Worst. World Cup. Ever.
Ok, so six matches in is maybe too early to make a damning judgement on the tournament so far. But the first two and a bit days have produced tactics more depressing than a conversation with Marvin The Paranoid Android, about as much adventure as a trip to Tesco, and about as much quality as my five-a-sides on a Monday night (and a damn sight less energy).
The only really good game so far was the England-USA game, and even that needed an Englabd goalkeeping blunder to light it up - an occurrence which is now increasingly cliched.
But for the best players on the planet, the football has been absolutely bloody awful, really gouge-your-eyes-out type awful. It's not just the negative tactics, though they obviously don't help. It's the crap first touch to the short pass, the massively overhit long pass, the shot from distance that sails so far over the bar that it ends up in orbit alongside Rupert Murdoch's SKY satellites.
So much for the ball that was supposed to humiliate goalkeepers - nobody manages to get the shots on target in the first place. It's as if there s a forcefield around the six yard box, repelling the ball away. Maybe, if it is really as light as they say, the ball is responsible - certainly the long ball over the top has been removed as a threat, as it just sails straight through to the keeper every time. The ball seems to skim off the grass as if it has landed on a trampoline rather than on turf.
Anyway, so far it has been hopeless. And as I write, Slovenia - Algeria is coming to a close, with the score goalless and Algeria down to ten men. And are Slovenia going hell for leather for what would be a critical win, considering they are in England's group?
Not. A. Chance.
L.
PS - And as soon as I write the above, Robert Koren scores. Thank the lord.
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