Viva España!

Well, we all know now that the new champions of world football are Spain – and well deserved too. They played the best football of the tournament, consistently so. My initial thoughts on Argentina being potential champions kinda fell apart! But this is why I’m not a professional pundit.

I enjoyed the later part of the World Cup, but bizarrely it was the final which was the worst game of the lot. Spain were frustrated at every turn by Holland, who were desperate to stop Spain play their passing football which would have otherwise seen the Spaniards dominate the game. Shame that the dutch felt that the only way to stop Spain was by being dirty, but I guess if you ever get to a major final then it isn’t how well you play, it’s that you win.

I’ve now got a real hunger for the new domestic football league season to start. I’ve missed it, to be honest. Forest still have yet to do anything of note this summer, but we always do things late. I’ve no doubt the wheels will start rolling soon.

Going to London next week to drown my sorrows as a newly unemployed person. Just the first part of next week to go.

You get what you give

It’s not the greatest of shocks to be writing this blog post after another early England exit from the World Cup.

The problems that affect our national side, the reasons and theories, will be and have been debated until words lose all meaning – so I’m not about to start here. I haven’t a clue who, or what, is to blame. As is the case from previous years, now England have been eliminated, I can enjoy the tournament. Not that I hate our national side, I hate the frenzy that takes over the country when England play. When they go out, you can relax and enjoy the football of the latter stages. For example, today saw Brazil knocked out by Holland, and at the time of writing Ghana are 1-0 ahead against Uruguay. Once the World Cup sheds the bad teams, the truly skilled teams are on show and the football is better. I fully expect Argentina v Germany tomorrow to be a cracker. As for tips on who’ll win the cup – I think Argentina. An ARG v NED final would be great.

Away from the football and it can’t have escaped anybody’s notice that we’re in the middle of summer. For the past few weeks I don’t think the temperature has dropped below 21 degrees. This, of course, is fine. Summer! But my only gripe is, as is getting more frequent, the newspapers. The british people love the topic of the weather, so of course the national newspapers will feature it heavily within their pages. Thing is, they refer to this weather as a ‘heat wave‘. Now, isn’t a heat wave defined as an exceptionally hot period of weather over a short period of time? The weather has been consistently warm for two weeks now, so rather than a ‘heat wave’, it’s just summer! I can understand the confusion, seeing as we barely had any prolonged warm weather last year, but it’s just one of those little things that annoy, when really they shouldn’t.

And finally, the job situation. I feel like I’m on death row, awaiting my grisly fate. The date draws nearer, only two and a half weeks until unemployment, and I don’t think it’s hit me how major this is. Putting aside the fact that no-one is employing anyone, making my job prospects exceptionally bleak, it’s the fact that I’ll soon be saying goodbye to people I really like – and will probably never see again. There are various people at the ILF that I will no doubt see on nights out, but there is my ‘team’ who never go on nights out, as they’re either too old, not that way inclined etc. It just isn’t fair that I’m being deprived of working at a place I thoroughly enjoy, with people I really like. Not fair at all.