2010 World Cup: Money matters

An excellent infographic on www.knowyourmoney.co.uk dealing with the economics of the World Cup.

In light of yesterday's budget you wonder how this British government can support England's 2018 bid.

And, given the money that has been spent, Sepp Blatter and FIFA should be hunted down - haunted even - if just one of their claims about the legacy in South Africa is not acted upon.

2010 World Cup: Makana FA - More Than Just A Game

I wrote something last week about the story of the Makana Football Association, the organisation that prisoners founded to run football on Robben Island during apartheid.

You can now watch their story, as told by the film More Than Just A Game, on the BBC iPlayer. Featuring interviews with many of those involved it is well worth a watch. (Note: You've got until 1.19am on Saturday 26th June to view More Than Just A Game.)

You can also hear Alan Green recount the story when he visits Robben Island for the World Service's World Football programme. (Note: Apparently this one is available until 2099)

Also up for some iPlayer viewing is Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. The only thing worth watching about France at the 2010 World Cup. (Note: You've got until 5:59am on Sunday 27th June to view Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait.)

Amazingly I don't see A Shot At Glory in the iPlayer listings.

Some other stuff for your listening pleasure:

Heart and Soul: Is There Room For God On The Football Pitch? (Note: 2099 again - does God know something we don't?)

The Monday Documentary: The Power And The Passion (Note: 2099 again):

"With the 2010 World Cup underway, many football fans around the world will be avidly debating and agonising over the fate of their nations in the tournament. However it is often at the domestic club level that the game finds its most passionate support.

David Goldblatt, embarks on an assortment of adventures into the meaning and madness of the game. He travels to four very different football games in Italy, Egypt, Ghana and the UK, to experience the build-up and pitch action from the perspective of the fans."

2010 World Cup: Hugh and cry

I’ve got to point you in the direction of The Record’s World Cup podcast.

An extraordinary rant from Hugh Keevins about the World Cup.

Poor old Hugh. He seems to be living in some sort of colonial time warp and thinks the World Cup should only be played in Europe, and western Europe at that.

Not South America and certainly not Africa.

His point about the massive inequality and the gaps between rich and poor is sound enough – although to some extent that can be levelled at any country.

And he fails to mention the United States.

On his criteria of footballing heritage there is no way the US could host. But, purely in terms of attendance, the 1994 World Cup remains the most successful.

There’s also some discussion about the ways different countries qualify. The suggestion is that an open, global qualification system would rid the tournament of lesser nations like New Zealand.

But surely the point of the World Cup is to have countries from across the world coming together to compete in a showcase event that allows people the world over to celebrate football.

Tweaking qualification would ensure a lot of countries never featured. That’s not the way to grow football. That’s the way to encourage a bloated hegemony amongst the leading teams. Just like the Champions’s League.

Anyway have a listen and see what you think.

Let’s just say that Mr Keevins comes across as vehemently unreconstructed.

Note also that Keevins, along with Jim Traynor and Keith Jackson, are rather critical of the event as a whole. Is it just me or has it the tournament really started to pick up over the last couple of days?

2010 World Cup: Vuvuzelas

What’s more irritating than the constant drone of the vuvuzela?

Many things.

BBC punditry.

ITV punditry.

Moaning about the new ball.

But most irritating of all, the constant drone of moaning about the vuvuzela.

Apparently over 500 people have complained to the BBC about the sound of vuvuzelas ruining their enjoyment of the games.

Really? I’d have thought low scoring, ultra defensive football might be ruining their enjoyment more. Or commentary and studio analysis that seems to be a less than successful balancing act between total ignorance and casual racism.

I’d propose a national complaints hotline for people to complain about these incessant complainers. Name them, shame them and then stand outside their house with vuvuzelas every night for a month.

I can’t say that the noise hasn’t annoyed me at times. But you get used to it.

And what are these people who pick up to the phone actually saying: “There’s a football tournament going on thousands of miles away and it seems that these locals don’t behave the same way at the games as I do.”

Or, far more likely: “These games don’t sound the same as when I watch Manchester United and Chelsea on Sky Sports.”

And the TV and radio presenters moaning during every link up with studios back here. Get over yourselves. There’s thousands of unemployed, under-employed or underpaid journalists would gladly trade places and put up with some local habits for the chance to be a paid eye-witness to Africa’s first World Cup.

And are the vuvuzelas not striking a little blow against FIFA’s apparent aim to turn football the world over into a Coca-Cola emblazoned franchise played out in sterile modern stadia?

Even Sepp Blatter has accepted that the vuvuzela has a more tyrannical grip on this World Cup than he does.

Imagine that drone as a million voices singing “f*ck off FIFA, f*ck off Blatter, f*ck off corporate land grab of football” in perfect harmony and it begins to sound a lot sweeter.

Now I hear that there is a call to ban them from SPL grounds next season.

Lothians MSP Margo MacDonald said:

"But as is obvious from the mounting level of complaint, I think there is justification for the SPL to consider the matter before it becomes a problem here.

"As well as being really annoying, there is also a possible health and safety aspect, given the noise they make."

Much as I respect Margo, and as a season ticket holder at Easter Road and wife of Jim Sillars we must consider her to be one of our most patient politicians, she misses a couple of points.

Firstly, the last thing the SPL needs is more rules and regulations about what can and cannot happen at matches.

And, crucially, the vuvuzela won’t catch on in Scotland. They will no doubt be much in evidence at the start of the season. Football fans are experts at cracking totally original jokes that only another 5000 people have ever thought of before.

But once that novelty wears off they’ll be as out of place as a ‘See You, Jimmy” hat at the South Africa v Uruguay match.

It’s not a part of our football culture, not - to borrow Blatter’s rather overblown phrase - part of the rhythm of Scottish football.

We all worried that South Africa’s World Cup would be out of reach of the local fans. Unfortunately that seems to have been the case but South African football fans have still found a way of giving it a unique local atmosphere. What’s wrong with that?

80 years it took us to take the World Cup to Africa. In return we have got vuvuzelas for a month. Are we really the ones who should be complaining?

Are we just scared of the unknown? The sound has been variously described as "a stampede of noisy elephants," "a deafening swarm of locusts," "a goat on the way to slaughter" and "a giant hive full of very angry bees." I’m no David Attenborough but do those four things necessarily sound the same?

2010 World Cup: Get this party started

So 16 games down and the first round of group matches complete.

Time to call the 2010 World Cup a disaster? No. People probably will but it's still to early to write off the entire tournament.

A few random thoughts:

Lack of goals: The lowest ever number of goals for the first 16 games of a World Cup - and a dearth of exciting fixtures.

Not that it has been without merit. Germany were impressive in demolishing a poor Australian side. North Korea - suddenly everyone's favourite rogue state - served up a treat against Brazil in a fascinating clash of tactics. Spain and Switzerland did much the same this afternoon.

Why? Maybe the tactics have been too negative, teams too scared of losing the first game. Certainly a lot of players have looked nervous and the uniformity of tactics is bound to result in more stalemates than we would want to see.

There is, of course, a difference in playing to your strengths and being overly cautious. Thus North Korea and Switzerland can thrill us with their defensive game while Italy and England just look jittery and dull, mistaking caution for a reliable gameplan.

There's only so many variations on 4-5-1 with worried looking players you can endure before you ask yourself why you're wasting the summer watching extravagantly rewarded players pretending to be in the SPL.

Maybe throughout football there is now an imbalance between the fear of losing and the desire to win, it's just concentrated at the World Cup.

Over the course of the next two games we'll see which of the big teams can shake off the torpor and start to perform. That should liven things up.

The ball: Shut up about the ball. As Chris Waddle said on Radio 5 Live this evening it remains a football. Not square, not a rugby ball. Not a balloon. Most of these players have been training with it for the best part of a month or longer. Stop moaning. If it was as bad as they say surely it would favour attackers. The lack of goals suggests the ball is not the problem.

The hosts: Spaces in the stadiums are not pleasant to watch. Anecdotally it sounds like South Africa is getting behind the World Cup. But actually going to the games is too expensive for the majority. That's a problem that FIFA should have addressed. So far the predictions of anarchy and rampant crime seem wide of the mark. South Africa isn't letting anyone down.

The TV coverage: Awful. The BBC remains ahead - especially online - but winning with a team that includes the smug Gary Lineker, the lazy Alan Hansen and the irritating John Motson is a fairly hollow victory. It's probably not cheering anyone up when they realise how hugely well paid Adrian Chiles has been for committing career suicide in moving to ITV. Radio 5 Live remains a cut above.

What's next?: Hopefully less moaning. Time for a lot of teams to get over the nerves, shed the negativity and do something. That should mean that the football improves. If it doesn't then we might see some surprising teams in the second round. Either way it's going to be more interesting than the first six days would suggest.

South Africa v Uruguay this evening is the perfect place to find the spark we need.

Scotland v Brazil

Nostalgia Friday.

1974 when we went so close. So very close.



1990 when Leighton could only parry.



Memories are made of this!

The first preview

21 day to go.

Just three weeks until the World Cup starts.

Here's the thing. I absolutely love it.

There are reasons not to. Reasons, some would say, to hate it.

Scotland not there. England there. Scotland not there. Fifa representing the very worse kind of globalisation. Scotland not there. Corporate behomoths getting richer as the game becomes ever more corrupted by money. Scotland not there.

And I care about those things. Some of them I care about a lot. Some of them not so much. But I do care.

Yet somehow I am able to suspend disbelief, embrace the hype and forget about Scotland's failings because I get to enjoy a month of as much football as anyone could want.

I love the wallcharts, I'm in heaven if there's space to include goal difference in the group tables - although I never had the patience for Panini. I love the preview supplements in the papers. I love that this is, sometimes, world class football available free to air. I love that people who don't like football spend a month either learning to like it or really pissed off.

Scotland not being there, that's the elephant in the room. But 204 countries tried to qualify for South Africa. Only 32 made it. Are 172 countries supposed to take no interest in what is, truly, a global event?

England being there. The rhinoceros in the room, warily eyeing up that elephant. I am not buying into the Anyone But England stuff. Bit bored of it all. Actively supporting them? No. Pretending to suppport whoever they are playing? Absolutely not.

Anyway, England have the world's most hypocritically moralistic press and that whinging, imbecilic fourth estate seems to hate them more than enough for all of us.

Yes, I find the media hype surrounding every England throw in annoying, often it makes my blood boil. But that's not the players fault, has nothing to do with the manager and can't be blamed on the decent fans who follow them.

And the world's a smaller place now. There's thousands of other places to get commentary when England are playing. Embrace the global village and the lingua franca of football.

So, free from the worries of watching Scotland and without a misguided jingoistic hatred of England, I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the spectacle.

And, if you are so minded, keep visiting the blog where I'll be covering the World Cup along with the usual feast of Scottish football.

A word from our sponsors

"The World Cup on The Scottish Football Blog is brought to you in association with..."

Not really. But I must mention the kind gentlemen at SoccerPro.com who saw their way to ensuring I can enjoy the World Cup in style.

I can never really make up my mind who to back at these events but this time I've taken the not wholly controversial step of picking Brazil as my team to follow. After all we've played them so many times that Brazil are pretty much the Scotland of the southern hemisphere. Kind of.

And now I can cheer them on in my very own Brazil World Cup jerseys as provided by SoccerPro and which are, of course, brilliant.

Seriously, they are good guys who said I could slag them off if I wanted but the service was first rate and the gear is actually great quality. Doesn't quite make me look like a samba soccer star but you can't have everything. (In my head it completely does make me look like that anyway.)

They've also covered me for World Cup kickabouts with a pair of Puma soccer shoes. Obviously football footwear has made giant strides since my day because these are the bees knees. I'm also told by those in the know that they look equally good when worn as part of one's everyday outfits. So take that, my trusty old Hush Puppies.

OK, advertorial almost over. Thanks again to Trevor at SoccerPro. Much appreciated and it is great stuff.