World cup

So – Nigeria versus Iran, then. I wonder who Boko Haram were cheering for, surrounded by their infidel abductees in some sand-blown, bilharzia riven hellhole. I was cheering for our new allies, Iran. We are told every year – since about 1986 – that African teams will take world football by storm. And they never do. They’re as useless as were Zaire in 1974. But that won’t stop the BBC spending our licence fee money on the African Cup of Nations, for political reasons. And then earlier, an enormous pleasure to watch Portugal’s pouting moppets, each of them seemingly named after a seaside donkey, thoroughly thrashed by good ol’ dependable

It takes quite a lot for me to feel even mildly sympathetic towards the French, but they had my support against the semi-reformed death squad of Honduras. One should not put too much store by the character of a country’s football team – but watching the way in which the Central Americans set about France, much as they had previously set about England, it did not wholly surprise one that the benighted mosquito-ravaged country has the highest murder rate in the world. Yes, including Iraq. Its murder rate is not far off double the next contenders (all of whom come from the Caribbean, natch). I’m writing this before Argentina’s game

You see – that’s the trouble. You write off the World Cup for moral reasons because of FIFA sleaze (and that opening game). And then Spain are magnificently humiliated, cheering me up more than I could have thought possible. Undoubtedly talented, Spain have nonetheless been boring us rigid for too long, with that self-regarding, tippy tappy, stifling of what the game should really be about. The Netherlands taught them that, with great glee. I haven’t been so pleased about a world cup result for ages – well, not since the French fell to bits against Mexico and South Africa. You sort of hope this is the end of an era,

Suspicions that FIFA is an organisation given, occasionally, to a bit of corruption will not have been allayed by the first match of the 2014 World Cup. Brazil won with two goals from a player who should have been sent off, including a penalty which clearly wasn’t a penalty, while Croatia had a perfectly good goal disallowed and were denied a rather more clear cut penalty themselves. Incidentally, I say “Brazil” – and so do ITV. So do FIFA. And so does the OED, Wikipedia and Google. But not the BBC. The BBC says “Brasil”. Of course it does.

Are all white women really prostitutes who should be avoided, as some children at those schools in Birmingham were apparently informed? This is obviously a delicate, if not rather fraught, area and one should tread carefully for fear of giving offence. I have given the matter a lot of thought and have tried to fashion a sort of middle way, amenable to both sides in the debate. So, while everyone might agree that white women are to be avoided wherever possible, it seems to me to be overstating the case to characterise them all as prostitutes. I am not even certain that one could reasonably describe ‘most’ white women as

‘What is this, please?’ I said to the estate agent, as he showed me into the building site he was calling a house. ‘This,’ he said beaming, ‘is the kitchen and breakfast room area.’ I picked my way over the rubble and stood in the dark, pokey room with its walls of hideous grey breezeblock. ‘I thought I asked you not to show me anything without a second fix, Sedrick.’ ‘Well, yes, but,’ said Sedrick, one of those perky young estate agents you can’t keep down, ‘you just need to use a bit of imagination. If you stand over here you can really get a feel for it. The space,

A successful gambler once told me: ‘Never bet on football, never bet on multipliers, and never ever bet on football multipliers.’ Multipliers, in case you don’t know, are those enticing combination wagers on bookmakers’ shopfronts: ‘Liverpool win 2-0 + Sturridge to score = 33/1.’ Mugs like me fall for them every time. My subconscious tends to add together the two probabilities — that of Sturridge scoring and that of Liverpool winning 2-0 — when really I should be multiplying them. Duh. The bookies don’t always triumph when it comes to football, however. This year’s Champions League has so far seen few upsets: as a result, the major sports bookmakers have

Gstaad Why are hacks scared to state the obvious? In Britain the excuse is the strict libel laws. But in America? To win a libel case over there one has to prove malice aforethought, and I don’t know many journalists who would admit it and go down the Swanee. Take the case that has been hogging the headlines lately, that of the 2022 World Cup and its Qatar venue. Qatar gets rather hot in the summer, hot enough to kill an athlete exerting himself for glory and the root of all envy. Rob Hughes, a respected football commentator, calls it ‘not a responsible thing to do’. He writes that a

Yesterday, Coffee House recommended that disappointed English football fans take solace, as always, in memories of 1966. To that end, here’s The Spectator’s review of England’s World Cup victory at the time. These were clearly more innocent times, as evidenced by the closing observation: “whether we win or not is not a matter for negotiation between heads of states or men in striped pants.” Their cup runneth over, D.N. Chester, The Spectator, 5 August 1966 Let it be for ever recorded. At 5.15 pm on Saturday July 30 1966, the Swiss referee blew his whistle and England had won the World Cup for the first time, having just beaten West