Believe me, it is. I think somebody did a study of several football games and found that in a 1 hour game, there is on average like 10 minutes of actual footballing action.

I can't talk that much because I love cricket where matches are played over 5 days but at least they play the majority of those 5 days.

I said this for years. I wish I were born to a country like Andorra or NZ. I would have fighting chance of some sort to get into the team!

Wasn't there a team in the 1970's who were absolutely rubbish but were hilarious? They just appeared for the hell of it.

As for bets? To be honest I have not been following the World Cup at all this year. Would anyone care to fill me in on what are the haps?

I was hoping to find a youtube clip from the first ninja turtles movie where raph was making fun of casey jones' choice of cricket bat as a weapon. oh well.

also, the 2002 world cup in korea was an interesting time. when korea had to play the US team the embassy issued a public safety warning. several of my mothers students wanted the US team to just take a knee so they could advance in the tournament because americans don't care about soccer anyway. the match ended blessedly in a tie ( in the words of a british famous-among-local-expats reporter).

Shhh, you know how many boring things like school and work you can skip by pretending to support England over here? I'll pretend to care about anything if it'll let me be lazy. *Hangs flag out of window*

Happy for anyone to win thuogh. Unless it's france.

You from the US? You could join their Rugby or cricket teams. You might even make the rugby world cup- the second largest watched sporting event in the world (depending on how you count the Olympics).


As for the World Cup, Spain are massive favourites after winning the last Euro competition and for playing a very attractive form of football built on short passes and lots of possession.
No other major stories apart from the usual rampant corruption of Fifa, with South Africa basically getting screwed by the world cup, locals getting kicked out of their homes, local vendors being cracked down upon to make way for official sponsers, the money that is going to African causes is a small fraction of the massive profits, locals priced out of games, unsold tickets, some teams nervous after the Togo team got shot at during hte African cup. Same old same old.

Also, didn't the American team shock the shit out of some top ranked team in one of the last qualifying tournaments?

he United States are reigning Olympic Champions at Rugby!
And they managed to qualify for the last world cup over Uruguay who are pretty good and at the world cup managed to cause problems for England, who were the reigning world champions at the time.
They do pretty well in the minor competitions at Rugby sevens too.

England squad announced and completley bugger up the chance of playing:
Hart
Johnson Ferdinand Neville Ferdinand
Cole Johnson Neville Cole
Johnson Cole.
Just try marking that team!

Man, this bites. Why does Canada have to suck so bad at Soccer(FootBall) :(

I was going to cheer for the lowest ranking team but that's North Korea and no one wants to cheer for them. I suppose I should cheer for England so my Grandpa doesn't kill me.

Go Sealand!