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"