Ten-ish days in and there are way too many highlights to mention, but we’ll have a go - in reverse order:
(3) Brian Kerr on the ref with the vanishing spray: "He'd be a great man for decorating a Christmas tree".
(2) Robin van Persie’s header, which is still ridiculous no matter how many times you YouTube it, and . . .
(1) That moment when you felt all melancholic about Ireland not being at this very lovely World Cup but then, over the shoulders of Martin O'Neill and Patrick Vieira in the ITV studio, standing on the Copacabana beach, appeared a man wielding a sign that read:
“UP CAVAN”.
Ah gawd, it left a nation misty-eyed. Well, Cavan at least.
So, we kinda made it to Brazil after all, although after you saw what Messi did to poor old Iran, you were half happy to be out of it. Mad cruel.
Anyway, Saturday's highlight was Germany v Ghana, which, Colm O'Rourke noted yesterday, put Donegal v Antrim in the shade, Michael Lyster wanting him to pipe down lest the viewers leave Clones en masse for the Copacabana.
Mind you, if they’d watched the first half of Belgium v Russia, they’d have been happy enough to return to Clones, even if Donegal and Antrim had packed up and gone home by then.
Hacker
Not massively pretty, although if you’d pressed the red button, as
Gary Lineker
suggested, you’d have got alternative commentary to
Jonathan Pearce
and
Martin Keown
: Hacker the Dog, a puppet from Wigan, on duty behind the mic. No, really.
For those of you not under eight, he's a star on children's BBC, and if you had a Euro for every tweet along the lines of "Hacker's a heckuva a lot better than Phil Neville - ha, ha", you'd have collected more than Mikko Ilonen did at Fota Island yesterday (ie €333,330 plus - what's with all the threes?).
After a while, Hacker sounded a bit demoralised, possibly having remortgaged his kennel to bet on Romelu Lukaku being the World Cup’s leading scorer.
“He looks like he’s half asleep at times,” said Keown, which left you certain he’d score a hat-trick in the next two minutes, but not to be, the lad taken off, at which point a Belgian fan, who most probably remortgaged his home to travel to Brazil, was spotted having a nap.
All you can hope is that he’d woken up by the time Divock Origi got Belgium’s late, late winner, otherwise the lad will never live it down.
Meanwhile, adieu to BBC pundit Thierry Henry, the New York Red Bulls man quite clearly tingling at the prospect of returning to MLS duty bang in the middle of the greatest show on earth.
Lineker: "It's strange playing their league during the World Cup. "
Thierry: “Tell me about it.”
Saturday? He’ll be lining out against Toronto FC.
Alan Shearer asked if he'd been in training while Brazil-based.
Thierry: Chuckle
MLS Marketing Dept: GRRRR.
Eoin Liston-ish
By then, Lineker had reminded Thierry that yesterday was the anniversary of the most famous handball in the history of Association Football (‘Moi?”), Diego Maradona’s Eoin Liston-ish effort against England in 1986, which for anyone young enough to know who Hacker the Dog is, must seem like the Stone Age.
Next up, Algeria v South Korea. And it’s games like this that test the pundits, them not being overly familiar with Algerian and South Korean football, their sense of relief when they spot an English Premier League player in the line-ups overwhelming because they can focus all their pre-match thoughts on said there men.
Glenn Hoddle, though, had a little more insight for us on the South Koreans, having spotted them being very happy in their hotel. "Their spirit is very European sort of style really," he said, Gordan Strachan nodding. Or it could have been Gordan Strachan trying to shake off his peeling skin after spending the ITV afternoon on the Copacabana, by now the fella looking like a walking, talking South Korean shirt.
Forecast? Well, Algeria had failed to score a World Cup goal – like, ever – before 2014, so a dour affair, most probably. Nil-nil?
Six goals later and sure, you could only love the World Cup that little bit more.
"Algeria look like world beaters, South Korea look like panel beaters," said Jim Beglin back on RTÉ, and in time we'll forgive him.
No offence Clones, but the Copacabana remains too tempting.
