Once upon a time in a land far, far away. Well actually not that far away. In the garden Chez TLF lived the lucky chicken. The chicken was a fine creature and always came into its own during significant football tournaments, with the hope of teams, most often France of course and England resting on its beak.
The chicken didn’t have many needs, but a good lick of silver paint was expected when its football influencing powers were called upon. The chicken was therefore feeling pretty miffed by Satday, the competition was just over a week old, it had intervened to ensure that two not entirely convincing French performances had resulted in victoire and yet a can of spray paint had been conspicuous by its absence.
Fortunately for the Lucky Chicken, TLF had decided in honour of the World Cup hosts to make Moscow Mule cocktails. TLF isn’t renowned for being very careful with the cocktail measures and soon enough Mr TLF, who was definitely over the limit for operating a spray can, had done the decent thing and the Lucky Chicken was restored.
Shiny, happy chicken
So pleased was the Lucky Chicken that it rescued TLF’s cheeky double on Germnay and Mexico, influencing that Kroosial free kick in the 95th minute. Admittedly the Germans were a bit lucky and Sweden should have had a penalty in the 12th minute but neither the Chicken nor TLF care about the injustices of the world when hard cash is at stake. Where they do both draw the line is over the thousands of idiots who seemed to think that racially abusing Jimmy Durmaz, the Swedish player who gave away that free kick, and threatening his family is an acceptable response to footballing disappointment. It isn’t, and so bravo to the response of Durmaz and his team mates – on line if you haven’t seen it.
Obviously TLF and the chicken were gleeful about Ingurland’s cracking result against Panama, but let’s not get carried away. Apart from the fact that TLF missed several goals due to having to disconnect from her radio to engage with members of the public while on duty at the Alban weekend street fair, this is Panama’s first world cup and they have made great progress in developing their national team back home. It was though great to see or indeed hear Ingurland make up a goal difference on Belgium which no one had given them a chance of doing in the morning’s pre-match previews.
The chicken was shaking its head as yet another ex-pro bemoaned his lot – this time Mark Lawrenson complaining about his 6 hour train journey to get to the next match he was paid to summarise on. Let’s compare this with the Peru fans and their inflatable llamas who travelled 32 hours by train from Moscow to Ekaterinburg to watch their team lose to France.
TLF was shaking her head on Friday as Ahmed Musa became the star of the show in Nigeria’s first win of the tournament and LCFC’s twitter feed proudly feted him as Lesta City’s first world cup goal scorer, omitting the fact he has been supremely unsuccessful down at Filbert Way and has been on loan for much of 2018. Clutching at straws the social media team there.
This after TLF had despaired of the time wasting and general mardiness that seemed to dominate the Brazil/Costa Rica game. Their coach Tite, who admittedly did pull a back muscle while celebrating their first goal, seems a likeable, calm man with a dry wit, it is shame that Neymar can’t follow his example.
When I wasn’t watching football, shaking my head in wonder as Mr TLF spray painted the chicken or making cocktails, I was to be found shopping and this takes me back to 1978 again and my first world cup sticker albums. Truly a thing of beauty.
Re-living my youth via official merchandise
This week sees us finish off the group games. We know six qualifying teams and there are ten to go, with still a chance that we might wave goodbye to a few ‘big teams’. Nice to know for once we can sort of relax about Ingurland. Tonight TLF will be glued to Iran/Portugal hoping for a minor miracle.
The heat is officially on!
Sergei Fox
National anthem fact fest: Egypt
Avoiding Arabic letters as it wouldn’t help, the anthem is called Bliady, Bilady, Bilday. The melody was composed by Sayed Darwish, with lyrics from Muhamma Unis al-Qadi. It was adopted as the unofficial anthem in 1952 and officially in 1979.
“My homeland you have my love, my heart”
Chant of the day – Russian
Here we go, here we go, here we go
Здесь мы идем, здесь мы идем, здесь мы идем