I don’t really get Formula 1.

However, I was interested to hear earlier today (on BBC radio 5 Live) that Fernando Alonso, who will start the British GP in 3rd position, is better there than in second place.

It strikes me that the German football team, who won the 3rd place play-off are happier than tomorrow’s losers will be. Although this was a ‘losers’ final, it still meant that the German public & players have finished on a positive high.

Think on it.

This has to be my final moan concerning FIFA WC 2010.
Howard Webb, the English referee has been appointed to officiate the final between the Dutch Bland Coffee Meisters and the  Castillian/Catalan alliance representative eleven (a.k.a The Democratic Kingdom of Hispania for nearly 40 years.)

I cannot quite seen how this man gets such a prestigious job after his errors in the Slovakia vs Italy game 2 weeks ago (not to mention his weekly faux-pas in the Premiership).
The Italians know how they were so non-grata in 2002 that FIFA’s referee keep the host nation (South Korea) in the competition at the expense the Azzuri. Now Webb does the same thing and gets rewarded for it!

To remind you, in their game against Slovakia Italy had a fine goal disallowed {from the Guardian “Fabio Quagliarella was unlucky when his shot was cleared off the line – if not from behind it – by Skrtel,” and ” Italy thought they had the goal they needed to progress two minutes later, only for Quagliarella to be ruled offside by a matter of centimetres,” (in fact TV coverage showed he was onside}.

You know that my self-imposed remit is to write about football in a way that makes folk feel motivated and uplifted, but quite frankly it’s wearing thin when a man is rewarded for being highly imperfect. England, France, Portugal and Greece were all mediocre and got insulted for being so. Why does a referee get rewarded for the same?

Or is it an advance consolation for the possibe fact that England (the country) won’t get to host 2018 after all.

I hope not, my blogs ought to be 4D holograms by then.

That’s all.

Right now I am listening to callers on a BBC Radio 5 phone-in adding opinions as to why England failed to beat Algeria tonight. I am sure the same conversations are taking place on German radio shows (Germany lost today to Serbia) and I am equally certain that Spanish callers did the same thing 2 days ago and their French €uro brothers (for now at least) did the same thing last night.

Without even listening I can guess that people are saying, via voice, blog and tweet, that ‘their’ players lack passion, ability and modesty.

I recall some six or seven years ago that Franz Beckenbauer (who has also spoken out of turn this week) said that international football had a limited future because the power of the clubs was getting greater and that international football was less a priority than earning a (great) salary and playing for a (great) club. It’s clearly too early to write off England, France, Spain and Germany from this year’s World Cup, but the question I’d like to raise is “Is there really such as thing as a consolidated international team?” I have no doubt that somebody will win the tournament, and whoever it is will have become ‘teamified’ between now and July 11th -but what of the 31 ‘teams’ that will have failed?

Right now this is just a hypothesis, I often preach keeping an open mind, so I’ll do that for the short term, but watch this space, I have a theory and I’m quite ready to produce the evidence to back it up!

For yet again more proof of how Life imitates Soccer (a tribute to our tenacious American guests) and today’s sarcastic Word Cup HIAKU click this link and float over to Football Mirrors life Mirrors Football and scroll to 18th June 2010