To get a red card when you’re through already, you mustn’t be the sharpest in the drawer. No need for rashness, keep it calm and steady – don’t jump in with your feet up off the floor. The last sixteen, your team will need you more than in this match in which you’ve naught at […]

All day it had been raining, Recife traffic aquaplaning. God help you if your home was in a cellar! But neither Jurgen Klinsmann nor Joachim Loew, his kinsman, came out onto the pitch with an umbrella. Things got worse instead of better. Even puddles got much wetter, as the weather really pulled out all the […]

Déjà-vû? Does it make you shiver? Postman Pat has failed to deliver. A laser beam may have messed him up but Pat’s now driving out of the Cup. World Cup football? Had enough of that – time to go and play with his black and white cat. Drive to the village of Greendale, then he […]

First time in the finals but many folk believed the Bosnians might reach the last sixteen. Decisions went against them and they might well feel aggrieved – the hallowed halls felt more like Hallowe’en. At least against Iran, a sense of justice was retrieved – their latent promise finally was seen. But they fly home […]

More than sixty million records sold around the world, famous for those mesmerising hips, Shakira is the emblem when the World Cup flag’s unfurled, with Waka Waka pulsing from her lips. She even has a star upon the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her hips don’t lie and doubtless never did. Gerard Piqué is her partner […]