Barney Campbell

There is something luxurious about the group stage of a World Cup. Gone is the waiting. Gone the fill-inch columns about arcane details of squad selection. Gone the faux-humanitarian pearl-clutching about global sport events being a massive waste of time and money. Gone the moaning about the scheduling. Just stay up late; it’s actually quite fun. For now, here we are, with the glorious, technicolour feast. Goals left, right and centre. None of the quotidian misery of a goalless draw on a rainy Tuesday night in Stoke. Now it is the sun-soaked rush of national anthems, heroes, villains and  – most of all – a goal fest aided by defences that barely know each other from Adam. Matches that you’d never before think twice about – Uzbekistan vs Colombia at 3 a.m.

France versus Albion is always good sport. The latest instalment of the rivalry was settled conclusively with PSG’s recent victory over Arsenal. As for the wider comparisons, strewn with titanic clashes – the Hundred Years’ War, the Battle of Trafalgar, Liquorice Allsorts versus Carambar – I’m no expert but I did live in Paris for a couple of years and was intoxicated by it from the very first evening there, a January Saturday in foul weather with the normally placid Seine a broiling mess. But after moving back home I hadn’t returned until this year. Inevitably, the first thing you do upon rolling off the Dover to Calais ferry is start declaiming how much better the French do things than us.

The past few years have seen a slew of devastating style assaults on the English language known as ‘LinkedIn speak’. You know the type of word salad: ‘synergise’ instead of ‘combine’, ‘ideated’ instead of ‘thought of’, ‘holistic’ instead of – well – looking at something as a whole. Alarmingly, there is now an app, Kagi Translate, that allows you to type any sentence and it will deliver it for you in this wretched patois. For instance, write ‘I went to the zoo,’ and Kagi gives you: ‘I had an incredible opportunity to observe high-performing teams in a diverse ecosystem and reflect on the importance of adaptability and strategic positioning.’ Go on, try it.