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No Frills Football
Giovanni Trapattoni was sitting at home watching a black cat on a ladder smash a mirror for seven years. Pointless superstitious beliefs – or religion as I like to call it – meant that he opted to stay at home as FIFA’s bigwigs rigged it so France could have a handy passage into the World Cup. One strange phenomenon that tends to accompany any draw involving Ireland was the mystery of the rising prices and some airlines got criticised for raising prices directly after the draw was made. It’s bad news if you want to go and watch the Paris leg of the playoff, but think about all the people who can now enjoy cheap flights to Athens, Lisbon and Moscow! Bonus! Ryanair got the brunt of the blame with Aer Lingus getting only a cursory mention, which suggests they take the far more honourable route of ripping you off all the time, not just after World Cup playoff draws.
And I move from a no-frills airline to the no-frills football of Ireland. There was a variety of responses to the draw in the comments section and by variety I do in fact mean two, which technically is the maximum possible views you can have on the draw – Ireland will qualify or France will qualify. That’s pretty much every eventuality bar a shock Godzilla attack where he eats all the players and any people eligible to play for their countries so neither nation can field a team for next year’s World Cup. Strangely, that one wasn’t mentioned.
According to FIFA’s rankings, it’s the worst draw Ireland could have got, but these are the same FIFA rankings that say the USA are the 11th best team in the world, so they’re about as reliable as William Gallas’ mental health. Gerard Houllier, still hanging around the French FA for some reason, says it was a tough draw for France and both teams have a “50-50 chance” of qualification – it was a nice thing to say, but the fact he said it all while having smug shit-eating grin on his face only slightly took away from it. In fact, that was the most diplomatic thing to come out of the France camp as new age hippy, Raymond Domenech called Ireland “sort of an England B side” because most of the players play their trade in England, which is rather like a lot of his players.
If you list off all the names likely to feature on the teamsheet, then it can seem daunting. But once you list them off and quickly ask yourself, ‘what have they done in the last couple of years?‘ it doesn’t seem so bad. Sure Thierry Henry won a treble last season with Barcelona, but did you see him on those crappy Gillette ads? He’s the only one who can be bothered to turn up in person these days! Franck Ribery always looks good – or more accurately he looks like he’s in a streetgang, but a streetgang that can play a bit – and he’ll need to be watched, but we’ll set the Hunt brothers and Glenn Whelan on him and then he’ll know all about gang warfare. Plus there isn’t £100,000 a week up for grabs so Nicolas Anelka isn’t going to try as hard as he does for Chelsea.
Other Football Stuff
- Elsewhere in the Grand Old World Cup Carve Up, Portugal will just about sneak by Bosnia-Herzogovina, Russia should beat Slovenia and if not busy in Paris, hopefully Godzilla will intervene to deny both Greece and Ukraine a place in the World Cup.
- The hosts of next year’s World Cup have more completed stadiums than they do managers, but that’s not saying much, particularly as the number of managers is now zero after they parted company with Joel Santana.
- There was an upside to the beach ball incident that saw Liverpool lose out to Sunderland – the Beach Set is now the top seller in the club shop. Although that’s mainly because ever-witty Man Utd fans have snapped them up and plan to throw them on to the pitch to remind them of something that cost them a goal. Liverpool fans plan to respond by throwing Ben Foster on to the field of play at some stage
The Lazy Round Up Of The Rest Of The World Of Sport
- Being undead and all the whole man in the sky deal doesn’t really work for me but those Jews sure do believe in the whole chosen people deal. When a coach for Israeli basketball side Maccaibi Haifa was ejected from the court during an exhibition game against the New York Knicks he refused to leave, got a rabbi in to plead his case and held up the game for 8 minutes.
“If you forgive him, I can speak to the children and say, ‘You also forgive. If you have a fight, you forgive.’ But he says this is the law, that you must obey.” Explained Rabbi Yitchak Dovid Grossman after failing to convince the referee to change his decision. Imagine that, blindly following some arbitrary rules without taking the individual circumstances into consideration. It’s like some kind of crazy reli…….ehem…..
- Joe Calzaghe tells Carl Froch that he needs to improve his defence. Carl Froch tells Joe Calzaghe that he needs to improve his jive.
- Two tennis players are ‘detained’ in Sweden on suspicion of soliciting prostitutes. If you were to solicit prostitutes, you’d be detained also – for half an hour or an hour, depending on how much you wanted to pay. Judging by Rafa Nadal’s massive left arm and Andy Murray’s frequent wrist injuries, we can rule those two out as suspects.
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