World Cup build up - I fear my aunt is part of a Brazilian crime syndicate & sh*t that happened leading up to the time we were born

Picture this scene:

I'm round my Aunt's house on Wednesday evening, it's my 4 year old cousin's birthday party (I know, I missed the Europa League final, poor form); his older sister, who is 7 and has never showed even the slightest bit of interest where football is concerned, pulls out a Panini World Cup 2014 sticker album. I'm like, "Hmmm, interesting..." she's got my attention (that's not to say that the kids didn't have my attention before or that they never do, she just REALLY grabbed my attention at that point).

So we start to look at her album, there's not many stickers in it, she shows me that she's got Cristiano Ronaldo, I'm like, "Meh! (I'm not about the big names, especially him)". We carry on flicking through, she's got the odd sticker here and there in each team, Ya Ya Toure being the most memorable for me; then she utters four words that I'l never forget (I probably will forget them, it wasn't that momentous, but it's sounds good saying that in this story), "Do you want one?" Me: "Nah it's ok, I can't take one of your stickers". I couldn't, I mean what would I do with a random sticker anyway? I don't have the album; not to mention I'm a 33 year old man. "No!" she says. "Do you want a book?" Me, double taking, sensing something truly wonderful is about to happen: "Erm! I'm sorry. What?!? A book? You mean, do I wan't your album? No no no! I can't take your album". I probably could have, I mean for a start she won't appreciate it on as many levels as I would. But no, I couldn't take a seven year old girl's sticker album. Even if she was offering it to me. Plus she won't have stuck the stickers that she'd put in so far as neatly as I would. Out of the question. Then she says to me, "Nah! It's ok, I don't mean my book. I've got loads of others..."

He'll be looking to fire Cameroon into the latter stages of this year's tournament

She runs off upstairs and returns 2 minutes later with another 5 or 6 identical, brand new albums. "Here you go!" She says. Now I can't believe my luck, I'd toyed with the idea of getting a World Cup 2014 sticker album (a few people I know have them) but decided against it due to being A THIRTY THREE YEAR OLD MAN. But now, now I'm being presented with a free one. This was a sign and I didn't need to be asked twice to grab my gift with both hands. I flick through the album, it smells of new book, you know that smell you'd get with the new textbooks at school. Then I catch a glimpse of something. Was that Ya Ya Toure stuck on the England page?? I hurriedly go back to what I thought I'd seen. My cousin says, "Oh yeah, Jacob (her 4 year old brother, the birthday boy) has been sticking them randomly in some of the books..." My heart sinks, I quickly grab another of the newly discovered albums and do a check of it. Sure enough Gonzalo Higuain was now a part of the Cameroon squad. That album was dispatched of, then the next (I'm pretty certain Daniele De Rossi isn't Korean) and the one after that. Just as I was losing hope, BAM!! An empty album! The last album, surely this is a sign, I'm definitely taking one now.

One of my aunt's friends returning from "church"

Then I said to my seven year old cousin, who has never expressed an interest in football, "Why do you have SEVEN brand new Panini World Cup sticker albums?" My aunt then steps in, "There were loads of them at my church, they were giving them to the kids. They had so many spare they were gonna chuck them away..." Hmmm, why would a church be interested in the World Cup, why did my aunt, who also has no interest in football, take SEVEN of them? even if the church were just going to chuck them away. Something doesn't seem right about this whole episode...

Anyway, I now have a Panaini sticker album and have begun to buy stickers for it. It's not quite the same as when you're a kid. Firstly the packs are like 50p, it's very hard to resist the temptation to spend £5-£10 on a few packets. That would ruin the fun though. Secondly it doesn't feel right buying them, I feel like the guy in the local newsagent is judging me when I go in and buy stickers. It's like the old stereotype of going into a news agent to buy "dirty magazines" (so to speak), you pick up a bottle of coke and a packet of sweets or some chocolate and head to the counter, then mutter under your breath, "And two packets of Panini World Cup stickers please mate." Don't judge me! It's a World Cup!

Earlier this week some more World Cup squads were announced, including England's. The biggest story to come out of that was the omission of everybody's favourite villain Ashley Cole. And would you believe it, Ashley actually acted with some grace and humility when he took to Twitter in response to the news. I was completely shocked given Cole's past track record when using social media and the fact that he seems to generally court controversy through his ridiculously idiotic actions (by the way, who has sex with somebody that is continually being sick?!? How desperate was this girl?). Well done Ashley!, Maybe you're not as much of a nob as I thought you were...

One person who still hasn't grasped the power of social media, especially when making comments that can get you in to hot water, is Samir Nasri's girlfriend Anara Atanes. I'd never heard of her before last Monday, and probably won't hear of her again once this all dies down, but she now faces the prospect of being taken to court by Didier Dechamps and the French FA. Good luck with that love! She's tried to backtrack on the whole episode but unfortunately the French FA and co are having none of that. I reckon it was the #ShouldHaveBeenSpanish comment. Hopefully Na$ri will cover the legal fees for you.

Poor Romario, he didn't have Twitter back then

What happened to the good old days when people just cried in press conferences...?

Another story that caught my eye was the one involving the Iranian FA, who have told the players that they will need to hold on to their kits as they'll be receiving one shirt etc for the whole tournament. No chance of any half time or full time shirt swapping then. It's a little bit gutting for the Iran players as they'll be facing up against Argentina in one of their games, no chance of bagging Messi, Aguero or Di Maria's shirt then (they won't be able to get Higuain's anyway, I've heard he's playing for Cameroon this year...).

"Alright lads! That's enough celebrating. Somebody needs to get these nets down, I put them up!"

It's all a bit "Sunday League", I have images of the players all scrambling around in a big kit bag that's in the centre of the dressing room before games. Pulling damp tops out that still smell a bit weird. Arguing over who get's to wear the number 9 shirt. "You're not even a striker?!? Why are you wearing number 9...? We'll you're on the bench, so you can't have it...! Anyone got any tape??"

Surely the Iranian FA, or even the players, could afford to buy replacements. FIFA will be giving them $8m if they're eliminated in the group stage (and even more if they progress further), I've not checked the latest exchange rates but shirts in Sports Direct are like £35-£40 (£50 if you have a name on the back). Surely they can afford that!

Last Thursday I made a guest appearance on the Shoot the Defence Podcast, where we discussed the final weekend of the Premier League season, the playoffs and the Europa League final. Additionally I had a massive rant about West Ham and Sam Allardyce, as you do. Just wanted to say a massive thank you to the guys for having me on, it was really fun and I appreciate them giving me the time to express my opinions after I'd tweeted them in response to a discussion they'd had involving West Ham a few weeks ago. They all seemed really nice, and more importantly knowledgeable when it came to football and I'd happily appear on the show again, if they'd have me (promise not to rant about West Ham again). If you're interested in football debate head over to their website or alternatively download their stuff from iTunes (or any other Podcast software, I'm not an Apple person) by searching "Shoot the Defence".

Now for some more World Cup history (told through my eyes). This stuff probably occurred before you were born but as we're moving into the 70's there may have been some of you who were around when all of this sh*t went down.

1970
Right, so we're now up to 1970. This was basically the first World Cup to be shown in colour, although I'd image a lot of people still watched it in black and white, my parents still had a black and white TV until at least 1984. It was probably a bit like 3D TV, nobody had it except for those flash neighbours across the street. I mean, do you even need colour? You could see England play in white and Brazil play in grey shirts with slightly greyer shorts right?

Anyway I digress, England turn up as holders, with a side that has been argued is even better than in 66. But Brazil have arguably their best side ever, the Italians are also very good as are the Germans (who went on to dominate the early to mid 1970's). Alf Garnet Ramsey, the England manager offends all of the Mexicans with his un-PC behaviour (obviously), Bobby Moore is briefly chucked in a Colombian prison accused of nicking a bracelet from a jewellers and Jeff Astle has one too many on the flight to Mexico (this World Cup was in Mexico by the way). As a result of all of this, we (England) aren't very popular with the locals and we aren't in prime condition to defend our title.

England play Brazil in a first round group match in the boiling midday sun and lose 1-0. Jairzinho socres the only goal of the game (he scored in every game he played in 1970, a record) and Gordon Banks makes a save from a Pele header that is described as the best ever. Pele tries to score from the halfway line against Czechoslovakia but fails (Maradona was better) and then does this dummy against Uruguay which he also misses (nobody likes a show off Pele!).

England began our time honoured tradition of being eliminated at the hands of the (West) Germans but did it in spectacular style, going 2-0 up in the quarter finals only to throw it away and lose 3-2 (at least it wasn't on penalties eh). Germany begin their time honoured tradition of being eliminated by Italy in the semi finals in a game often called The Game of the Century. It finishes 1-1 after 90 minutes with the Italians scoring very early, leading for ages, then the Germans equalising in the 90th minute. Then it all goes berserk and becomes a basketball match in the 30 minutes of extra time and finishes 4-3 to Italy.

As a result of playing 120 minutes in the boiling heat the Italians are knackered when they meet Brazil in the winner takes all final. Both teams are on 2 World Cup wins each and FIFA decide whoever wins gets to keep the trophy for ever (or 13 years). The first Half is close and at half time the teams go in 1-1 but Brazil run riot in the 2nd half and score a goal that you'll see in any World Cup best moments montage (although you might not see this version).

1974
1974 was not 1970! By then everyone was used to colour TV so it wasn't novel any more, everybody had caught up with those neighbours, except for my parents (although my mum could be forgiven for not splurging on new fangled consumer goods, she was only 16). 1974 looks boring to me there was no knockout stage, just a group stage where the winners went into another group stage where the winners went into another group stage where the winners went into another group stage where the winners went into another group stage where the winners went into another group stage where the winners went into another group stage where the winners went into another group stage. Ok maybe not that many group stages, but there were two, meaning no epic quarter finals or semi finals.

East Germany qualified and were drawn against West Germany, and beat them in a classic Rocky IV style, East v West, Communists v Capitalists, Good v Evil. The West Germans got the last laugh though, as coming 2nd in their group meant they were drawn in a much easier group in the next round and dodged the Brazilians and the Dutch.

The Dutch! Oh the Dutch.Just so you know, prior to 1974 the Dutch didn't overachieve in international football. In other words they performed how you'd expect a nation with a population a quarter of the size of the likes of the UK or Germany or Italy. In other words, they did nothing. In the 1970's something changed and the orange shirts became synonymous with great footballing sides (that capitulated due to infighting when it looked like they might be dangerous). In 1974 the Dutch were good, the reached the final playing what is nowadays referred to as Total Football, a system where the players continually interchanged positions and bamboozled the opposition.

You wouldn't want to get tomato on these suits!

As I've mentioned before Brazil weren't great in 1974, neither were Italy. Remember in 1966 when the Italians were knocked out in the group stage after losing to North Korea and the returned home to be pelted at the airport with rotten tomatoes. Well in 1974 they weren't any better, so they thought they'd be clever on the journey home and didn't go back to the main airport in Italy, but many people second guessed them and still turned up when they landed to pelt them (they're lucky they didn't get the same reception in 2010, it would have ruined those lovely suits).

West Germany played and beat, everyone's favourite team, Holland in a final full of drama. Firstly, on the morning of the final German news agencies were running stories of the Dutch players "entertaining" some local ladies in their hotel during the World Cup. Johan Cruyff (FYI if you've not heard of Johan Cruyff he was like one of the best players of all time, he was opinionated and principled but he was also a bit selfish and arrogant, but he got away with it cos he was the man) had to have show down talks with his wife just hours before kick off, that can't have helped the team prepare.

To add to all of this, someone forgot to put the corner flags out before the game so the game was delayed and there was a mad dash to sort it all out. And they say Germans are supposed to be efficient (the 74 World Cup was held in West Germany, in case I haven't mentioned). When the game finally kicked off the Dutch took centre and proceeded to pass the ball around for 30 seconds then made a dash for the German penalty area. Without a German player having touched the ball yet, Cruyff was brought down and the the referee (who was an Englishman) gave the first ever penalty to be awarded in a World Cup final. Holland smashed it in and found themselves 1-0 up after a minute, and I repeat, with not a single German player having touched the ball yet.

Did they win though? Nope. Legend says that they spent the rest of the 1st half show-boating and trying to humiliate the technically inferior West Germans. On 25 minutes they had a lapse at the back and gave away a penalty themselves (you wait 44 years and then two come along), which the Germans scored. Then 2 minutes before half time, German legend and former all time leading goalscorer in the World Cup, Gerd Muller scored to put West Germany ahead. Holland spent the rest of the 2nd half frantically trying to get an equaliser but never looked like doing so. Holland had become Brazil of old times!

That's enough story telling for now, apologies for the delay in posting. I had an IKEA day bed to errect!

World Cup build up - Jogi Löw's dress sense, where the hell is Kaka? & part 2 of sh*t that happened before we were born

Week two of my work cup build up. Remember as I said last week, this is being written from the perspective of a 32-34 year old man; so if you're a little older or younger you might have differing opinions (or memories) of some of the things I'll talk about in my World Cup history/catch up. That being said it might be a week or so until we actually get to a tournament that any readers have seen. Unless I've completely misread the age of my audience; and if I have great, I'm all for older people using the internet. My parents have started to use it quite a lot in the last 6 months, although it does mean that I am now on 24 hour IT support (the queries I tend to get centre around saving documents and rotating pictures). All this being said my dad doesn't really go on much about the World Cup in the 50's and 60's, all I ever get told about is Scotland flopping in 78 and Eder's goal against the USSR in 82 (we'll get to those later though, I don't want to spoil any future posts).

Before we go into all that historical shiz (apparently I've stolen the word "Shiz" off of the Mrs, yeah right! I make up my own shiz, I don't need hers!) let's look at what's been happening this week. Everyone is submitting their squads, well not everyone, and in some cases it's the 30 man preliminary short-list, but there have been developments regarding who will be playing in this year's World Cup.

Imagine if Roy Hodgson was this well dressed

The even impeccably dressed, Joachim Löw, has named his 30 man German squad, which is to be trimmed to 23 next week. The biggest news there is that there's only 2 strikers in the 30 and no room for Mario Gomez. I suppose Gomez's omission isn't as big a shock considering he's been injured all season, but two strikers? This is partly down to his refusal to pick the Leverkusen striker Stefan Kießling for calling him a "Sissi", which I obviously find hilarious (I'm sorry but the only links I could find to the story were in German, you have to take my word for it this is 100% true). Can I just say Stefan, just because a man takes pride in his appearance and has a diverse wardrobe, it DOES NOT make him a "Sissi". No World Cup for you!!

The Brazil 23 has been named, no messing about, just like Bosnia. And on paper it doesn't look amazing. I suppose you can't argue with it too much though, they did win last year's confederations cup beating Spain in the final. A lot has been made of the fact it contains 6 players from the Premier League, but then many of them (not all) make sense to me as does the omission of Robinho aka "The next Pele". He has been dog poo this year, I tried to find one of his open goal misses from this season but only succeeded in finding a compilation of misses from his entire career, including one that defies physics for Santos (David Blaine would have been proud of this trick), forgive the crazy Arabic commentary.

You stole Kaka's place!!

And then there's Kaka. Maybe it's the old romantic in me, but I thought that Kaka was having a decent season this year and had hoped he'd make it into Scolari's squad (which would have been his 4th tournament). Alas "Big Phi" doesn't feel so and has chosen to go with the likes of Oscar, and Will.i.an. Personally I think Will.i.an should stick to The Voice (I DO NOT watch The Voice by the way, the Mrs does). Additionally I was amused to see that Scolari had chosen his two OAP sounding strikers Bernard & Fred. I assure anybody reading this who is not familiar with the Brazilian national team, I am not making those names up. Expect a lot of jokes from the BBC and ITV commentary teams this summer. Come to think of it Adrian Chiles is gonna have a field day, maybe their selection wasn't such a good thing after all...

By the end of this week we should know all of the official World Cup 23 man squads, another sign that the tournament is around the corner (tomorrow will be a month until the opening game). I wonder whether there will be any shock inclusions? Do England have any promising uncapped teenage sensations? I suppose we could say Ross Barkley and Luke Shaw. Never fear though, I'm sure James Milner will make the squad, if we're lucky we might even get Stuart Downing too!

We move on to part two of my World Cup catch up, the story so far. We're still in the region of sh*t that happened before we were born. Last time round Brazil were doing their best to mess up every time it looked like they were going to win the thing and Italy and Uruguay were taking full advantage of this.

1954
The 1954 World Cup sounds like footballing heaven. It didn't have a superstar like Maradona, Pele, Baggio or Ronaldo (although it could be argued that it had Puskas), but it had goals. Tons of em. More goals than you could shake a stick at  as they say (I'm not sure why you'd shake a stick at anything that occurred in abundance, especially goals). Hungary, with the aforementioned Puskas, were the favourites to win having been unbeaten for a few years, but in true World Cup fashion they didn't. They lost a dramatic final 3-2 to a West German side sporting revolutionary boots with screw-in studs made by ex-Nazi party member Adi Dassler.

The final is always called The Miracle of Berne, which is apt as the 1954 World Cup was in Switzerland (and even Uruguay showed up),  and as the Germans came back from going 2-0 down within the first 8 minutes of the game to win 3-2 (see, I told you there were goals galore, start shaking your sticks!). On top of that the two teams had met earlier in the group stage and Hungary won 8-3 (shake your sticks), although the Germans had tactically fielded a weaker team, so nobody had given West Germany a hope of winning the tournament.

There are a number of conspiracy theorists that say Hungary were cheated out of winning the trophy, because FIFA didn't want a communist nation winning, they had a perfectly legitimate equaliser ruled out for offside minutes from the end of the game. Oh well, Hungary were a great side anyway, they'd already reached the 1934 final too, they'd get another chance right? It's not like they'd have a bloody political uprising two years later causing most of their best players to flee the country for their own safety and never be the same again...

1958
Fifa went back to snubbing South America in 1958 so the tournament remained in Europe, Sweden being the hosts. Brazil finally won the tournament beating the Swedes 5-2 in the final, don't shake a stick at that, although that is a lot of goals, this tournament wasn't the goalfest that 1954 was (it had the first ever 0-0 draw in the World Cup). That being said there were still a lot of goals, I'm just saying put your sticks down.

For the first and only time to date, all of the nations that make up the British Isles qualified, Wales doing the best of all of them and reaching the Quarter Final, where they were defeated by Brazil. Some 17 year old fella got the only goal of the game, his name isn't that important, unless you'd like some diamonds that have been made from human hair or would like a prediction ahead of the upcoming World Cup.

Just Fontaine scored the most ever goals scored in a single tournament by one player (13), although he scored four of them in the 3rd/4th place playoff, I'm not sure how much they can really count. The 3rd/4th place playoff is like that last day of school when you're allowed to bring toys in (or sometimes you got to watch a VHS, on the TV/Video on wheels, of an old 80's kids film). There's always tons of goals, nobody cares about defending, there's more goals than you can... I'm kidding I'm not starting that again.

1962
When I watch videos and read books about World Cups in the past I often wish I'd been around to see them. In the case of 1962 I don't. Brazil won AGAIN (enough with the World Cup winning Brazil it's becoming tiresome) and from what I read the competition was spoilt by rough/violent play on the field.

One example of this is what has been dubbed The Battle of Santiago between Chile and Italy. Personally I find the whole episode a little boring (a chapter of the book I'm currently reading was based on it and I genuinely considered skipping it). I'll summarise for those of you that aren't as au fait. In the build up to the game, two Italian journalists write an article on Chile saying it's a dump and all the women are prostitutes (I'm assuming the "dump" impression came from the fact that there had been a devastating earthquake a year or so before the tournament, can't speak regarding the comment on the women). Chilean folk are naturally outraged by the whole thing, some poor Argentine reporter has the crap beaten out of him in a bar as he's mistaken for an Italian journalist. Anyway the match comes along and from the word go the Chileans proceed to kick lumps out of the Italians, both on and off the ball. The Italians retaliate and end up having two players sent off. At one point a player fully right hooks his opponent to the ground (breaking his jaw, I think). The ref basically allows a lot of this to go unpunished making the game even more bad tempered. Oh and Chile win 2-0. Not a great World Cup moment in my eyes.

In addition to Chile an Italy scrapping with each other, other acts of violence on the field saw (the names escape me) a Yugoslav player break the leg of a Russian (going unpunished) who then died 8 years later from cancer caused by the complications of the leg break and subsequent surgery; and Garrincha. Sorry let me explain, in case you've never heard of Garrincha. He was basically Brazil's best player in 1962, who managed to be one of the best players of all time despite having bowed legs (one was even shorter than the other) and infamously lost his virginity to a goat aged 14, killed his mother in law in a car accident, impregnated a Swedish girl while on tour in Sweden and sadly died in 1983 from alcohol related issues. He was a more extreme Balotelli, 50 years earlier. Anyway Garrincha was getting kicked and hacked so badly in the semi finals, he ended up retaliating, getting sent off and suspended for the final. "Oh no! How do Brazil cope in the final without their best player?" I hear you say. Well they just pleaded with FIFA. I'm not 100% sure as to how it all went down, but after some discussion between Brazilian delegates and FIFA delegates he was allowed to play the final, Laurent Blanc and Gazza should have done the same.

So to finish off this dour episode in the history of the World Cup (I'm honestly losing the will to type here), Brazil beat Czechoslovakia 3-1 in the final (by the way I can spell "Czechoslovakia" perfectly every time as a result of doing a degree in History and having to type the bloody word every 5 minutes in essays, the rest of my spelling can be suspect, as you've probably noticed). The Czech keeper, who had been blinding all tournament, had a mare and gifted them two of the goals. That's all you're getting for 1962!

1966
1966 was when we did the business. England delivered! We proved we were the best team in the world! Yeeeeaaah that's what happened...

From what I've seen, the 1960's didn't produce classic World Cup tournaments. I mean there were only two (62 & 66) but I get the impression that unless you live in Brazil or England you'll probably struggle to find positive accounts of either tournament.

First of all Brazil, the reigning champions were booted out of the tournament in 1966, 1962 style. Pele limped off in their first game against Hungary and said he'd never play in the World Cup again (liar). Brazil followed Pele and crashed out in the first round. As did Italy who were beaten 1-0 by North Korea in one of the biggest shocks in World Cup history. Apparently on their return to Italy the players were pelted with rotten tomatoes at the airport! Brilliant! Everybody get down to Heathrow for the 26th of June! Bring some old veg... (or fruit, I know that tomatoes are fruits).

Best manager we've ever had!

I don't want to take anything away from England, they were a good side at the time (although they were probably even stronger in 1970) but they got some questionable decisions during the tournament. For example the quarter final against Argentina. A game where Alf Ramsey the England manager, who the more I read about him sounds more like Alf Garnett, labelled the Argentines "Animals". The Argentine captain was sent off by the referee for "the look in his eye". I'm all for disciplining players for dissent but can we really send people off for giving a dirty look? In a World Cup quarter final? Apparently the ref didn't even speak Spanish, so Rattin (the Argentine captain) couldn't have said something offensive. And then there was the crossbar and down "goal" in the final, fair enough it's technically 1-1 after the Lampard indecent in 2010, but all I keep hearing from numerous sources is that there was no way it went in and the linesman only gave it because of experiences of Russians at the hands of German troops during the 2nd World War, or something like that?!? I've even heard  that Ex-FIFA president Jao Havelange claims that the 66 World Cup was fixed. Saying that, he had an agenda when he made those claims and, like Pele, he has a touch of the "batty old Brazilian man" about him.

Anyway England beat Germany 4-2 in the final, "Here comes Hurst. He's got... Some people are on the pitch they think it's all over..." and all that. We won! Eusebio was top scorer in the competition, playing for Portugal, this included FOUR in a comeback from 3-0 down to 5-3 against North Korea in the quarter finals. Now that's more goals than you can shake a stick at!

I'm done with this for now, next week we'll move on to the far more exciting 1970's and more rotten fruit for the Italians.

To finish let's take some time to appreciate some more of "Jogi" Löw's wardrobe

Bit of an assassin look going on here 

Nice fitted shirt

I like to call this look "Winter"

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.