech won't have any players at his disposal for the match against South Africa and have to play himself in the match!), English and Italian supporters have also had their fair share of heart attacks till now, and if recent form is anything to go by, then they might be going back home quicker than they expected. Both sides were expected to stroll through their groups, but both sides are massively struggling and can't hit the back of the net to save their lives. England, for all the hype surrounding Wayne Rooney's fantastic season, haven't seen their strikers hit the target yet; while Italy have fared precious little better - they've scored two goals in total, one of which was a penalty (and no matter how soft it was, it indeed WAS a penalty, just as much as New Zealand's goal was offside - stop whining about it!!)

While the English have looked toothless all over the pitch, as well as relatively uninterested in troubling the opposition; the Italians have at least attacked with some intent but have the worst bunch of strikers ever taken by their national team in World Cup history, which obviously doesn't help their cause one bit. Indeed, something positive to draw from the Italian performances is that they've showed some form of resilience in both of their games so far in order to come back from losing positions. The English, on the other hand, relied on a customary goalkeeper howler to let the USA back into their first match, and parked the bus in front of the Algerian assault on goal. Perhaps Don Fabio wasn't exactly the saviour that the English were hoping for - so far. In any event, both teams still know that in reality, due to the equally appalling performances of the other teams in their groups, they still have their fate in their own hands - win their matches and they get through to the last 16. But that too might be too much of an ask for these nations in their current form. And that's obviously not to speak of Capello's confident admission that England would reach the final of the tournament.

Having however seen some big nations falter, it's been the World Cup of the underdog so far. Shock results have been recorded pretty much across the board - Italy's draw with New Zealand, England's draw with Algeria, Germany's loss to Serbia and Spain's loss to Switzerland have all been unexpected, to say the least. That's not to say that each of these nations will now go on to win the World Cup - on a personal level, I still believe that the Spanish suffered a minor setback in that game against the Swiss and have the talent and the overall team to win the title - but at least, we're seeing that the minor nations of the tournament have managed to really close the gap on these superpowers. A group comprising England, the USA, Slovenia and Algeria definitely does not send any shivers down one's spine, but look at the position England are in at the moment, despite being predicted to steamroller one of the weakest groups, on paper, of the tournament.

The problem is that the superpowers have also underestimated their opponents. It's clear that a laissez-faire attitude is unacceptable in tournaments like these, where anything can pretty much happen. It also means that teams must be willing to go out there, fight for every ball and not enter each match thinking that they've won it from the start. Teams have become plucky over the years and are no longer willing to just roll over because the likes of Italy, Argentina, Brazil, France and England have come to town. Actually, for them, it's an opportunity to create a shockwave that the rest of the world will get to know about and even justify their places at the tournament. Perhaps it is for this reason, for the sheer unpredictability of it all, that this World Cup could be classed among the greatest at the moment.

God Bless You all!
Matti

Nous sommes Francais, et nous buvons trop ce soir.

What better way to spend your evening on a beach, with one too many guitars playing away, in the midst of exam time just before summer?

Well, post-Y4J, that's what we did last night. And while I was seeing both this and my pizza from Surfside, which cost me the best part of a tasteless €7.50, as slightly extra at around 11pm, I can now safely look back and say that you should have no regrets about what you do in life. Whether you sing to your heart's content, whether you die swimming with sharks, whether you kill someone in a car accident... ok, yes, maybe you should live to regret the latter. But you get my point, it turned out being one quite enjoyable night by the end of it all.

It's a pity that some people weren't there, as they missed the humorous bit of it all. After the majority left, to the extent that we were a group of around 12 people, we had an adoring audience looking down at us from the Tower Road promenade above. They were French. And while we initially thought that they would just peer and move on, like many other people did, these decided to come down and listen to us play and sing away. And poor Matt just had to get the worst bit of it all, with these three French women all looking on in awe at him. Poor chap, I actually pitied him - if they were somewhat attractive, I don't think I'd be writing in this manner, but calling him one lucky chap instead.

Well, naturally, for them not to be disappointed, and to be at least slightly courteous on our behalf, we tried seeing which songs we could either play or sing along to that they also knew about. In their alcohol-induced state. Obviously, what with the difference in cultures, finding common ground was about as common as finding a pothole in our roads. Two, three, possibly four songs later - we had exhausted our list and them seemingly theirs - we just resorted to playing our own thing, and went to worship songs. And this was after we played Mike's 'wildcard' song, James Blunt's "Beautiful", to them as well. Anyhow, while this makes us people - me excluded - dance sometimes out of the grace of God, this actually started to make some of them dance as if there were dancing to some form of tango. Weird.

The worst bit though was that the more we wanted them to leave - which they finally did, at around 1am - the more they actually stayed on (adoring Matt and staring at the stars in awe)! This, we could see, was interspersed with the occasional cigarette, drink, and piss further down the beach for a couple of this group. How touching. The cherry on the cake is when they finally left though, and they thought that we were performing for them, as they asked poor Mike now (yes, poor Mike) for his mobile number so that they find out when we would next be on the beach. (I'm sorry, I still can't resist the laughs right now!) Yes, of course, any number was taken down out of common courtesy, but I'm 150% sure that we aren't giving these people a call before our next "gig".

The motto of this story? "Nous sommes Francais, et nous buvons trop ce soir."

Au revoir, and God Bless You all!
Matti