Football

Football and Coffee House rarely mix, except of course when Manchester United win the European Cup. Yet I'm sure plenty of CoffeeHousers want to see England come out on top when the winning nation of the 2018 World Cup bid is announced later today. This morning saw the English delegation – including Davids Cameron and Beckham, and Prince William – make their final presentation to FIFA dignitaries. To my eyes, it was schmaltzily effective stuff, but you can judge for yourself from the video above. All that remains to do is echo Iain Dale's call of "Come on England!" And if we don't win, then it was obviously fixed. P.S. There's even some World Cup-related embarrassment for Ed Miliband.

Goals don't come much better than this. Part of Lionel Messi's charm - and his football really is charming - comes from the impish glee that runs through his performances. There's an almost childlike joy to Messi's game that leaves you smiling and feeling just a little better about the world. Some of that, no doubt, comes from the fact that he still looks as though he's a 12 year old playing amongst men, but there's a purity about Messi too that raises his football far above his erstwhile rivals for the title of Greatest Footballer of His Time. Aesthetics are not the only fruit, but they matter. Is there anyone who actually dislikes Lionel Messi? Even when he does something spectacular you don't, somehow, get the sense of a player who enjoys showing off.

Emotional involvement is a grand thing. Except when it clouds the mind. Such, anyway, would seem to be the case with Tim Montgomerie's call for government intervention in the vexed [sic] issue of who owns football clubs. Now, like Tim (who, unlike me, is a Manchester United fan) I've little against supporters-groups owning football clubs. But... At the moment the Culture, Media and Sport team seem content to let the footballing authorities find a solution to the football debt problem. These are the same authorities who, amongst other things, stupidly signed a contract extension for Fabio Capello before the World Cup. Jeremy Hunt isn't quite standing before an empty goal but not far off.

  I don't know. I really don't. It can't go on. But it will. It bloody will. There are times when watching Scotland play international football produces the sensation that one's actually trapped inside a Beckett play. It might seem a tragicomedy to you but it's no fun in here. A game of two halves, as a friend puts it, in which bugger all that's good happens. Twice. We can all recite the horrors. The 7-0 hammering against Uruguay in 1950 1954*. The 9-3 unpleasantness against England. Peru. Iran. Costa Rica. The two draws against the mighty Faroe Islands. But all bar the last were at the Big Show and even the grim fiascos against the puffin-munchers were away from home (like Alan Rough, we are clutching at thin air here).

Good to see that Craig Levein, the new Scotland manager, has a sophisticated grasp of football tactics. As this note left in the dressing room last week demonstrates: Final score? Sweden 3 Scotland 0.

A good question! Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski suggest not. Their argument, summarised by Tim Harford, runs more or less like this: - England do about as well as you’d expect, given their size, economic power, proximity to football’s “core” in Western Europe, and footballing history. That is, you’d expect them to usually make the last 16, sometimes make the last 8, occasionally make the last 4 and make the final very rarely. And they do. - Managers don’t make much difference to a team’s expected performance. Not even Fabio Capello. - There is no correlation between the qualifying performance (which in this particular campaign was outstanding) and the performance at the championship itself (which… well, the less said the better).

Yes, it might well, nay would, have changed the momentum of the game*. No, video technology is not needed (not least because it hasn't improved any game in which it has been introduced). And anyway, to adapt Wodehouse, what you gain on the roundabouts of 1966 you lose on the swings of 2010. Consider this, then, an open thread to moan about the World Cup:   *I didn't actually see it since I was playing cricket. Against Langholm. We won. I took, rather astonishingly, two wickets. It should have been three. Or even four. But that would be greedy and massively above and beyond expectations.

I'm not going to intrude into private grief. But, as mentioned before, there's a considerable disconnect between the England fans (many of them anyway) and the tabloids. As this wince-inducing Sun frontpage from the day after the draw was announced makes clear... So, readers, what do you think England should do next?

One of the stranger aspects of watching World Cup coverage in the United States is ESPN's choice of colour commentator and studio analyst. Who knew that what this tournament really needs is Robbie Mustoe's analysis? Then there's Steve McManaman and Ally McCoist and Efan Ekoku all of whom are working for the Americans for, frankly, mysterious reasons. Not all of it works. Then again, the quality of analysis on the BBC and ITV has been abysmal and actually, I think, worse than what ESPN offers.

 Hats off to the New York Post: And we'll have no more jokes about Scottish goalkeepers, ok? [Thanks to RF for the tip.

As the build-up to the World Cup continues, my latest item at Goal Post defends Italy and the Italian way of playing football. Some of this, I confess, is based on sentiment. If Scotland cannot prevail - and it seems that some techinicality has made that more than usually impossible this year - then Italy are the european team I tend to support. Perhaps it's because I spent the first year of my life in Rome that this is the case. No memories of that time, of course, but some bond of sentiment nonetheless. Anyway, there's a magnificent austerity to Italian football sometimes and, while one might not want to feat upon it every day, it's good to have it there nonetheless: There is, as I say, a minimalist purity to the essence of Italian football.

Naturally there'll be some of that here this month, but I'm also blogging for the New Republic over at Frank Foer's reconstituted Goal Post blog. Among the other contributors: novelists Aleksandar Hemon, Daniel Alarcon and Rabih Alemeddine. There's also Howard Wolfson, now a Deputy Mayor of New York City but better known, perhaps, as communications director for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.  Anyway, it should be fun so I hope you'll come on over and say hello there as well. My opening contribution is to express the desire that Anyone But Brazil wins. However you can skip that and move to Daniel Alarcon's reflections on the Cult of Maradona. Naturally there's also a Twitter feed here.

Lord knows that in these trying, perhaps even desperate, times we need some light relief. So here's Chris Kamara cheerfully admitting that he hasn't a clue what's going on in the Portsmouth vs Blackburn Rovers game the other day. Now, if only political pundits and broadcasters were this honest... And no, I'm not knocking Mr Kamara. I once wrote a 900 word report on a rugby match that, thanks to my own stupidity and the uselessness of a colleague who was giving me a lift to Hawick and had got the kick-off time wrong, was into injury time by the time we arrived. That is, we saw fewer than two minutes of play. Happily, no-one seemed to notice...

  Who knows how bad Wayne Rooney's ankle injury is? Not since Metatarsal Watch in 2006, however, has there been such troubling news for the England camp. One mobs' rain is another lots' sunshine however and the Agony of Wayne's Ankle is a gift to our never under-excited press. We can expect Fleet Street to move into battle with its customary brio. All weapons will be deployed including, but not limited to: 1. Ankle Correspondents. No serious paper can cover this crisis without a specialist Ankle Correspondent. Just as old Afghan hands were hauled out of retirement in the winter of 2001-2002, so their Ankle brethren will return to prominence now. 2. Endless features on Famous Ankles We Have Known and Loved, This Day in Ankle History, Can Ankle Injuries Give You Cancer?