I have never really seen the point of 'Live Blogging from the Sofa'. If someone is interested in a match, they'll be watching it themselves, or, if circumstances dictate that they are reliant on the net, they're better off choosing either a factually accurate blow-by-blow serious site, or one that, perhaps with the help of 'the public', provides a humourous oblique commentary of proceedings. Not some B- List blogger who had decided the world needs to know her half-baked thoughts on "Wow that is a wonder goal, almost as good as the one they scored last week which is being heralded as the greatest world cup goal ever and possibly almost as good as the one Joe Cole scored."
You also don't need to know that I'm going "What! Four strikers! One's gone home crocked. One's not match fit. One's still at school and the other's a useless twat with tallness being his only skill." Cos, you know, every England fan's saying the same thing.
Nor do you need to know my growing resentment at the useless statistics the half-wit commentators reel out without analysis or without any apparent understanding of the difference between correlation and causation.
It is useful to know, and needs little analysis, that Togo have lost six of their last eight matches. That emphasises that even an underperforming France are likely to beat them. It is vaguely fascinating to know that France haven't lost a match in which Thierry Henry has scored, but not very useful without context. In what proportion of matches has he scored? How many matches have they lost in that period, what happens when he's not playing, do they tend to lose when other players, not Henry, score, or do they just lose when they, as a team, fail to score? Meaningless superstitious twaddle.
And to come out with crap like - it's forty three years since Argentina have lost in normal time during a full moon in the second half of the month, in countries with a 'g' in their name. So bloody what. It gives me no insight into the fact that Argentina has a strong tradition of producing very fine players that often mesh together into a great team. Nor does a detailed listing of past performance predict the result of a current match. Fine, we know that the long-term trend of Argentina is to be a successful winning team, but the fact that they beat Italy in 1974 is no indication of how they will fare against Portugal in 2006. For instance.
But it is jolly good fun to watch the football. And not be tied down to national allegiances. Great to see Brazil beginning to get it together. My all-time favourite football team of all time was the 1982 Brazil team - Zico, Socrates et al. Boy, they could play. Overheard in the lift lobby the other day "Who's on tonight?" "Argentina-Holland" "Ugh. I'm not watching them." I don't understand it; if you are sufficiently interested to watch some, if not all games, and you are implying you are free to watch that evening's game, what have you got against Argentina-Holland that you'd avoid it.
Look, England are crap. Argentina will win it. Or maybe Brazil, if they can get their arses into gear. Don't rule out Germany as the home team. I predicted France in 1998 but the boys tried to belittle me saying that the home team rarely wins. I said, no, they're fired up, wanting to win, capable of winning. In those circumstances, home advantage gives an extra edge. That's all. History proves I was right, the boys were wrong!
Sadly, a combination of work and bad diary-planning means I shall miss a veritable feast of football: Brazil-Ghana and Spain-France on Tuesday. I suppose if people start quietly backing Spain to do something, they'll turn all crap on us again.
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