Click here to have the Fiver delivered direct to your inbox every weekday at 12pm(ish), or if your usual copy has stopped arriving SWISS OF LIFE Phew! It’s a good thing that celebrated, squat, slightly penguin-shaped pillar of moral rectitiude, Sepp Blatter, was at Durban Stadium yesterday. Because if Above-Board Blatter hadn’t been personally supervising events, many folks might have suspected that jiggerypokery was responsible for the defeat of seemingly invincible Spain by Switzerland, the country of Above-Board’s birth and home to Fifa HQ. How else, such folks might have asked, to explain that a side universally hailed as the best in the world could be beaten by a team who began their qualifying campaign by losing at home to Luxembourg? How else could a free-scoring machine that went into the match having won 19,754 consecutive matches be shut out by a defence led by Philippe Senderos? Ottmar Hitzfeld knows how else. “We concentrated and were organised from the start,” yodled the manager whom the Swiss now worship as Gottmar. “We didn’t allow any chances for Spain in the first half and that gave us self-confidence. In the second half, Spain rolled one attack after another and we knew they would open their defence. After we took the lead, we gained even more confidence.” Simple, see? Especially as Spain could not adapt their approach to overcome Hitzfeld’s tactics, suggesting, perhaps, that the most feted team on the planet are mere one-trick ponies, nothing more than footballing Rod Hulls. Or, if you prefer, the international equivalent of Arsenal or Barcelona. Spain manager Vicente Del Bosque thinks otherwise. That, of course, confirms they are the international equivalent of Arsenal. ”I feel [the win] is an excessive prize for them considering the football they displayed,” harrumphed Del Bosque in tones familiar to anyone used to hearing Arsene Wenger suggest that any defeat for his team means not that there is something wrong with that team, but that there is something wrong with football itself. SIGN UP FOR OUR FANTASY FOOTBALL GAME You can still sign up now and play daily competitions with the most exciting fantasy game on the web (oh, it’s free too) . QUOTE OF THE DAY “How did you manage to muck it up?” – Telecinco touchline reporter Sara Carbonero, Spain’s very own version of Nick Collins, asks the question on everybody’s minds to Iker Casillas – her other half – after yesterday’s game. LIVE ON GUARDIAN.CO.UK TODAY Join Paul Doyle for MBM coverage of Argentina 1-1 South Korea at 12.30pm, Barney Ronay for Greece 0-1 Nigeria at 3pm and Barry Glendenning for France 1-1 Mexico from 7.30pm . GAUCHO GARDEN GNOME The Fiver is astonished to detect, sifting through its daily media monitor portfolio of yellowing free-sheet newspapers, eavesdropped stairwell conversations and the Text Maniacs section of the Daily Star, a sense out there that this might, in fact, be quite a boring World Cup so far. Not enough goals they say. Where’s the drama, they ask. WOT U MUPPET WENGA NO WAY FERGIE LOL WC INNIT SORT IT AWT, they rage. This is all news to the Fiver, for whom the World Cup has so far been an intoxicating ride, a feast of the senses, a palm-drenchingly humid sensory journey of sounds and smells – and particularly smells, given that the Fiver has observed the entire tournament from its prime vantage point in the inside suit jacket pocket of Diego Maradona, previously a star of the World Cup, and currently shaping up as its saviour from the sidelines. Not content with capering wildly, with performing furiously sweaty touchline man-hugs, with roughing up his players, and with appearing in public displaying a peculiar gaucho garden gnome facial hair arrangement, Maradona has now decided to enter into a full-combat joint comedy roast of two of his fellow old-style WC hall-of-famers, the invariably wrong Pele and the invariably sniffy Michel Platini, incumbent Uefa chief blazer and outspoken critic of all things non-Michel Platini. “Pele should go back to the museum,” Maradona opined at yesterday’s knockabout press session, responding to criticism of his “coaching” “style” by the man who once attempted to defeat a crack Nazi XI with a selection that included Sylvester Stallone in goal and the aged Michael Caine in a kind of strolling EBJT role. And to be fair to Maradona this isn’t actually a bad idea. The Fiver would be among the first to visit a properly kitted out, adequately resourced Pele museum, with its Pele waxwork hall, its stuffed and cured Pele exhibit, its Pele fossils and interactive Pele experience with the sounds and smells of Pele through the ages, not to mention its Pele gift shop crammed with Pele lavender biscuits and bracing Pele throat lozenges. Platini, meanwhile, thinks he “is better than all the rest”. “I’ve always had a very distant relationship with him, it’s always just hello and goodbye, nothing more than that,” Maradona shrugged, producing a sheathe of unanswered RSVP invitations to a cigar-smoking, burger-cramming, shark-fishing speedboat expedition in Cuban territorial waters. He also had a pop at the ball, fingering it for the dearth of non-Maradona-related thrills. “I’m having a wonderful time, to me a World Cup is something that’s quite amazing,” he gurgled, taking the first steps in a small, capering improvised dance and balancing a goldfish bowl on his nose. “I don’t want to go into the ball again because everyone is talking about it, but it is important and it does play a part and I would ask Pelé and Platini to go out there and play with the ball and take a closer look at it to see if it’s a good one or bad one, and to stop talking rubbish about me.” Which is something the Fiver, for one, would be willing to pay a lot of money to witness, in a kind of blazered, sweating, ankle-hacking middle-aged great dream three-and-in tournament sense. As for the rubbish-talking, keep it coming. Right now it’s pretty much all we’ve got. WIN! WIN! WIN! Enter our ridiculously easy competition and you could win a shirt signed by one of the World Cup’s biggest names. Is it Maxim Kalinichenko? Wouldn’t you like to know. £66 HAT-TRICK OF FREE BETS WITH BLUE SQUARE Click here to find out more. FIVER LETTERS “It may have taken longer than originally anticipated, but kudos to the Fiver. The World Cup in South Africa proves that the Stop Football campaign has indeed succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams” – Central Park Rangers. “I’m no expert but surely fans attacking power distribution centres to protest against power outages during World Cup games (yesterday’s bits and bobs) is not going to help” – Ian Manning. “Re: Robbie Earle asking for tickets to a match being played in a city he doesn’t live in, between two countries he doesn’t come from (yesterday’s Fiver). Surely it worked in the past for Jamaica matches?” – Gareth Deeble. Send your letters to the.boss@guardian.co.uk . And if you’ve nothing better to do you can also tweet the Fiver now. BITS AND BOBS The fixtures for The Best Tournament In The World That Sky Does Have Rights To have been announced and Liverpool will host Arsenal on the opening day of the season. Click here for the fixtures from across the leagues . World Cup chief Danny Jordaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan hopes South Africans will retain an interest in the competition when … sorry, if the hosts crash out, following their defeat to Uruguay. “[The fans] were dragged along in silence and pain, not a sound from the vuvuzela,” he said a tad dramatically. “What is important now is that the fans embrace the tournament beyond the Bafana team.” Fifa has handed Tim Cahill just a one-game ban for his red card during the Sheilaroos’ opening defeat to Germany. Chris Evans, the man who spawned TFI Friday and is therefore directly responsible for James C****n’s World Cup Live, has apologised for posting a joke about poverty in Africa and the World Cup on Twitter. “Apologies for last retweet didn’t read it properly,” he said. “Never meant to offend. Not funny at all.” A frozen pitch caused Ghana’s training session to be postponed by two hours today. “We were informed early this morning that we had to reschedule training due to the freezing conditions,” chattered a chilly Ghana FA suit. Darlington boss Simon Davey has quit the club, handing in his resignation to the Conference club via email. “I’m off XOXO,” he didn’t write, while Stockport boss Gary Ablett has also left his position. And Peter Andre has somehow, somehow prised the Celebrity Dad of the Year title away from England’s Brave John Terry. Wayne Rooney was ninth and $tevie Mbe 10th, both finishing behind Ronan Keating. Hmm … THE FIVER FANS’ NETWORK: HAVE YOUR SAY! In the spirit of mutualisation (ie this and this and this ), we’re offering this space to one Fiver reader a day to have their say on whether or not it’s a good idea to let football fans have their say. Here’s Phil West: “Better for a football fan to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to have their say and remove all doubt.” Send your efforts – in 140 characters or less – to the.boss@guardian.co.uk with ‘My say on people having their say’ in the subject heading and we’ll publish … something. STILL WANT MORE? Jonathan Wilson is so obsessed with tactics that he thought the Jackson 5 were an experimental defensive formation. So listen up when he says attacking full-backs could be vital at the World Cup . James Richardson and his pod chums discuss Spain’s defeat and today’s fixtures on the latest edition of Football Weekly World Cup Daily . Rob Smyth is a registered tacticphile himself and has pored over Opta’s stats to tell you why the World Cup has been a little on the flat side so far . Finally 44 years of hurt are over: an article about 1966 without one mention of England. Richard Williams says the current North Korea side could emulate their illustrious predecessors . And Fabio Capello has got all sorts of problems ahead of the England-Algeria game: our writers have put their heads together to try to solve them . SIGN UP TO THE FIVER Want your very own copy of our free tea-timely(ish) email sent direct to your inbox? Has your regular copy stopped arriving? Click here to sign up . WE ALL KNOW WHOSE RADIO ROCKS Paul Doyle Barney Ronay guardian.co.uk
Read the rest here:
The Fiver | Footballing Rod Hulls; and An Adequately Resourced Pele Museum | Paul Doyle and Barney Ronay
