Cursed sponsors

All the big players are out. It truly is the weird World Cup I expected. Remember in my last post I announced surprises and it has delivered plenty so far. Brazil is back to playing on the beach. England is back to learning Italian. Italy going straight to the retirement home. Argentina is going to need stitches to recover.

But whatever the nations suffered, it is nothing compared to the poor deal the sponsors got. All the players in the Nike advert have under performed to say the least (even Federer). The commercial is amazing and offers to write history, which is fine when your are winning, less when you make a fool of yourself in front of millions.

If Nike has the bad players, Adidas has the bad (beach) ball. Why manufacture a new ball that only the Germans have really practised with? Oh yes, have the Germans winning the world Cup.

ENGLAND TO QUIT FOOTBALL

In a remarkable turns of events, England has decided to stop the practice of football within its borders and will not present teams to football competitions. The FA chairman recognised that the country would never perform at the international stage "We suck and will forever suck", he said after the last ever FA meeting.

Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, announced that goal-line technology was therefore not needed as other football teams actually score “goals that go all the way to the back of the net”.

All football pitches will be refurbished to accommodate for dart practice, as England makes a bid to maintain its supremacy in the noble sport.

JC Hermier, UK correspondent

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How many flags will we see by the car windows tomorrow? There is no shame in leaving the competition early believe me. It was a pretty interesting game, with plenty of emotions. Eager to see what stories come out after the World cup. Has Rooney been playing with a wooden leg? Is Lampard actually blind?

I wish they where showing more statistics. i like when they do it in boring sports like Cricket and I am sure it would be even more exciting here.

Going to watch Argentina now. I am all for Mexico.

Group stages

France and Italy have wrapped it up. Lucky me! I am 92% French and 8% Italian, which makes me a very blue loser.

I enjoyed the England game a lot. Rooney, even when sleep-running, was more impressive than in the previous games. I heard a lot of comments about playing "like they do in their clubs" as being a good thing. Call me an old fool but I would expect players and teams to be BETTER than in clubs. What is bigger: playing for Chelsea or playing for your nation?

Thierry Henry was meeting with the French president today. Sport and politics mix well in times of victory, but poorly during crisis, so I think it is commendable. I think the big secret is that someone from the coach team put stones in the shoes of every player and they could not run properly. Shocker.

Pressure

It's been a crazy weekend for France. We were doing pretty badly but now it's all falling apart. We have players going on strike, federation people resigning, and more importantly, we can't score goals. The office is mocking me and my French flag is flying low. I'll support France till the end though, it's not like we were cheese eating surrending monkeys.

There was comments from Anelka to the Coach that got leaked to the press. I could have predicted that: Newspapers have made huge hits publishing "off" comments from politicians recently (Like Gordon's bigoted woman), and it was only a matter of time before they applied the recipe to Sport. Who are we kidding? Do we think that people are polite on the pitch, off the pitch? they don't make fart or burp? of course they do. It is just that journalists respected this before. Now that sales are struggling, they are on the lookout for the next scandal at low cost. All the info is there and always has been. Free info - big sales - very tempting.

Let's sport be sport please. Let's stop diving or pretending (Ivory cost / kaka's elbow). Let's be paid less. Let's sweat more. Let's make people dream! Shit, I sound like a Nike ad.

War and peace

Our destiny is out of our hands. Be it war or football, it seems that we struggle achieving without external help.

We lost against a better team, all is fair. I was at a comedy club yesterday and could only be updated by texts and mobile web.

Naturally France is upset and wannabe heroes are despised. L'equipe.fr the French sport site, is wondering why Henry was not playing: "the highest goal scorer. But I think the person to blame is the president of the football federation, Escalettes, for keeping Domenech on for so long when clearly something was wrong.

The world cup is now over for us. I got to support England now. Go on lads!

A new star is born

Who is this guy? Uncontrollable trajectories, amazing curves, but who is this Jabulani?
Funny stories around that ball. Adidas say it is fine, while all players say it isn't. Surely someone is lying, would it be the players or the company that has invested millions in developing the balls?

I saw a Louis Vuitton campaign on French websites. It stars Zidane, Pele and Maradona. The same Maradona that suggested Pele should "go back to the museum" when he criticized his qualities as a coach.

France is playing tonight. I wish they could draw again, so they would be really pumped up for the following game. Shame we can't win the World Cup by drawing at every game, we would have a shot.