Sunday, July 02, 2006

Allez les Bleus

Well, Zidane must be a contender for player of the tournament, and that must be a contender for performance of the tournament.

My only worry now is that all the teams that have played really well have gone out - I'm hoping it's not gonna be an Italy-Portugal final. The last four are all European teams - that would have seemed fairly far fetched a week ago. It's clearly not been a great world cup, yet, in terms of quality, although there has been a lot of entertainment...I've enjoyed it anyway, and I'm glad that France at least have made it to the semi finals.

I was proud of England today, in a strange way. Proud of the way they played when they went down to ten, proud of the unabashed support they got from the fans, support which sounded whole hearted and non-judgemental, just support. It's all a bit soon to try and make sense out of it, but I had two predictions in mind for England and the start of the tournament, and this is the one that's come true. The other one would have maybe been better.