Football = frustrating

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For a start, I’m talking here about football. That’s the sport in which 90% of the time the ball is touched by the foot.

The rules of football are that the team who scores the most goals within 90 minutes wins the game, and the other team gets nothing. Traditionally in a league you’d get 3 points for a win, and nothing for a loss.

That’s cool, but sometimes you can play exceptionally well for 89 minutes, be in complete control of the game and have scored a goal, but then there’s one bad referee decision, or one defensive mistake, and the game is drawn, or worse, lost. It’s great if you’re the team who ends up on top, but for the loser there would barely be any difference between that result and if your entire team had pulled up a set of chairs and relaxed until the final whistle. The other team would still get 3 points, and you’d still get nothing.

Not to overthink this, but has football therefore become less of a sport than an art form? The purpose of football nowadays is overwhelmingly to entertain rather than to provide a competitive arena in which to demonstrate one team’s superiority…

Maybe it doesn’t really matter.

Posh & Becks

There were some photos this morning in the paper that Posh & Becks had done of them kissing. Bit of a blatant publicity stunt but fair enough, their commodity is fame and they’ve not been in the papers for a while so good for them.

But it got me thinking: I like Posh and Becks. There are a couple of reasons why:

• Their kids’ names aren’t that ridiculous. Slightly quirky, but not as bad as plenty of others. Audio Science.
• They waited until they were married before they had kids. Good for them.
• They’re obviously very happy to make sacrifices for one another. Let’s be honest, David joining L.A. Galaxy wasn’t the smartest career move but I bet he knew it would make his wife happy. Good boy.
• They didn’t allow rumours to affect them. David was accused of doing something similar than Wayne Rooney has been but at the end of the day Victoria’s response was pretty much: ‘I don’t think he did it.’ Compare that to the reaction of the whole world to Rooney’s allegations.

Phil Brown said that we shouldn’t go spreading rumours because on this occasion it looks like the whole family is being pulled apart. True, but it’s not just about that. Posh and Becks have proven themselves willing and able to stand firm in the face of attack, and I like that.

The new Oxo ‘England’ brand: the laughing stock

Thanks to Phil Brown for that one-liner. Oh all right then, let’s have a rant about the World Cup.

I thought England played pretty well against the USA. Apart from the obvious mistake by the unfortunate Rob Green we were on top, and if we’d put together a few more plays we’d have won.

However, watching the team on Friday was just painful – I pretty much complained at the television for the whole thing, not least of all the lack of Joe Cole, the mind-boggling Lennon/Wright-Phillips substitution, and playing three strikers in a 4-4-2 formation.

So, I think we’ll win against Slovenia. I thought we’d beat the US, and I thought we’d beat Algeria, but I definitely think we’ll beat Slovenia.

Seriously.

No, honestly.

Why is no-one taking that seriously any more? Oh, yes. I remember. Because we’re English – we’re pre-programmed to genuinely think that the underdog can do it – I’m sure all the English watchers cheered when North Korea got that goal back against Brazil last week.

Anyway, I hope that England and USA both win on Wednesday. And I hope we meet in the final. And I hope that Capello starts thinking outside the box and asks me to play – after all, every other England fan is convinced they could have played better than the team did the other day, I might as well jump on the bandwagon.

Call me

Kevin Keegan is leaving Newcastle. Definitely.

Oh no wait, he isn’t. Definitely.

What I mean is, no-one knows.

So why did all the papers and news shows report that he had? It just goes to show that our news media doesn’t (necessarily) tell us the truth – they run just as much on rumours and random thoughts as the rest of us, it’s just that they have bigger mouths than we do.

Nice.

Start of the Blades’ season

So the Championship’s been going on for a couple of weeks now…my team’s Sheffield United so I thought I’d grab this opportunity to celebrate being right up at the top of the table after two AWESOME victories in the last two weeks – 3-0 and 3-1.

I like.