Sweet Nothings

Group E Switzerland, Ecuador, France, Honduras The intricacies of FIFAs world ranking system are only marginally less opaque than those of their host-country selection/trough-feeding process. And so Switzerland are apparently the sixth best team in the world, despite their utter failure to do anything of note at a major championships. Maybe it’s all a deliberate ploy to give some lower-ranked teams a better chance of success – certainly Ecuador and Honduras will be far happier than had they drawn any of the other seeds, all of whom are actually any good. They do have the mercurial French to worry about, however. Their fantastic display of stereotype-confirming petulance in South Africa took some of the heat off England’s pathetic showing, and it’s true that they looked down and out after the first leg of their playoff against Ukraine. However, they did have the misfortune to be drawn in Spain’s qualifying group, practically condemning them to the playoffs from the off, and si...

Although World Cup fever has been somewhat tainted by the shock discovery that the bidding for the Qatar 2022 edition may not have been entirely above board, the show must go on and so here is my exclusive, highly-informed preview: Group A Brazil, Croatia, Mexico, Cameroon It ’ s hard to think of this group as anything other than a gentle warm-up for the hosts. The Croats have some useful attacking talents in Luka Modric and Mario Mandzukic, but they’ve never come close to replicating their third place finish of 1998. Us Englanders being hopelessly blinkered, we often view fellow European nations in relation to ourselves, and although they’ve been known to beat us on occasion (thanks for that, Mr MacLaren), Croatia basically sit as one of those B-level European teams who we tend to get drawn with in qualifying fairly regularly, yet rarely do they look like a significant threat to our hopes. Unlucky, lads. Mexico are like clockwork - generally quali...

In this first post-Fergie season, it wasn’t terribly surprising that Manchester United continued to dominate the headlines, albeit not in the manner to which they were accustomed. Although in some ways a shame that they didn’t put up a great fight to defend their crown, it’s so often the case in sport that great champions don’t just slowly fade away, their declines instead being sudden (check) and total (which now rather depends on Mr van Gaal). It’s interesting that journalists chose David Moyes’s clearout of the club’s backroom staff as one of the biggest sticks to beat him with. After all, most managers bring their own people with them to new clubs. Either the likes of Mike Phelan and future-ex-Fulham-boss Rene Meulensteen were gods amongst men, or United are a textbook example of all that’s gone wrong with football - a toxic bubble where Fergie was God, and players and fans alike are bloated with self-important, preconceived notions of the club’s ‘way’. Moyes was th...

Another article now appearing in Late Tackle magazine : To the unconverted, American team sports might as well be from another planet – fiendishly complex and stat-obsessed, yet simultaneously ultra-tedious, with adverts every other minute to ensure games last for aeons. But although some of those accusations are hard to deny, the NFL – now the granddaddy of US sports – is ultra-competitive and genuinely unpredictable. Remember the heady days when the unfancied likes of Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest could win the old first division (yes kids, football did exist before the Premier League)? Such tales still happen, only in a different sort of ‘football’, played across the pond, on a field named after a type of grill and in full body armour, which can best be described as rugby with huge shiny knobs on. Here are some reasons why. Any of the below are even less likely to happen here than a witty bon mot from Michael Owen, but one can certainly dream. The draft A...

Ok, I know I’m not meant to flaunting my ignorance by highlighting Asian place names, but Hong Kong has a district called Mong Kok. Mong Kok. Apparently it’s the most densely populated part of what is the most sardine tin-like place on earth, and you can certainly believe that as you come out of the metro station onto a narrow main road packed with shops and pedestrians and surrounded by overpasses and subways. Walk up a few blocks to the various markets and you feel a little less claustrophobic, but this is a relative term in this vertical city-state, where our hotel’s reception was on the 5 th floor due to lack of surface space and where giant hills lurk beyond any mid-skyscraper gaps. View from the Peak   Said markets, by the way, are technically rows of themed shops. The flower market is pretty standard stuff; the fish one less so, most of its wares being bulging bags of goldfish (considered lucky by the Chinese) plus the odd tank to put them in; the bird one th...

We didn’t actually do a lot in Phuket, other than get pathetically sunburnt in typical Englander-abroad style while lounging around beach/poolside at a hotel that in truth was far too swank for the likes of me. But here are a few pictures for you to cast envious glances at, and some general observations on our time on the island. Apologies in advance for banging on about how nice our hotel package was, but it really makes a difference to be welcomed at the airport by a driver waving a card with your name on it. The roads in Phuket aren’t quite as chaotic as Bangkok’s, but lane changing still triggered involuntary buttock-clenching and the number of helmetless youngsters on motorbikes was worryingly high. Once we got to our base in Kata, the roads became hilly, twisty and pavementless but still the bikes kept coming, many ridden by white folks. I could not think of anything less fun than hiring an exposed vehicle to zoom around foreign roads governed by a rudimentary highway...

Don’t start. Yes, Bangkok has a rude name and lots of unsavoury associations - ping pong shows, happy finishes, etc etc. But take your minds out of the gutter now, because as a sophisticated traveller I am above such lowbrow things. Pah - you people sicken me. Cultured though I am, this was actually the first time I’d been to Asia and therefore concepts like 30+ degree heat and saturation-level humidity were rather novel. I’d love to say that I got used to this immediately but that would be a massive lie, and instead the scorching blast every time I stepped out from the shade or onto the balcony of our lovely air-conned room always caught me by surprise. The other thing is, well… anyone who even slightly knows me will see through the above ‘citizen of the world’-style boasting as overcompensation for my safety-first, creature of habit personality. Making my way around a chaotic metropolis on the other side of the world without any language skills to fall back on was always goi...

I wrote this piece a while ago, then due to life events in their various forms getting in the way it was never 'properly' submitted and thus I have no idea if it ever made it to print. Anyway, here it is (dated though it now is): It’s fair to say David Moyes hasn’t had a dream start at Old Trafford. Whether it’s entirely fair to lay all the blame for Manchester United’s underperformance this season at his door, the reality is that the reigning Premier League champions look like a long shot to even qualify for next season’s Champions’ League. This would be quite the comedown for anyone, but especially so for United’s success-obsessed supporters. And so, as is the modern custom, certain fans are already calling for Moyes’s head. Managers never used to change this much. How we used to laugh at the continentals and their high-speed coaching merry-go-rounds! And yet, now English fans are used to such phenomena as seven firings in one eight-day period, which happened...