The final Wednesday Dispatch of 2011 sees Hayden Shaw gazing into his crystal ball and telling us the future. It doesn’t bode well for England fans. Ladies and gentleman, may we introduce to you…
Tag Archives | Argentina
Unpredictable Predictability
I’d imagine that fish restaurants from Hamburg to Leipzig will be sharpening their knives tonight in anticipation of a flurry of orders for the ‘kalamari special’ over the next few days. Unfortunately, schools of innocent squid will probably suffer terminal fates because of the uncanny ability of one of their distant cousins to correctly predict the result of all the matches involving Germany at this World Cup. Yet again, Paul the Octopus gravitated towards the flag of the victors in his tank at the Oberhausen Sea Life Aquarium and this time his prediction was Spain.
A Simple Plan
If you’ve been regularly reading this blog you will recall that I confidently predicted a South American winner of this World Cup and more specifically that victory would take shape in the form of Argentina (see south-america). The events of the last twenty-four hours have dramatically re-shaped such initial bluster with the twin exoduses of the traditional giants of that continent, Brazil and Argentina; both spectacularly caving in during their quarter-finals but in differing circumstances. While Brazil panicked beyond logic and reason against Holland and went about single-handedly wrecking their chances of recovery with rash tackles and petulant tantrums, Argentina’s demise was devastatingly brought about by a team that clinically dismantled the attacking foundations with which Diego Maradona had so admiringly instilled into his players.
Sofalife – A User’s Guide
Top tips for World Cup sofa survival:
1. Use technology to your advantage
When the forces of employment take away all the joy of living with their serious insistence that bills must be paid and responsibilities adhered to, the World Cup obsessive must seek refuge in the ability of the boffin to bring you your World Cup fix in a matter of seconds, locale holds no bounds. Twitter, internet, mobile phone and hearsay will all allow you to keep your finger, albeit surreptitiously, on the World Cup pulse. Match on at half twelve? No problem. Mute it and check your desk for ‘pens’, every few minutes or so, catching a blurry image of a New Zealand defender clattering into a Slovak. Three o’ clock matches? Forg-edda-bou-it! Sky + the required match and endanger pedestrians as you zoom home just in time to watch the recorded first half, forward the Hansen’s jibber-jabber and relax into the second half, ‘live’. Bliss…..unless…..the machiavellian spoilers at Sky, shorn of footballing dominance, sabotage the opening match by having the recording stop with thirty minutes to go unbeknownst to the erstwhile fan. Recording over, the tv goes back to real time and the match is in stoppage time. Adrian Chiles announces a barnstorming second half but you wouldn’t know because you endured the tense chess match of the first half. This has happened to more than one person. I share your pain.
Edited Highlights
Rest day in South Africa today, so in keeping with footballing convention, I bring you the edited highlights from the past twenty days on the World Cup sofa. Dare to think, dare to dream…
Sambas and Tangos
Here’s a question for you to mull over: are Brazil just ever so slightly overrated? Chile were sadly swept aside with relative ease tonight by the five-time holders but with three difficult hurdles still to negotiate, it seems that they have already been crowned with their sixth title judging by the drooling of the ITV commentary and punditry teams before, during and after proceedings.
Eyes Wide Shut
Before the unfolding drama of England’s second round match with Germany today, the BBC ran a puff-piece evoking the words of the giants of both countries’ literary traditions with the aim of putting the requisite fire into well-fed Sunday afternoon bellies. Rounding it off were the words of William Shakespeare imbibing visions of glory. After witnessing the events in both of today’s matches, a more appropriate truism from the Bard would be Hamlet’s: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.
Continental Shifts
How magically fitting on this night that it was the first African-American President who popularised the notion of ”the audacity of hope”. I feared that the albatross of not just a country’s dreams and hopes but an entire continent’s, would perhaps weigh too heavy upon the tenderly young squad of Ghanaian players in Rustenburg. As it transpired , they held their nerve spectacularly when it looked as if the balance had tipped in the favour of the USA, once Landon Donovan calmly dispatched his spot-kick. With the final whistle came spontaneous outbursts of jubilation, which by the looks of things will be replicated on the streets of Accra, Yaounde and Johannesburg for a long time to come; cementing these Black Stars into the annals of the continent’s history in the process. No football fan on Earth can really feel anything other than an uplifting sense of pride that Ghana remain in the tournament. Ghana now face Uruguay and beyond that they but can only dare to hope.
Individuals United
Perhaps more pronounced than ever before, the footballing world is divided into two distinct camps. On one side are the teams that employ rigid formations and highly organised strategies that have reaped rewards to varying degrees. Juxtaposing them are the teams whose lifeblood runs through the veins, match fitness and temperament of a single, totemic talisman. For every unbreakable line of Swiss defenders, there is a Didier Drogba who embodies his team’s ambitions. For every squad of unfamiliar Slovakian faces, there is a Lionel Messi who is capable of turning a game in his country’s favour with one moment of breathtaking flamboyance. Quite which philosophy trumps the other is a matter of perennial debate but both present us with issues that both furrow the brow with worry and leave us scratching our heads in consternation.
The Numbers Game
I sadly missed the gallant but ultimately futile attempts of Bafana Bafana to avoid becoming the first ever host nation to go out in the group stage today. I missed it because of numbers. Cold, heartless numbers. I don’t much like statistics and data. They group people together into faceless graphs that suck out any semblance of individuality and personality which only serves to embed preconceptions and prejudices which as a teacher, I do so much to eradicate from the malleable minds of the young. As the minutes of the meeting turned into hours, I began to question the fundamental reasons that I chose to enter this profession in the first place. How can a bureaucrat in a faraway monolith of drabby cement even begin to understand the personalities that my fellow professionals and I juggle with every day, (with all their stratifying elements of mischievousness, witticisms and travails) through the emotionless accumulation of anonymous polls and pie charts. I decided today, that I will refuse to play the numbers game however much that might hinder any vainglorious ideas of career progression.
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