JT's Room, Rustenberg, Monday
SUNDAY 20th JUNE
Firstly, news from the French camp where Nicolas Anelka has been sent home by the manager and the players have all refused to train in protest at the French Federations handling of the situation. Bizarrely, the players get the manager who Anelka had the bust up with, to read out their militant letter explaining that they are refusing to train. Domenech has the air of a man who knows he only has to put up with this shit for another couple of days. He reads the statement and he looks like he doesn’t give a toss any more. Meanwhile, Patrice Evra has had a barney with the fitness coach who is caught on video dramatically hurling his accreditation badge thing to the floor. In addition, some French Federation bigwig has quit in disgust. Fantastic. Wonder what Michel Platini makes of it all.
To the football and Paraguay continue their impressive form with a comfortable 2-0 win against Slovakia who in truth, offer nothing at all. Like all the south American sides, the Paraguayans are brilliant in possession but do tend to squander chances, taking until the 82nd minute to make the game safe with a second goal.
Italy – or ‘England in Blue’ as they should be known, take on group minnows New Zealand so it’s Current World Champions versus team that doesn’t even have a professional league. NZ go 1-0 up through ex-Halifax superstar Shane Smeltz and Italy get back in it with an arbitrary penalty decision when the ref just decides that a bit of shirt pulling means a penalty. De Rossi’s shirt is pulled one way and he falls the other. Anyway, penalty and Iaquinta scores. NZ go into full defensive mode and are quite brilliant at keeping the Italians out and in fact came closest to winning it when Wood fired wide in the last minute. Anyway, best result in NZ football history, complete with topless women in the crowd which is something that never happens enough and certainly did it for Robbie Savage on the radio commentary. They really are like England in that they have decent players who play for decent clubs but struggle like mad. Also, the top clubs in the Italian league are full of foreigners… I mean, Inter Milan won the Treble with a team made up of South Americans with European passports – not an Italian amongst them.
Refereeing reached a new low in the Brazil v Ivory Coast match in the evening when Brazil were 1-0 up through Luis Fabiano (great shot that was) and the same player played keep-uppy with his arm twice, before scoring the decisive second goal. Courtesy of BBC HD, we got a replay of the ref running back with a big smile on his face, miming the ball hitting his arm and presumably asking Fabiano if he handled it. ’Not me Sir’ said Fabiano and so the goal stood. You can imagine Emile Heskey running after the ref to tell him that he did handle it and getting the goal disallowed. Silly me… that implies the big bollocks had scored I the first place. 3-0 soon after when Elano tapped in a Kaka cross and then Sven substitution masterclass with three like for like substitutions - charlatan. Brazil slacked off and Drogba pull one back with a neat header. What everyone will remember from this game though was an Ivory Coast defender running into the back of Kaka and going down holding his face, even though the contact, if there was any was at lower rib level. The referee who wasn’t even looking decided it was a 2nd yellow and off he went. An absolute joke.
In the evening, the England camp decided to go a bit French and John Terry decided that a few weeks without shagging anyone was not on so he decided to shag himself by publicly going to war with Capello over tactics and especially, Joe Cole’s omission. Bigging up a player who is not in the starting XI only going to be seen one way by any manager – as a direct challenge to his authority. It was very entertaining though and in one respect, you have to pat him on the back for speaking his mind but talk about being up yourself. For what it’s worth, I agree with Terry but I wouldn’t be surprised if JT awakes with a severed horses head in his bed on Monday morning and we’re lining up with Upson and Dawson at centre backs on Wednesday.
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