Gerry's not excited by the World cup and muses on who to root for seeing as Ireland won't be there. A lot of Irish people have adopted Poland, given the large amount of Poles here, many of whom will obviously be taking an interest in their team's progress. My default and partisan position at the moment is to root for Manchester United players, so I will be following Portugal (Cristiano Ronaldo), Holland (Edwin Van Der Sar at least*), Serbia&Montenegro (Nemanja Vidic), France (Mikael Silvestre, Louis Saha at least**), England (Gary Neville, Rio Ferdinand at least***), South Korea (Ji-Sung Park) and of course Argentina (Gabriel Heinze at least****). However, I like to think that I might find myself rooting for the team which plays the most appealing football - much as I did with the Czech Republic in Portugal 2004.
Incidentally, unlike Gerry, I don't consider Brazil a shoo-in for the title. For one, the last time a South American (or any non-European) team won the World Cup in Europe was Brazil in Sweden 1958. More relevantly, and tieing in with the post below, there are quite a few ageing, complacent members of the Brazil first team who justify their place on historical record, rather than current performance.
* - It seems unlikely Ruud Van Nistelrooy will remain much longer a United player.
** - We might yet sign Franck "Scarface" Ribéry.
*** - I'm still hoping Rooney rests his metatarsul at home.
**** - It would be great to see Javier Mascherano line up alongside Juan Roman Riquelmé at Old Trafford next season.
It is a well know fact that more Englishman know where Wayne Rooney's metatarsul is that where Basra is located :-)
Posted by: Perry de Havilland | June 08, 2006 at 11:46 AM
Indeed: after the similar injury to Beckham last time around, the word metatarsul is no longer an esoteric medical term. Although I have a horrible feeling this is going to all end in tears with a breakdown of that very well known bone leaving Rooney out of the beginning of United's season and possibly with some permanent injury. Here's hoping I'm wrong!
Posted by: Frank McGahon | June 09, 2006 at 01:57 PM