The F**k Right Off France: World Cup Preview
Not counting Crystal Swing’s forthcoming appearance at Mullingar Community Centre, it’s surely the greatest show on earth - a four week carnival of footie featuring the world’s greatest soccer players (and Emile Heskey). As the South Africa World Cup kick-off looms, Craig Fitzsimons tells us who is going to shine and who might flop - and explains why, for all the hype, England are unlikely to replicate the success of ‘66.
Craig Fitzsimons, 16 Jun 2010
t’s that time again. As a fully-grown man of my acquaintance said the day after the 2006 World Cup ended: ‘Why can’t the World Cup be on all the time?’ It made him sound like a whiny eight-year-old. In fact it was a spectacularly good question. Of all life’s great pleasures, very few of them are as mouth-wateringly magnificent as the World Cup. I don’t think I exaggerate when I say that it might well be the greatest invention since the aeroplane. Thirty two teams. 64 games. 150-odd goals, hopefully closer to 200. Limitless colour, drama and intrigue (Sounds like production weekends at Hot Press - Ed). And of course, the fact that it only happens once every four years. You can keep your Christmases, music festivals, holidays in the sun etc. This is the pinnacle; this is what we live for.
So far, I’ve seen seven World Cups, and it seems to get better every time. Or perhaps it was always this good, and it’s just my unbounded love of football that has deepened and deepened with every passing year, as has my appreciation of and insight into the game’s subtle nuances and endless tactical possibilities. Watching Espana ‘82 as a seven-year-old, I know that I didn’t really have a clue what was going on and why. I was vaguely aware that Germany and Austria played out the infamous ‘Anschluss’ stalemate because it would ensure both of them qualified at Algeria’s expense, that Harald Schumacher smashed three of Patrick Battiston’s teeth out because he just wasn’t a very nice man (as was often the way with Germans with moustaches) and that Scotland had been knocked out on goal difference because life just isn’t fair. I also cottoned onto the fact that you could make money from this, when a friend of mine ill-advisedly said he’d ‘bet you a million quid’ that Germany would beat Italy in the Final. (He didn’t actually have a million quid with which to honour his bet when it went tits-up, so I settled for taking 50p a day off him until he grew heartily sick of it, which didn’t take too long. He still owes me at least 999 grand, but I’ll let it go).
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