We arrived home in Edinburgh tonight to find the letter from the Home Office on the mat. My wife’s application for British citizenship has been accepted.
Good News
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Month: July 2010
Low Expectations in the International Arena
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Interesting words from Craig Levein in the Scotsman: He says he watched his first match at the helm like a scientist analysing matter through a microscope and he was baffled by what he saw. The lack of self-belief in the players was “strange”. He had expected players who are big performers at club level to…
Agincourt and England 2010
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Paul Carpenter (Carpsio) takes the “passion and commitment” line of England criticism in an interesting direction with an informed comparison of Agincourt to that 4-1 defeat to Germany: In all these cases (Agincourt, Waterloo, Dunkirk, The Battle of Britain, Rorke’s Drift), we are assured that it was English ‘spirit’ that was critical to our victory…
Real World Football
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Whatever you might say about the professionalism controversies in England in the 1880s, it was the case then, and has been ever since, that practically all the actual football is played by amateurs. Snopes-type legends about amateur football abound. About street football, which is alleged to have honed ballplaying skills so well – you can…
All of the World Cup Balls 1930-2010
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Here’s a gallery of all of the balls used at FIFA World Cups from the beginning. (H/T Metafilter). The top row of the gallery contains the kind of footballs that would have been familiar both to participants in friendlies in the 1960s and British schoolboys ninety years later. Row 2 contains what my generation might…
The World Cup Final 2010
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It was, in the end, a Final for people who enjoy complex, technical, thinking football. There has been plenty of this throughout the tournament, especially from the three European semi-finalists, and the standard of commentary on television and in the press has struggled to keep up. It struggled in the Final too. In musical terms,…
Putting a Curse Upon Uruguay
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Given that I’ll be shouting for the Germans in tonight’s 3rd place playoff, I thought it appropriate to show this clip of the Uruguayans – when the South American team were still World Champions – coming a horrible cropper against Scotland:
Lost 30 minute film of the 1938 World Cup
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A “lost” official-esque 30 minute film about the 1938 World Cup: fantastic work in uncovering this by Tom Dunmore at Pitchinvasion, and you can read his account of it – and watch the film – here.
Weight and the Jabulani Ball
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I just wanted to post a clarification to my previous post on the historic weight of the official football. The Jabulani ball’s dry weight is 440g. That’s 15.52 oz. (Typo corrected – Thanks to @darcysarto) You’ll recall that since 1937, Law 2 has specified the dry weight of the ball. It has to be between…