Updated Scroll to bottom for new rubbish

So that’s it. World Cup 2006 over and done with. And its a bit strange, cause despite the fact that there weren’t many great games^[1] I thought it was a great competition. Then again I’ve always liked good defending, almost as much as good goal scoring, and this was the World Cup of Defenders. Player of the tournament has to be Cannavaro. He was just fantastic. Still, it did lack those moments of great play didn’t it? And the diving and spoofing.

Which reminds me, it was a great move by RTE to use the Apres Match team to do all of the punditry for the 3rd place play off between Germany & Portugal. After all, no one really cares who wins that. Bill’s analysis in particular offered some wonderful insights, but they all did a great job:

• How can I analyise something that I haven’t seen?
• there with a loopy shot
• a smackaronny of a shot. He’s given that some pelt hasn’t he?”
• Look at the floppy fingers Bill
• But its easy enough for the Germans because the Portugal have been so rubbish Bill. If you look at your man, the spoofer… he says “I’ll do my trademark nonsense… where am I going, my brain exploded, have it back Germany… you win nothing with eejits

I’ll stop now, cause otherwise I could just quote everything they said.

And you can watch them all on youtube; The half time show is where all those quotes are taken from, around two and a half minutes in is the start of the “spoofer” section. But there is also the introduction which had to be split into three sections, and of course the full-time analysis

And Incident of the Tournament must be awarded to Zidane and the headbutt. There’s been a lot of instant condemnation, and while yes it was a stupid fucked up thing to do, we don’t know what Materazzi said to, I want to say deserve but that isn’t right, provoke Zidane’s response. Now obviously a football field is not the place for a headbutt^[2] but I want to know what Materazzi said.

It is really fascinating to see the b’verse covering the world cup and Zidane and the variety of opinions on the headbutt, or as Clicker Conspiracy would have it the “Zizou”:

Zizou - a diabolic bull charge to the chest of an adversary [...] My first reaction when I saw the slow motion replay of our new bovine ritual was to leap out of my seat shouting Thats Impossible! I couldn’t control my glee. And it has only gotten better with repeated viewing. I don’t know what it is about completely random and senseless petty violence that sets me off but this has to be the most poetic execution of such behaviour I have ever seen.

Most people are giving out about it, but to call it the day that football died may be going to far.

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