Sweet Nothings

Can it really be four years since the carnival of football that was the Brazil 2014 World Cup extravaganza? (Yes.) That tournament will be remembered for a cracking group stage full of expansive, attacking football that petered out - with one hilarious exception - into a mealy-mouthed defence-fest during the knockout stages. This negative trend continued into the newly-expanded Euros, whose new faces weren't good enough to play on the front foot but could shut up shop well enough to frustrate the decent teams (and England) and bore the arse off neutral spectators. So what will Russia 2018 bring, besides unprecedented corruption levels? (lol jk) The change in draw format to divide the pots by ranking has largely done away with the usual Group of Death/Big Team Cakewalk scenario, and with some intriguing debutants and a few absent stalwarts (ItaLOL, the NetherLOLs, the US of lAme, etc) we might get a bit more balance and/or novelty value. Here come the group previews! We al...

Please forgive the appalling self-indulgence - this is an article about my South African experience that was written for an in-house newsletter. I got far too carried away and failed miserably to stick to a reasonable word limit, and it will not be included in its full-length form in the newsletter because - the editor-in-chief assures me - it was just TOO DAMN HARD to cut it down whilst still doing it justice. That's what I choose to believe anyway. She also told me the word "gullible" isn't in the dictionary, how strange. So here it is in all its glory, and obviously this is copyright (c) Ben Gould, 2010 in case anybody was thinking of appropriating it (stop laughing at the back). Some sections may have appeared in similar form in blog entries at the time - deal with it. ........................................................................ My favourite World Cup-related memory is of a high school food technology lesson back in the summer of 1994, during wh...

FINAL SOWETO UPDATE: As it turned out, the tour operator person was very nice about our aborted trip, making various offers to take us out that evening for dinner/drinks. Offers which I kept declining because basically I was still annoyed with them and, no money ever having changed hands, I just wanted to forget about the whole business. Yeah I know, another gift horse stared squarely in the chops. Anyway, it's nearly the end of our trip now and it's often been a strange and fascinating experience. So, what have we learnt? South African petrol stations aren't very accepting of credit cards. Plus they all have attendants who fill your tank up to overflowing unless you specifically ask them not to. They have tomato sauce over here rather than ketchup, which is sweeter and tastes just different enough to be faintly annoying B&B/hostel cooked breakfasts consist of, at most: one egg, two bacon strips, one tomato and toast ONLY. There's normally plenty of cereal ...

Hmm , so it turns out we're not trundling round Soweto this afternoon after all. For whatever reason our driver failed to meet us at the designated location, or at least he didn't show up after an hour and 15 minutes, and so we decided to cut our losses and leave. I'm sorely tempted to NAME AND SHAME the tour operator in question, but as they came highly recommended by the Rough Guide I'll assume this was an aberration and give them the benefit of the doubt. Just.

So yeah, I was at the World Cup final. Admittedly it wasn't the best game, with the Dutch gameplan seemingly to kick several shades of shit out of the Spanish and hope that Howard Webb didn't give them a red card (having seen some highlights, he could have done so much sooner but apparently a kung fu kick to the chest doesn't merit a red these days). And admittedly we were right at the front behind one of the nets which, due to the many cameramen in front of us, was not the ideal vantage point we'd first imagined it to be. And admittedly you could only really get the full effect of the closing ceremony from high up in the stands, or from watching it on TV, and I only got the tiniest glimpse of Shakira in the flesh. But hey, I was at a World Cup final, which still feels pretty cool. More by accident than design, the last few days of this trip have featured not one but two theme parks - UShaka Marine World in Durban and Gold Reef City here in Joburg. Both of these were ...

Durban is an interesting old place. After our first visit for the semi-final on Wednesday night, we returned yesterday for a proper look around. If we'd stuck to walking the streets of the city centre and visiting the Victoria Market, we'd have seen no more than a handful of other white faces all day. It felt like a proper African city, bustling with hawkers and street traders trying to compete with the modern shops they share the pavements with. The market itself is a much more Indian concern, being part of the district where Durban's large community from the subcontinent is apparently based. I was slightly disappointed not to see more Indian folks around there, but I think the real heart of that community was further north, going into the areas which the Rough Guide only recommends for the braver travellers. I did have lunch in an authentic-looking Indian fast-food joint, a nice enough chicken roti roll which I then said hello to again later that evening. Going back d...

After yesterday's match in Durban, we've now been to seven of the ten World Cup stadia and seen eight matches in total. Thoughts on these as follows: Royal Bafokeng stadium, Rustenburg Basically a provincial athletics stadium which somehow holds 40,000 people (the minimum required for World Cup matches), with no video screens or working scoreboard when we were there. From our seats right near the front behind the goals (for England v USA ), we could barely see what was going on at the far end of the pitch and couldn't see the near touchline because of the athletics track and advertising hoardings, hence we only worked out that Robert Green had let Clint Dempsey's tame shot go underneath him by everyone else's despairing reactions. Plus, as recounted elsewhere, the organisation for the park and ride after the match was an absolute shambles. Frankly, an even worse football ground than Brighton's comical Withdean stadium, which was never intended to be used f...

We've seen several sides of South Africa in our two and a half weeks here. Although the place is vast, the nature of the World Cup being spread out between cities in as many areas as possible and our purchasing of different types of tickets has meant plenty of driving and allowed us to see a decent cross-section of it. On day one we briefly experienced the ultra-posh Sandton suburb of Johannesburg (well, one street on which we queued for 2.5 hours at least), which is as white and affluent as you can get. We also saw a bit of Rustenburg (a city everyone agrees is rubbish), and had appalling experiences both in getting away from the stadium and at our hostel - the latter charging us 300 rand each for what turned out to be newly-built bunk beds crammed in 8-to-a-room, as the owners were attempting to make as much cash from English fans as possible. The knackered manager reckoned he'd been up for over 48 hours, which might have elicited some sympathy if he and his sour-faced wife...

... not for us anyway, we still have two more weeks over here including second-round, quarter-final, semi and final matches involving either Paraguay or whoever ends up beating them, and I'm determined to enjoy myself. But I feel almost duty bound to rake over the ashes of yesterday's limp defeat. Here are a few half-baked theories as to why this World Cup campaign was such a disaster for England: Over-reliance on one player Pretty early on, Fabio Capello sussed out that Wayne Rooney was by far our best and most creative player and thus built his formation and team around him. Rooney was by no means alone in being horrendously below par in this tournament, but he was the one player we desperately needed to be on his game. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold etc Pressure/nerves England did look nervous against the USA but this could be excused as opening-match syndrome, and we still could have won the game against our most difficult group opponents on paper. Then ...

... er, actually not at all. Addo Elephant Park , a huge national park in which we stayed last night, and where you can do your own safaris or guided tours with a chance of seeing all sorts of big game, was really good. I just wanted to do that pun. (Sorry.) The so-called Big Five animals all live there, although of the five we only saw elephants and buffalo, missing out on rhino, lions and leopards. I didn't have massively high expectations going into the safaris, having never done anything like this "in the wild" before, and therefore I really enjoyed seeing a plethora of pachyderms as well as warthogs, meerkats, zebras, a tortoise and a whole host of deer/antelope-y creatures - an Eland, some Hartebeest and loads of beautiful Kudu, which were by far the most numerous. The guide on the guided trip we did said there used to be even more Kudu in the park, which was the main reason for introducing the lions into the fray. Having stopped off at a market at lunchtime, I ca...

... but hopefully not England too. Just a quick one this, as WiFi is expensive and time is against me. South Africa will count themselves rather unfortunate not to progress past the group stages after yesterday's performance, one albeit aided by a farcical mid-meltdown French side. We watched the match on a big screen in a hall on top of a massive hill, at the bottom of which was the Storms River Village - a fantastic national park where we spent the last two nights in a log cabin virtually right next to a stunning stretch of rocky coastline complete with crashing yet strangely soothing wave sounds. (Are you jealous yet?) The aforementioned hall was chock full of rapt South Africans who were going mental as the second goal went in, and throughout the remainder of the match to be fair. It really does seem like the entire country has got behind the national team for this tournament, a fantastic display of unity. And this match proved once and for all that it IS possible for a large...

Lekker: Our four days in and around Cape Town were mostly fabulous. I don't want to become one of those travel bores so I won't drone on and on about how pretty the scenery is, etc. Capetonians certainly love their city though, and the usual phrase you hear is "there are two types of South Africans - those who live in Cape Town and those who want to live here". You can see their point, as their city has the massive advantage of being built in a stunning natural ampitheatre (not sure if this is the correct geological term but it sounds good) surrounded by imposing mountains, including the daddy itself Table Mountain. Climbing the Table was really hard, mind. For some stupid reason, maybe because all my hill climbing experience was years ago in the Malverns/Brecons/Snowdonia, I was thinking the climb would consist of steepish slopes, not the vertiginous, endless rocky steps that were the reality. It was immensely satisfying once we reached the top, however. It sho...

Right, so my World Cup experience so far is as follows: Saturday June 12th Arrived in Johannesburg airport just before 5am after almost a whole day in the air. The plan was to have some breakfast, then get in the queue for the all-singing all-dancing FIFA TICKET MACHINES from which we could obtain all our tickets, including most importantly those for this evening's opening England match. We queue for the machines. The queue is not moving. The machines appear to be broken. We are advised to go into Joburg or Rustenburg instead. We wait a while. Many people leave. The queue starts moving. Up ahead, people are getting actual World Cup tickets from the machines. We get to the front. So close. All the machines break down again. No tickets. We decide to go to Sandton (posh Joburg suburb) to get them instead. Queue for ages to pick up hire car. Drive to Sandton. Queue for over two hours but finally pick up those precious tickets. Back to car, start drive to lodge we've booked...

Tomorrow my alarm will wake me up at stupid o'clock so I can get to the airport in time to catch my flight to South Africa. I'm going to South Africa! For the World Cup! The entire thing! With guaranteed tickets to the final! Which England might even get to! I am absolutely shitting myself. I've sensed the bemusement on peoples' faces when revealing this information in the last few days. Wait a minute, they will have been thinking, you're taking a month off work to go halfway across the world so you can witness one of the great sporting events in person, and you're not bouncing off the walls with excitement?? I see their point. Unfortunately, as someone who craves the orderliness of a safe, familiar routine, I do not make for an ideal traveller. I am also a terrible worrier. I blame this entirely on my mother, who could find the grey cloud of doom attached to every silver lining. Whatever I did with my life, there would always be something for her to nag m...

Right, all you media and advertising exec types - listen up. I thought we'd learned our lesson after the last World Cup. You remember, the one before which the so-called English "golden generation" were massively hyped up as potential winners and out of which we skulked after another limp quarter final defeat. Yeah, the one where we barely put in one decent half of football and where the bloody WAGs generated as many column inches as their spouses. It's bad enough when England inevitably exit a tournament on penalties - the sense of crushing disappointment is a damn sight worse when you lot have pumped up the pre-tournament optimism to a ridiculous and wildly unrealistic degree. But what have we here? I've sat through multiple screenings of at least 5 different Come On Lads, England Expects-type ads this weekend - Kit Kat, Sky, The Sun, Carlsberg and Sony are all at it again. Two of these feature Terry bloody Venables, and during yours, the Sun, we even have t...

Let us spare a thought for poor David Beckham. It may sound odd to demand sympathy for a multimillionaire, one of the most famous men in the world and the man who may singlehandedly bring the World Cup to these shores in 2018, but Becks is a curious case. You can pour scorn on his modelling exploits, snigger at his silly voice and be frankly repulsed by his skeletal missus, but if you're an English football fan the chances are you'll be shedding a tear over the ruptured achilles that will cruelly rob him of the chance at glory in his fourth World Cup this summer. It wasn’t always thus. Indeed, it’s remarkable just how much Beckham’s popularity has waxed and waned throughout his career. Going into France 98 he wasn’t considered a starter, but Glenn Hoddle bowed to public pressure after the first couple of games and put him in the team, only for him to flick his foot at Diego Simeone in the second round in one of those sporting acts of petulance whose consequences are similar ...