And so to what I believe tends to be described as ‘the business end’ of the tournament. Yep the quarter finals are nearly upon us, thus ending the two day tedium that has been a football free zone. As Macduff might have put it,
“O tournament miserable,
With an untitled tyrannical bloody two day break
When shalt thou see thy game days again
Since that truest issue of thy FIFA
By Sepp’s own interdiction stands idle
And does blaspheme the beautiful game?”
Well he would have said that if he hadn’t been busy trying to convince Malcolm to go 4-3-3 against Macbeth Utd…..
To keep the football fiesta spirit alive thus weekend I’m going to cook up some Brazilian stew (Feijoda) and hope that this small domestic effort softens the blow of another two evenings devoted to the beautiful game. I also think, that unlike the Brazilian team, I’ll try not to get too emotional about the whole thing.
As you know my gambling and jinxing skills are almost Neymar-esque these days and so I will be eschewing the bookies this weekend. Rather than financial reward I am hoping for four great games and a reason to still be wearing my Holland shirt(s) into next week. Can Brazil cope with the pressure and stop crying? Can Colombia come up with even better dance moves than they have to date? Will the flu outbreak in the Germany camp mean they catch a cold against France? (BOOMBOOM) And will I spend a lot of time shouting from the living room to wherever Mr TLF is, “Oh my God! You’ve got to come and see this!” (Sometimes that’s about a goalmouth incident and sometimes it’s about Adrian Chiles). Answers to this and more when I’m back on Monday.
Buckle up people, I think it might just be one hell of a weekend.
Lostin van Der Fox
TODAY’S FIXTURES
5pm
France v Germany
9pm
Brazil v Colombia
SATURDAY FIXTURES
5pm
Argentina v Belgium
9pm
Holland v Costa Rica
One final handy bit of advice from Dr Pam
Make them see what they are missing:
“After the footie’s (sic) over, run them a hot bath and massage their shoulders while they relax. This should prick their conscience and remind them to give you a rematch.” I assume she means another game of table football?
Phrase of the day
Just for once I’m going a bit serious on you; I hope you don’t mind. Today’s words come from an article written by Andres Escobar, captain of Colombia at the 1994 World Cup where they were knocked out by an own goal thatl he scored. Everyone was gutted. On his return home he wrote the article for Bogota’s El Tiempe newspaper, in an effort to rally everyone (including himself). Two days later he was murdered.
“Life cannot end here. We have to go on. No matter how difficult we must stand back up. We’ll see each other again soon because life does not end here.”