England's taking it Easy

The English are typically cocky after their supposedly soft draw has given them a milk run to the World Cup Final next July. This newspaper headline says it all- it's a dream draw; a doddle; dead 'EASY.'

Now, those who were paying attention in third form English class will notice that this headline is an acrostic poem.

I seem to recall having to do first name acrostics at the beginning of each school year. Each letter was supposed to be a representation of the writer's true persona. As the years progressed the words chosen would illuminate the inner turmoil of the youthful poet. For example an optimistic 11 year old Garry might be:

G-reat!
A-wesome!
R-eally good at soccer!
R-ipper!
Y-oung!

But by age 15 poor Garry has realised the true tragic awfulness of this mortal coil and now describes himself as:

G-othic prince
A-ngry!
R-eally, really angry and my
R-retarded heart knows no love
y-oung of years, but old of soul.

Thankfully at 16 Garry discovers girls and the would-be Byron spares the world another awful acrostic outpouring.

So I always thought the acrostic was the last refuge for the unpoetic to shine a glimmer of creativity over a career destined for the prosaic wilderness of the wrecker's yard. There is something terribly simplistic and naive about this form of poetry-much like The Sun's A for Awesome effort.

EASY?

Should England really be so confident? Slovenia are no slouches, trumping perennial World Cup qualifiers the Czechs and Poland in qualifying. Even mighty England has been made to look like a clown when dealing with Poland in past qualifiers.

Algeria booked their tickets to South Africa by beating the African champions Egypt in a pressure cooker atmosphere that would have surely pushed England's pampered millionaires to their limits:


And as for Team USA, soccer is less and less a novelty sport in the land of the free throw, and after a very credible performance at this year's Confederations Cup in South Africa, England would be wise to be wary. We all know what happened the last time England underestimated USA in a World Cup match.

EASY? The Sun's having a larf Garry.

I thought I'd take a look at NZL's group and compose an acrostic headline from the point of view of the Italian tabloids:

P-araguay
I-talia
S-lovakia
A-otearoa-New Zealand

"It's a PISA piss mate!"

Do you have any more suggestions for World Cup group acrostics? Alternative epithets for countries names (i.e. Aotearoa/New Zealand) are allowed.

While you are pondering this poetic puzzler here is a vid* for your enjoyment. It is taken from FIFA's (actually rather good) magazine show Futbol Mundial. Wellington looks gorgeous throughout, despite the fact that the water in the surf shots would be absolutely freezing.



*'Its all about me alert':

When John Adshead picks up the Dominion Post at 2 minutes 10- the back page photo shows me and some of the Yellow Fever boys before the game, as also shown here.

The Bahraini team are training at my local, Newtown Park, as profiled here. Should have spent more time practising penalties...

Jabulani=Celebrate

In an extravanganza featuring contemporary and traditional african dancers, South African world music star Johnny Clegg, and African sports stars such as Makhaya Ntini, Haile Gebreselassie and, erm, David Beckham, the draw was made for the 2010 World Cup this morning in Capetown.

Here's the song Johnny Clegg did live at the show for you to listen to while you read the rest of this post. I'm not really a fan of Clegg but I thought this was quite catchy, and 'the Scatterlings of Africa' is a nice poetic phrase:



Here is the full draw for South Africa 2010:


For New Zealand Group F will be tough, but as rank outsiders every group looks tough. The top seed in Group F is Italy, and they are the current World Champions. It is unlikely we will ambush them like we did in the 2009 Confederation's Cup warm up match when New Zealand took the lead an incredible three times over Italy before sanity was restored and Italy stumbled home 4-3 winners. The circumstances will be quite different next time we meet.
Paraguay finished third in South American qualifying, racking up wins over Brazil and Argentina. Slovakia finished top of UEFA Group 3, knocking out their former siamese twin and past-powerhouse Czech Republic in the process.

Which group will pick up the inevitable Group of Death tag? On face value it has to be either Group B or Group G. Group G has the mouth watering colonial battle between Brazil and Portugal, dark horse Cote d'Ivoire and complete unknowns North Korea. Group B has African aristocrats Nigeria, the unpredictable Greece, workhorse South Korea and the always competitive Argentina. I also think Australia got a very tough draw in Group D. It could be the turn of the Black Stars of Ghana to shine into the quarter-finals, and Germany are always there at the business end of a FIFA World Cup.

The draw ceremony itself was good fun and made for great television with some hugely (unintentional) comical moments. Draw assistant Charlize Theron was doing her utmost to wind up FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke, undercutting the pomposity of the ceremony with faux-naive freestyles and stage whispers. The tension between the two was palpable, FIFA brass obviously worried that Charlize was going to turn into a rampaging mad-libbing monster on them, and pull another stunt like pretending to draw out 'Ireland' from the bowl as she did in the rehearsal.

The loudest guffaw was reserved for poor old confused Sepp Blatter who forgot where the first game was being played and had to have the host, Carol Manana, remind him. For the amount of money he's paid you'd expect him to be completely savvy about his product.

It was a far cry from the last time New Zealand was at a draw ceremony. Apparently the 1982 draw in Spain was thrown into a complete farce when a revolting machine spat the balls all over the floor. This stressed out the FIFA staff, who in turn made the poor Spanish kids, who were roped in to provide the cute factor, cry.
The 2009 version ran like clockwork- micro managed down to the last detail by a legion of FIFA event underlings.

After watching the draw on TV, Miro and I went down to the launch of the official World Cup ball at a sports store in Central Wellington.It was a fairly strange event with a little portable pitch set up inside the store- of course Miro wanted to get on and strut his stuff but there seemed to be some sort of Kid's skills competetion going on to promote Ricki Herbert's new Football Academy. Ricki Herbert was there signing shirts and balls, and he seemed pretty relaxed after the draw. He was constantly taking calls from his assistant Brian Turner, who was at the draw over in SA, and the media looking for a soundbite or two.

The Jabulani ball (An Isizulu word meaning to celebrate) looks as plastic as ten dollar ball from a discount toy store, but I bet it handles like a dream. I would dearly love to take one to the park for a punt or two. Retailing at $200 plus NZD and with only 500 in the country I doubt that I'll be kicking one around Martin Luckie Park anytime soon.

I bought Miro a mini Jabulani ball for xmas, and got Ricki to sign it. It is the perfect size for his little feet to dribble:

Gone to Pot

The world has gone to pot.*

The 32 (ahem) best football teams in teh wohle world now know who they may come up against at South Africa 2010. Herr Sepp, the great curator, has seeded the top 8 World Cup qualifiers into 'pot' one and allocated the rest into the 3 other pots.

The gardening metaphor of pots and seed is worth exploring.
Pot one is for Sepp's treasured fruit trees- the 8 teams which will bear the coveted summer fruit of South Africa 2010; flowering, blossoming and bringing the honey bees of world media attention to the garden:

Pot one (Current Fifa rankings in brackets)
South Africa (85), Brazil (1), Spain (2) The Netherlands (3), Italy (4), Germany (5),Argentina (6), England (7)

The remaining pots are comprised of the deciduous bric a bracken, the garden's hedging and borders; unlikely to win awards but neccessary to make the flowers and fruit stand out and be noticed.

Some, like Nigeria and Cameroun, are the exotic detailing- tolerated for the colour they bring, but hardly sustenance worthy of being included in the garden's autumnal harvest. Others like New Zealand, Honduras and North Korea are the cute little bonsai- cultivated to a point and then clipped, pruned and set aside as curiosity pieces. Hopefully dusted off and shown a little care and compassion once the great garden show is over.
When the pots were announced the biggest intake of collective breath was reserved for the decision to drop France down to the unseeded pots- not as a karmic kick in the nuts for the Henry affair, but as just rewards for their recent poor form, proving that a Grenouille's green thumb does not guarantee perpetual verdancy in Sepp's magic garden.

Following FIFA's own procedures I made my own mock draw, using an online Excel tutorial to randomly order the 32 teams. As time-unworthy as this excerise was, much like pissing on a lemon tree in a howling southerly, it was a bit of fun. I can tell you that according to my draw New Zealand would be grouped with the Netherlands, France and Chile. Extending my gardening metaphor a little I can also say that if that was the scenario NZ would be mere fertiliser for the Oranjeboom,the Chile plant and the Fleur de Lys.

(For my friends over the ditch, according to my most unscientific draw, Australia ended up with Algeria, Serbia and England. How do you like them Apples?)


*The phrase gone to pot is actually not associated with gardening nor recreational drugs. It is in fact from the industrial revolution when defunct parts were tossed back into the smelting pot to start their time again. Oh cruel fate which tossed Ireland, Bahrain, Bosnia, Egypt et al unceremoniously back into that bubbling pot.

Lights, Camera, Action...

...Which , as every parent should know, is a particularly catchy tune by Ocker supergroup The Wiggles.

But the phrase has been misappropriated by that other World Media Super Power FIFA to describe the lighting of lamps along Adderley Street in Downtown Capetown, as they gear up towards the wiggly circus that is the FIFA World Cup draw.

Ah! I'm salivating at the merest thought of the hooplah, the pageantry, and the orchestrated litany of pre-ordained catastrophe that is a World Cup Draw.

Meanwhile the bunfighting over the yet to be divvied up 2018 World Cup has begun. As evidenced by this article in the Sunday Star Times. Quite apart from generating some predictably negative and parochial in-fighting based around which region has the better stadium (Auckland or Wellington), or the massive questions around inter-confederational co-hosting, this story has all the hall marks of a 'counting chickens before they fully cross the goal line' scenario. Yes it would be a dream come true to host a group, or even a game, in Aotearoa but Aussie has to win the bid first and most likely won't be using the co-hosting angle as a point of difference.

My personal view is that actual competition games would be a long shot, but the more likely hosting of pre-tournament trainings, friendlies and the associated media junkets means that NZ would be likely to get a piece of the action.

Meanwhile I keep telling my son that next year he will be sitting on daddy's lap while we both enjoy the spectacle of the world's best entertainers in action, resplendent in their traditional, representative colours.

Unfortunately, I think he thinks I mean this.

Ah well, if you can't beat em- join em. Enjoy: