Last night was one of those matches that every football fan will be able to recall exactly where they were when they saw it unfold. I was in the House of Commons, at a work function, and the match was twenty minutes in already when I started to get edgy to see what was happening. […]

In my initial World Cup prediction, I said the semi-finals would be Brazil v Germany and Argentina v Spain. All right, I was completely wrong about Spain, but I got the rest spot on, not to mention the fact that my Brazil v Argentina final is still on – and looking more and more likely. […]

So the second round of the World Cup has concluded. This officially ends the “shitloads of matches on all the time” portion of the programme; there are only seven games left in the entire tournament, eight if you include the third place match. I suppose they theoretically increase in quality from here – although this […]

Apologies to start off with for being quiescent this past week; I was on holiday with the family, in France. There are so many things about France I adore, but chief amongst them is the fact that despite only being twenty-two miles distant, the place feels a world away from England. At one point we […]

First to the really big news: Spain is out of the World Cup after only two matches played. Seven days into the tournament, no less. Already my prediction for the whole shebang is in tatters – I had Spain going out to Argentina in the semis. It should also be noted that they are the […]

So England lost to Italy. This was not wholly unexpected, at least to those of us who live within the boundaries of reality. There was a lot of talk afterwards about how England weren’t that bad, actually, that there was a lot to build on. I suppose I see their point. It wasn’t the mauling […]

The story for me, so far in this very young World Cup, is the amount of officiating howlers we have had already. The Brazil penalty was bad enough. But in the first fifteen minutes of the Mexico v Cameroon match, two clear and fair goals were denied by erroneous officiating. What was worse is that […]

There’s a great Simpsons sketch that brilliantly illustrates the American viewpoint on association football. We are presented with the concept of a “World Series of Soccer” in which Mexico and Portugal are pitted against each other for world supremacy. The Americans, of course, cannot fathom any sport in which they don’t come out as World […]

As the entirety of the football following public knows already, earlier this month Sol Campbell brought out an autobiography in which he claimed that had he been white he would have captained England for ten years. This, as could have been foreseen, opened up a huge discussion on racism in English football and whether it […]