I'll be perfectly honest, yesterday was one of those days that just make you want to just scream , why am I doing this. Four matches, only one was of any kind of significance to me at all in any way. So apologies in advance. I won't be dwelling on the foibles and special moments of what was in small moments a pretty good day of footie. The really important thing to take from the day was the dumping out of the World Cup of Italy. Something I predicted as early as their first proper match when they sleep walked for 90 minutes. What happened to Italy was the well deserved result of taking your own greatness for granted and the misguided belief by the manager that he above all others was the holder of the Holy Grail of football. You have no idea how much joy it gave me to watch the Italians moan and suffer as the day got worse and worse, well all except one lady who clearly believed herself to be at a rave somewhere on planet ecstasy. So you can understand, In 2006, I was sat in a cafe full of Italians watching as they were awarded a late penalty. A penalty they knew was the product of a massive dive and never ever deserved. They of course scored the goal and advanced to the finals in the end. But if there was any justice, they would have to a man, said no ref we can't accept it. After the match the cafe supporters quietly filed out and didn't have any of the usual OTT celebrations, this of course did not stop them from pretending they were the best after the final . Well this time as the saying says, Karma is a bitch. All those dodgy pens, dive induced yellows inflicted on opponents and ref rushes that had got them this far , finally didn't work. They would have to work for a result. Even the disallowed goal was particularly tasty, how often had they in 2006 alone benefited from the same kind of clearly wrong call without so much as a word to say , sorry ref we were massively offside. In fairness it was a dramatic fight back but not good enough. And that is the point of all of this. Italy were not worthy of advancing and they didn't. All those hang dog faces I saw , young boys, old men, women who looked like their mother had died, I'd like to say I felt bad, but no , they deserve it after the pain they inflicted on others in 2006, served them right. Joining France and maybe Spain soon , the big European sides are being exposed for the lazy players they have become. Italy got a taste of it's own medicine and I don't think they will even be aware of it. Instead, the post mortem will start in a few hours and the ref will be evil and the other side cheated. I say this as I've heard it all before from them and I'm sick of it. Say what you want about Brazil or Germany, but they aren't actively trying to win the game first by man management , mind games you know cheating. They try playing football first before resorting to smoke and mirrors. Just maybe over the next two years under a new manager Italy might get a younger better less arrogant side and return to the pretty football they used to play. If England go out next Sunday I hope it's only after playing their very best and leaving it all out on the pitch. At least we'll know they tried. How many teams showed up this time and simply expected the opposition to promptly fall apart and hand them the next round on a plate? If there's one thing good about this World Cup over the most recent ones, it's that this time it seems only the teams that were good enough have been allowed to advance.With luck the last four teams to advance tomorrow will be sorted in short order and we can see the pressure cooker do or die football that we have seen in the last few days from the winners continuing in the knock out matches.
And is if to remind me life is more than football, I was told by one of the laptops that I needed to upgrade my adobe flash player. The Acer was fine and did it's little dance and 2 minutes later we were back on line , but the Vaio was going to be difficult. Error messages, special help pages , un-installing the old version of Flash player, none of it seemed to work. Finally after what felt like 4 hours later but was in fact only an hour of cursing, it somehow decided to cooperate. It just did what it refused to do for the last few days.How rude, why didn't it just sort itself at the first time of asking? I can't tell you why some upgrades are more frustrating than others, but this was one of the upgrades from hell.
All that faffing around with websites and down loaders delayed the main event of the post match relax. Catching up on Corrie. With the adobe and Java script sorted we could fire up the ITV player and watch the morning after the night before. Graham Proctor, village idiot savant and sensitive soul finally won the babe lottery and spent the night exploring Tina McIntyre. Here is where it gets interesting , and by interesting I mean fun. Tina was supposed to tell her ex, Bob the builder, and Graham is going to tell the ever peaceful and serene David about the development. Knowing Graham, it isn't going to be simple or predictable. You have to see it to believe it. The best comedy sequence in years going back to before Kim Crowther started as head producer. There is a blanket gag first used in Abbot and Costello , a pair of handcuffs, a radiator , a lunging David and finally the comedy cherry on top of the cake, the street scene in which David plays the clown so well you almost believe he isn't just doing it for effect. Phill Collison has in this ep finally taken control and returned the keystone cops humour we used to take for granted on Corrie. I was so happy I gave it my full attention. Stories about ordinary people have come home and I suspect the OTT bizzaro ones are in the bin where they should have stayed.Corrie is fun and again, I hope it stays that way for a long time to come.
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