I like football but I rarely enjoy a World cup, well not since Italia 90. I think Ive finally realised in my older years Wimbledon is the best sporting tournament there is. The World Cup or tournament football in general is shit. England is also shit, overpaid foreign managers, for too long.. now a boring English one whose dinosaur tatics saw us to the world cup but gave us no chance of winning it. A team of over the hills that still think they deserve a place against the hungrier but less experienced. To be honest I just don't care what happens.

This all before we look at the bigger social issues around the event. Anyway I can watch tennis starting from the 23rd. Now there is a spectacle.

The excessive influence of money on the Premier League has wrecked English football with foreign players and managers dominating and making it tougher for homegrown talent to break through. Despite this situation the current England team contains some great young players with the necessary core of experienced ones. On paper we should be able to do very well but we never seem to be able to find the extra magic that makes the difference, unlike the Dutch, who despite being a much smaller country with a lesser domestic league to draw on, manage every few years to produce an exceptional national team and it seems they've done it again this time.

Personally, I shall be far more interested in following the progress of the Tour De France which always exerts a fascination in our house for three weeks every summer. Even with the underlying spectre of doping by riders, nothing can take away  the shear athletic endeavour involved in riding 5-6 hours a day at race speed over the some of the highest mountains in Europe in extremes of weather. Apart from 2 or 3 rest days this goes on daily for three weeks. Riders are often involved in excrutiating crashes, losing large amounts of skin and worse, but if they are physically able they just jump back on their bikes and keep riding, it's not unknown for them to continue in the race with with broken collarbones or ribs. They are some of the toughest people in sport.  Chivalry still exists in pro cycling with top riders sometimes slowing to allow competitors who have crashed to catch up with the group. This is a stark contrast to football where they roll around feigning agony after being tackled and cheat to win decisions from the referee.

Surely woofboxer meant that the money that the players are paid has led to over-indulgence and the players no longer have the hunger for the game. They play like computer icons.Footie is a big business because the majority are morons and they love it so much that they will pay the absurd prices of premium TV to the likes of that ugly moster Murdoch..

On a side note, went out for a piss-up last night, we started to chat to a few girls who then asked us whether we were following the world cup. Same old "real men watch football" when we said that we didn't really care. Later on two of them had to go upstairs to check the score, of course coming back all disappointed that England lost. Couldn't help quipping that if she was genuinely disappointed, then she couldn't have been following the cup for that long... luckily she didn't resent the remark.