World Cup build up - The ugliest ball ever, Calvin Harris' song and part 1 of the whistle stop guide to sh*t that happened before we were born

I couldn't' give a toss if you are younger or older. As the famous song goes, "I've got love for you if you were born in the eighties...!" 1980 or 1981 to be even more precise. I'm not saying you can't read this if you weren't born in that 24 month period, it's just that I feel those that are somewhere between the ages of 32 and 34 will be of optimum age to see things the way I saw them. For a start you'll probably have been in a similar school year to me. All the best players were, Ibrahimovic, Gerrard, John Terry... ok well maybe I'm clutching at straws but if you start think, "That's not how I remember that!" at any point in the next few weeks, then you may need to have a long look at your date of birth.

So let's begin. As someone who's in love with the World Cup you can imagine I've been keeping up with the goings on in world football in the build up. One of the first things that caught my eye was a recent story regarding Pele. Now Mr Do Nasciamento (that's Pele by the way) has a habit of talking absolute bollocks and doing weird sh*t, especially in the run up to the World Cup. This is the man that, predicted that an African team would win the World Cup by the year 2000 (nobody from Africa has got further than the quarter finals); said Michael Owen would win the Ballon d'Or; and tipped Columbia to win the 1994 World Cup, in case you don't know they failed miserably, going out in the first round, and one of their players was shot dead upon return to Columbia. I'm definitely not making light of that by the way. Just saying, had Pele not been one of the greatest and internationally successful players of all time, people would see him as a slightly senile old man who at one point in his life turned to peddling viagra. Anyway I digress, so Pele has recently responded to the deaths of two construction workers on the site of one of the stadiums to be used at the World Cup saying, "That's normal. These things happen... ...what worries me is the airports not being finished." Pretty crazy eh. Pretty insensitive. But then What do you expect from a man currently launching a collection of diamonds made from his own hair?!?

Awful ball!

Moving away from the ramblings of an old Brazilian man, has anyone seen this years World Cup ball? What the hell is that about?!? I thought we'd got away from all the crap when Adidas re-released the Tango design for Euro 2012. I mean we've had some terrible balls in the last few World Cups, especially that weird gold one in 2002, but this latest one genuinely makes me feel sick when I look at it. Who the hell designed that?!? I could have definitely come up with something better. As the saying goes, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The Adidas Tango was not broke. The Adidas "Brazuca" or whatever it's called, is BROKE!

My 2014 World Cup ball, it's green for Brazil (geddit)! Much better than the Brazuca!

In other pre-World Cup news, players keep getting injured. Maybe when I was younger I had less awareness when it came to footballers abroad and their injury problems, especially what with the lack of internet in the 1990s (I'm not sure if that whole sentence makes sense but I'm gonna go with it); but right now it feels like they're all dropping like flies. First it was Giuseppe Rossi, and thankfully it now looks like he'll be fit in time for the tournament. Then it was Radamel Falcao. Falcao was my hope for an old school World Cup, with heroes and drama etc And then he goes and get's himself injured in a French Cup game! French Cup! What the hell is the French Cup?!? Nobody playing at a World Cup should be playing in the French Cup, unless it's the Final! Who cares about the French Cup? I don't! I do care about seeing a full strength Columbia and one of the stars of the CONMEBOL qualifying tournament! Monaco! You f***ed up!

So I'm coming to terms with the fact that we may be Falcao-less this summer and then Strootman goes and gets injured. What?!? Add in Walcott and Jay Rodriguez (for all of you, "Premiership is the best league in the world" fans) and that's a whole bunch of entertaining players that we'll be missing this summer. In my opinion, they should have just ended the football season in February and made everyone hold daily training sessions for the next 4 months, padded up, while on a bouncy castle. No more injuries! Please!

A couple of other things caught my eye, the first being that Adnan Januzaj (I had to look that up to spell it, I don't think I'll ever master his name) had pledged his future to Belgium. Yeah? Not Kosovo? Or England in a few years time? Or my old 7-a-side team? Shock! He basically chose the team he could play for right now at the World Cup, and that has a decent chance of progressing to the latter part of the tournament. Although can I say now (and I post a link to this statement when they go out), I don't think Belgium are as strong as people are making out. Yeah they've got good players, hence they qualified for the first time in 12 years, but they won't get anywhere near the Semi Finals in my eyes. In fact I think the Quarter Finals will be a good tournament for them.

Lastly, Bosnia have announced their provisional 24 man squad. Now! On the 5th of May? You've got another week or so, relax. I know it's your first tournament but you don't want to come across as too keen. Play it cool, have say a short-list of 30/40 players and hold a training camp. Then shorten it to 23 men on the last day (and pray that Gazza doesn't smash up a hotel room). Also how p***ed off would you be if you were that one player that got cut from the final 23, maybe I'd take it out on a lamp too.

OK so, believe it or not, I have a lot of people tell me that they read my blog. These people range from the most clued up football fan, to those that read it looking for a cheap gag here and there. In the run up to this summer's World Cup I'd like to fill you all in on what happened before Brazil 2014 and why it's a bit of a big deal (we'll it is to me anyway). I'd like to think that everyone reading this is going to see at least one game this summer and that hopefully armed with my whistle stop interpretation of the history of the World Cup they can say things like, "This reminds me of the time that Frank Rijkaard gobbed in Rudi Voller's hair" or "The time the fella from Zaire just randomly booted away the Brazilian free kick". So if you want to learn something about the World Cup, or my interpretation of it, and don't want to watch all the videos and read all the books etc that I have (nobody with a life would want to), carry on reading from this point onwards.

Part 1 - Sh*t that happened before we were born (I've sworn a lot in this post??)

The Entertainment at the draw for the 1930 World Cup

1930
So in the 1920's, on top of doing The Charleston during times of economic prosperity, the powers that be in international football start thinking to themselves, "We really should hold a tournament to determine which country is the best at football". There are two Olympic gameseseseses in 1924 and 1928 which have football tournaments in them that seem to go down a treat with the fans and convince everyone to hold a world championship. A few countries express an interest in hosting the tournament but one by one they pull out leaving Uruguay, the best team at the time (they won both the Olympic Tournaments which are officially recognised as World Championships), to host the tournament. And nobody had to bribe any FIFA delegates. Being the best team at the time, Uruguay go and win the thing beating Argentina, who are also decent, 4-2 in the final. A final which included a squabble about what ball should be used, a Uruguayan one or Argentinian one. Bet they wouldn't have chosen the Brazuca (see above)! As a final note, if you wan't to sound really clued up on football history or ever get these in a pub quiz; Lucien Laurent scored the first ever World Cup goal for France against Mexico and Guillermo Stabile was the top scorer. Also both Semi finals finished 6-1, now that's a goalfest!

He'd have been up for being Italian in 1934

1934
For any of you outraged by the fact that Diego Costa has switched from Brazil to Spain, that's nothing. In 1934 Italy signed a few guys from the aforementioned Argentine runners up in 1930, and it helped. They hosted it in 1934 and like Uruguay did 4 years earlier they brought home the bacon, with the help of their new Argentine players. Uruguay didn't travel to Italy cos it was too far, not sure if they thought the World Cup was going to be hosted in South America every 4 years. Then again when you consider that the tournament was a straight knockout; screw travelling on a boat for 6 weeks for potentially 90 minutes of football!

Rest up for the final lad! We're operating a squad rotation policy!

1938
So it's 1938. Most of the major fooballing nations are either South American or European. As mentioned before it takes roughly 6 weeks to travel from one to the other, so FIFA will host the 1938 tournament in South America right? With the intention of 1942 being held in Europe... Wrong! It was held in France. As a result Uruguay once again told FIFA where they could shove their World Cup. Italy won the tournament again beating Hungary 4-2 in the final, rumour is that they'd been told by Mussolini that they'd better win it or else... He wasn't the only dictator who had an interest in the tournament, Hitler sent an annexed Germany-Austria team (I'm not sure if he personally sent them, the German FA probably did, but you get the point right). Best story of the 1938 World Cup for me was the one of Leonidas the Brazilian striker that finished the tournament as the top scorer. So he 's banging them in left, right and centre and the Brazilians make it to the Semi Finals against Italy. What do they do? They rest him for the final! If you did that in 2014, people would say you were crazy. If you did it in 1938, when substitutes weren't permitted and therefore you were stuck with the 11 you started the game with, that's suicide. As I said above Italy won the 1938 World Cup so you know how Leonidas-less Brazil got on.

1950
As you probably know, there was a pretty big war between 1939 and 1945, which involved a large number of the countries interested in playing in the World Cup and took priority (the cheek, didn't they know the World Cup takes priority over most things). You might have noticed that so far I haven't mentioned England in any of this. We didn't get involved in the World Cup pre-1950. Why should we? We were the best team in the world. The teams that won the World Cup had basically just won a tournament to determine who was the best after England. We were like the SEGA Team at the end of Virtua Striker. So as you know, we went to the 1950 World Cup and showed everyone who was boss... No! We turned up and lost two of our first three games and went home in the first round, one of those defeats being at the hands of a USA team made up of part timers.

Uruguay turned up in 1950, well it was held in Brazil so they were cool with that. Brazil probably wished they'd have stayed at home. They messed up in 1950 just like they'd done in 1938. So in 1950 there was no final. Instead there was a mini league between the four teams that had won their 1st round groups. Brazil batter Sweden and Spain, Uruguay scrape a draw with Spain and come back from behind to beat Sweden. The maths is as follows going into the last game

Brazil 2 wins 4 points (2 points for a win)
Uruguay 1 win and 1 draw 3 points
Spain 1 draw 1 defeat 1 point
Sweden 2 defeats 0 points

On the eve of the Brazil v Uruguay game the newspapers are declaring Brazil champions in their headlines, musicians are writing celebratory sambas (this actually happened) and the Mayor of Rio (I think it was the Mayor), gives a speech on the pitch pre-kick off basically telling the players how proud they've made the nation in winning the World Cup. Anyone who knows about counting chickens based on the number of eggs you have knows what's coming next... Brazil only need to draw the game to win the tournament, they take the lead and all looks to be going to plan, then the Uruguayans equalise. The crowd (an all time record of an estimated 200,000+) start to get a bit jittery and this feeds through to the players. They Uruguay score again. I won't bore you with the details but they hold on and win 2-1. Everyone is shocked; Jules Rimet (the president of FIFA) doesn't even have a congratulatory speech written in Spanish so he just gives Uruguay the trophy without saying anything; some fans commit suicide, the Brazilian goalkeeper becomes an alcoholic and years later dies penniless (which is quite sad). It's all pretty intense and farcical.

In case you haven't worked out the maths it finished:-

Uruguay 5 points
Brazil 4 Points
Sweden (they won the other game) 2
Spain 1 point

This is me done for now. Next time round in "Sh*t that happened before we were born", Hungary get cheated and Brazil finally sort themselves out.