Finally beginning to recover from my unbridled misery after England's unprecedentedly horrendous 'performance' on Friday, I thought it time to return to the blogging fray. Still, being the bitter individual I am, I can't let sleeping (overpaid, gutless, despicable) superstars lie. And so, revel with me in the press assassiation of Friday's Cape Town debacle. "What went wrong?" asks Kevin McCarra. Everything, naturally. Meanwhile, Marina Hyde thinks it was "comically unwatchable". I wasn't laughing.
Still, on a (slightly) lighter note, if you read nothing else from the papers about this World Cup, be sure to check out this peice by Jonathan Liew in the Telegraph, which provides a hilariously sharp crystalisation of the excruciatingly pitiful World Cup coverage that yours truly has been ham-fistedly addressing in my occassional dispatches.
In other news: Brazil win, but the real winner is, erm, diving around; playacting; handbags; and pursing thumb and index finger in the 'book-him-ref' motion. The ref proceeds to hand out some distinctly unfathomable bookings (including sending Kaka off), whilst inexplicably missing a studs-up annihalation of Elano's shin by the Ivorians, and two blatant handballs in the lead up to Brazil's second goal. Ah, the beautiful game.
Anyway, here's my favourite England football song - merely by virtue of three factors: It features Alex James; it rips the piss out of the Verve; and a restraining order in the interests of human decency (dignity?) prevents any footballers or Ant and Dec from approaching closer than, say, 800 light years of it.
One of the more interesting (which admittedly isn't saying an awful lot) days of the World Cup so far resulted in the first major shock of the tournament: the Guardian's minute-by-minute commentary published one of my emails, showcasing a carefully manicured high-brow wit befitting of the lefty rag. And I mentioned Kraftwerk - 10 automatic cool points please.
Oh, and in other news some unfancied Mediterraneans lost to the those gold-hoarding snoots who always refuse to take sides. Was that xenophobic? I must dig out my England flag...
On the subject of England, apparently Carragher is set to reprise his role of committing reckless fouls and panting away at the backside of mid-paced strikers as they comprehensively leave him for dead. Meanwhile, Ledley King will be left for dead in the treatment room in Rustenburg whilst the whole squad (and entourage of sniggering physios) decamp to Cape Town.
In reference to my puntastic blog post title, I suppose I had best mention that Chile won 1-0 against Honduras. Bad news for the hosts though, they got mercilessly disptached 3-0 by those wily Uruguayans, who somebody has thankfully drawn in the office sweepstakes. I knew they'd come good.
By way of musical accompaniment to today's post, here it some trendy sounding Ingerlund blather from quite possible the dorkiest 'rapper' I've ever seen. Enjoy!
Thanks to draconian work rules and an 'external audit' I couldn't care less about, I couldn't even listen to, let alone watch, any of today's games. Which has the unfortunate corollary of rather stifling my supply of barbed witticisms for this evening's post. And yes, for those who haven't been paying attention, my previous posts have been laced with barbed witticisms (not to be confused with Barbara Windsorisms).
Even more demoralising was the rather pitiful display by my traditional second World Cup team, (the) Cameroon, who displayed the hackneyed traits of "naive", "inept" defending, "calamity" goalkeeping and a good dash of "haphazard" disharmony within the ranks. Still, they remain the team who constructed my favourite World Cup moment ever - this reckless display of willful savagery from 1990:
The Germans won (yawn). An African side won (Ghana), which was the clarion call for every pundit to wax patronising on their "spirited, uninhibited football", liken them to a safari animal of some sort, and add "the" before their name. Yawn.
In other news, Algerian clown Faouzi Chaouchi confirmed the link between bleach blonde hair and atrocious goalkeeping.
And Weezer have only gone and done a World Cup song for US and A. This four-chord rumbler must've taken Rivers Cuomo about 5 mins to write - just as long, in fact, as we thought England might win the World Cup...
Can't bring myself to blog properly about today's events, which had the same morbid predictability as bumping into Tony Adams in your local N5 boozer in 1994. The disease? Being an English football fan.
Honourable mention for the South Koreans, who looked fairly tidy (albeit against a wretched Greek side), and Edgar Davids, who spent a good 6-7 seconds of dead air time trying to think of the words "steering wheel" during ITV's half-time patter.
But the award for most redundant pundit goes (predictably) to Kevin "Batty will definately score" Keegan, who offered up this (paraphrased) gem on England's prospects: "We've got loads going for us - attackers... and... things like that". I'd "LOVE IT" if he just fucked off.
Anyway, here's an under the radar pick for England's best 2010 World Cup song offering - indeed, Youtube commentor (read: eunuch geek) Hamatashi thinks it's an "Amazing song! Good idea and superbly performed". Sounds like a Futureheads cover band doing a reworked version of 'Danger Of The Water' (sans hooks) to me, but hey-ho.
