34 days to go.....

On the final day of the English football league season, it seems time to now start thinking towards the 19th World Cup finals, for the first time held on the African continent and hosting by South Africa. 34 days to go until the tournament starts, 32 countires all battled through to the World Cup finals tournament, from usual sides like Brazil, Germany and Mexico, the favoured sides like Argentina, Spain and current holders Italy to the 'how the hell have they qualified' sides like Honduras, New Zealand and North Korea......actually, how the hell have North Korea qualified!!!



So over the coming weeks, i'll do research into the tournament, post thoughts and opinions and hope everyone dislikes the French as much as me (let's give a big hand to France for qualifying, they handled their play off with Ireland well). So wether you like football and want a more 'colourful' view of the tournament or if your not that bothered but want a different view of the tournament, i'll try my best to provide that service.

First up i'll talk about the ball, since Mexico 70, Adidas has made a ball specifically for each World Cup, each one having it's own name (very male thing to do), this World Cup, the ball is called Jabulani (apparently means 'be happy' in Zulu fact fans, in fact, if it's Zulu country, will we have a Michael Caine inspired team as in Escape To Victory, but then Bobby Moore is dead and Sly Stallone is too old to dive about in goal....), the balls got eleven colours on it to represent the 11 players on a side, 11 official languages spoken in South Africa blah blah blah but most importantly, after the ball has been tested in various smaller tournaments and training, Barcelona's Spanish goalkeeper Victor Valdes says 'i'm scared about the ball, it's unpredictable' which indicates we could see some wild free kicks and long range shots, seeing how Portugal's Christiano Ronaldo shots or Italy's Andrea (girls name) Pirlo's long passes react to this ball could be interesting, but that seems all a bit too sciencey, it's a ball at the end of the day, the best players and teams should cope and lets hope we don't have to endure managers complaining about teams performance due to a ball (let's especially hope Fabio Capello doesn't anyway)