The World Cup is soon becoming a distant memory, the Final finally coming to a close 2 hours after kick-off on Sunday 11th July 2010 and now, we’re in that situation we experience every summer where we have the long wait for the new football season to start.

The long and short of this World Cup is that it sucked. It sucked hard. From the god awful coverage from both ITV and the BBC, to the complete lack of crowd personality with the Vuvuzela simply drowning out great chants and support with its incessant buzzing and the competitions rather poor football.

I’ve watched World Cup’s regularly since Italia ’90, so this was my sixth and I think it’s safe to say that this was my least favourite. We’ll get this out of the way first… I really don’t like England, I feel no heart and passion for the side, nor do I fall into the common misnomer that England are a major side, so going into this competition, as with other World Cups, I wasn’t in a position whereby if England were eliminated far too early it wouldn’t affect my enjoyment of the tournament. Of course I want them to win and do well, but if they don’t then I’m really not bothered. Some people do seem surprised by this, they can’t understand how I can’t get behind my country (albeit only half, I genuinely feel more passion for the efforts given by the Scottish despite a lesser quality squad) when I was born here, especially when I’m so passionate about football on a regular basis and be a die hard Man Utd fan. The simple answer is that I support Manchester United every single second of every single day, I’ve been to see them countless times live, I watch every single game and follow the news every day, with England they don’t play too often, Friendly’s are pointless and major tournaments are only every 2 years. In Lehman’s terms, I’m full-time Man Utd and England are a summer job.

The first round of the World Cup saw teams going out there not to lose rather than going out there to win. Games were cagey events and, if I’m being honest, the quality of football just wasn’t up to snuff and the overall tournament statistics go some way to proving this, with the 2010 World Cup having less shots on target than any other World Cup in history. The games did improve over time, but barely and no games reached the quality of Argentina vs Mexico from World Cup ’06 in Germany, which is one of my favourite, if not my favourite, International games of all time.

The final saw the Dutch, who had played solid football all tournament against a stuttering and rather boring Spanish side and, much like the rest of the tournament, it also disappointed. The Dutch, instead of focussing on what they can do, as they did against the Brazilians, went all Man Utd against Barcelona, and tried to stop the opposition, resulting in some of the worst tackling you will see in a major tournament. The Spanish of course were no saints, throwing themselves to the floor and surrounding the referee waving imaginary cards. It was a case of all my least favourite things in football on display from both sides. Sods law then that it would be a refereeing mistake to not award a corner resulting in yet another last minute winner from Spain.

All in all it was clear that South Africa was never the right place to hold the World Cup, and thankfully it won’t be there again for a while. We’ve just sat through a month of one of the most instantly forgettable International football and now I’m really hoping that the footballing seasons ahead will allow us to forget that rubbish.

One thing good did come from the World Cup though, and that’s a realization of just how good Martin Tyler and Andy Gray are as commentators. Every single pairing on terrestrial TV World Cup coverage were shockingly bad.

In some horrible news today, I was awoken to hear of stories regarding new refinancing of the Manchester United debts, most notably the potential selling of Old Trafford, the Carrington training facility and even a major clearout of players, many of whom I really wouldn’t be too bothered in seeing the back of, those being Nani, Berbatov, Foster and more disappointingly, Anderson, Vidic and even Rooney.

The simple fact is that Manchester United are a club living outside of their means, we have no Russian billionaire to write off £300m of debt by way of a good will gesture, or a middle-eastern sheik who has more money than sense, no, instead we have some massively skint Americans who plunged the club into debt because they couldn’t afford us. I’m not entirely sure what they get out of the deal either. Of cours

On the bright side, we’ve actually won quite a lot over the last few seasons… It could be worse, we could have been Leeds United or Liverpool.

It may be one of our oldest past-times and even something that on rare occasions we’re actually good at, but I just don’t understand cricket.
It’s not so much the rules, of which I do actually understand the general basics, as well as variations in test cricket and 20/20, but more to do with the popularity of it. Just why the hell is it so goddamn popular? I am genuinely sick of putting Sky Sports News on and seeing Cricket all the time. You actually see loads of Cricket but no NFL, no MLB, no NBA and very, very little Rugby, all sports which are infinitely superior to cricket and I’m starting to become really annoyed with it all.

I’m not one to criticise someones likes and dislikes, it’s entirely up to them what they want to follow, yes, even if it makes absolutely no sense at all. First of all, it’s not exactly a world game, there are to my admittedly short knowledge, only five actually competitive teams, or at least it seems that way, Australia, England, Pakistan, South Africa and Sri Lanka. That actually equates to less competitive teams than you’d get in the opening group stages of a UEFA Cup. There are some big competitions, like a World Cup (again, quite a tenuous name at best considering the lack of quality national sides…) and the Ashes, which if I remember correctly is a series of 5 test matches against Australia to commemorate a game between the countries where the wickets were burned to ashes and kept in a mini cup, which becomes the prize. Nice history, but let’s be honest, it’s not like we’re not playing Australia every couple of weeks anyway, so it’s not like it’s really that special.

This is where my point comes in. There is no table, no knockout competition, nothing, it’s just a case of playing the same short list of teams again and again and again with absolutely nothing to show for it. Why do we do that? It’s the only sport that comes to mind where you don’t actually win anything for winning. In Baseball you have the World Series (again, ridiculously titled seeing as all teams are American), in American Football you have the Superbowl, in Football you have the World Cup and European Championships (or otherwise for countries not in Europe) which feature qualifiers to get in to those competitions. It doesn’t seem very progressive as a sport, which means it lacks competition and therefore entertainment.

Of course, it also doesn’t help that it’s also incredibly boring to watch…

As Harry Redknapp is famous for muttering, it’s now Manchester Uniteds time to be down to the bare-bones with no less than almost a full Premiership challenging XI out injured, the latest being 4 injuries at the midweek Derby Carling Cup game. Having recently gaining the top spot in the Premier League after failing to set the world alight this season we have now been reduced to a squad of players playing out of position, the latest victims being my favourite player, Anderson, out for 3 weeks with an ankle injury (it was originally suspected to be broken and despite this, Anderson played on the last 5 minutes), Jonny Evans, like Anderson with an ankle injury, again for 3 weeks, Nani is out with a groin strain for 1 week (though knowing him, it’ll probably be a month) and Rafael has a hamstring tweak, so that’s 3 weeks minimum.

Those players now join Wes Brown, Owen Hargreaves, Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, Patrice Evra and Ji-Sung Park as sidelined players, a total of 10 players, if we had a goalkeeper out injured you would literally have a team who could even compete for the Premier League injured. Now more than ever we need Berbatov to start shining, along with Tevez and Ronaldo and as long as Vidic remains fit we will have someone who will fight for everything at the back.

January into February could be a gruelling few weeks, though we may get to see more of young James Chester and Rafael’s twin brother, Fabio. Sadly, at the one time this season Anderson was almost guaranteed a solid run of games he gets injured, so we have to keep putting up with Darren Fletcher in the middle of the park. The only real highlight is that we do have some truly key players still fit in Tevez, Ronaldo, Carrick, Vidic and Van Der Sar, the latter two of which are crucial as we’ve seen in the past when we’ve lost them to injuries.