Sucking heartily on life's half-time oranges



Monday 26 July 2010

A New Starlet Is Born!

Catching some BBC sports report the other day, it was great to see the England Under-19s do rather better in the Fisher Price My First European Championships than our so-called Internationals, walking hangovers that they were. And who should pop up as a sub to score the goal to send the boys into the semis but Matt Phillips, a young WWFC player? He's a local boy and by far the lowest-ranked of the squad. Bless. I expect it won't be long before cashwad-totin' Big Guns come calling; surely we can't keep hold of a leggy, nippy England starlet for long can we?
I hope Matt's career has more glamorous longevity than my hero of yore, Keith 'Keithy' Ryan (I never called him Rhino; how could you term the then-blond-bombshelled one after a lumbering knobble-skinned pachyderm? Or so I thought then in my teenage rose-tints, erk), who, it announces with rather odd trumpeting on Wycombe's website, is developing a carpet and flooring business. Erm, congrats?

Saturday 3 July 2010

World Cup Review (Tat)Two

I thank God* that England puttered out in the second round, given the excitement of subsequent games. I'm not sure my heart could have stood the hysteria...

New awards:

Crimes against footy-feminism #1: A joint award to the BBC and ITV. The BBC for Lawro's casually flung-out remark, following the shot of a pretty blonde Naomi Watts-lookalike in the stands at Germany vs Argentina: 'I don't know who she is but I bet she's a WAG'. Didn't you mean 'I bet she's a fully-formed, individually valid and coincidentally attractive human being', Mark? Slip of the tongue was it, oh ye Ex-Footballer Most Famous For No Longer Having A Moustache?

Crimes against footy-feminism #2: Over to ITV for Clive Tyldesley's locker-room joshing 'Phone the wife and tell her you won't be back from the pub for a bit longer' at the end of full-time in Ghana vs Uruguay. No need Clive, I was at home, glued to the match with THE HUSBAND as MY happy co-viewer, you prehistoric numpty.

Tattoowatch: This World Cup has been a wondrous feast of skin-griffonage, as black ink continues to scrawl amok up the biceps of the globe's players.
Australia's Tim Cahill has the best of the arms but they're a little commonplace now.


Kevin Prince Boateng merits credit for his quite hilariously silly neck simulacra of crowns and cards.

Finally Cisse, the coolest-looking man in football, wins some kudos for his clean and simple heaven-bound look.
Though thinking about this award has sucked me into a very
dark and dangerous world from which there is no escape...):

Most dramatic triple-moment #1: The Ghana vs Uruguay quarter-final's a) last-gasp goalmouth melodrama b) Suarez handball and c) crossbar-thwacked penalty misskick by poor, blubbing Gyan. Had England been involved in this feverpitch moment, my brain might have gone into meltdown with the sheer terror. As it was, the Ghanaian reactions filmed by ITV in Accra was the sweetest thing ever.

Most dramatic triple moment #2: The unbelievable trio of penalties in the Spain vs Paraguay quarter-final, watched in a lovely Hackney kebab joint full of old Turkish men and Ghanaian families raw from the night before. We tried to decipher the action on the silent big screen, our open mouths full of
chicken beyhtis as Paraguay missed theirs, Alsonso scored his and then missed his second go when it had to be re-taken. Hilarious stuff.

Most overused words of the tournament: 'Humbling, yet inspiring', uttered by Gary Lineker after a every single small feature on a shanty town which now lives in the shadow of a hulking, totally inappropriate uber-stadium. 'Rainbow nation' comes a close second.

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