World Cup 2010: The cream also rises

This World Cup is getting good, people. Argentina were admirably patient tonight in their disposal of Greece, inspired by their entirely-correctly-rated talisman, whom the coach properly kept in the starting XI ("I think it would be a sin", Maradona told the press, "not to give Messi to the people, to the team...") Brazil and Portugal showed their essential beauty to best advantage the other day. Holland are safely through and capable of better. I keep everything crossed for Germany and for Spain. Right then, who’s left…?

Sean Whelan, blogging from the World Cup for NUFC site True Faith, is presumably one Mag who’s shouting for The Ingerland, if we judge by the ‘we’ in his screed below. But on that basis his opinion of David Beckham’s presence on the England bench can be taken as less one-eyed, or more rounded, than mine (which is that Beckham is, quite clearly, one of the most disastrous liabilities ever to appear for England at (5!) major finals.) But forget me - come in, Sean:

‘David Beckham is p***ing me off. The players must be getting annoyed with him. If you’re not playing well, you don't need that self-obsessed whopper moaning on the bench. He's only there for his own benefit, he needs to be seen at the World Cup to promote the Beckham brand. He's a footballer, not a chief executive, so why wear a three-piece suit? Hair immaculate, the bloke's a w***er. He stopped being a serious footballer when he left Man Utd 6/7 years ago to become a bit part player at Madrid. As for going to America, well, it's a joke. He should be doing what Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs are doing at Man Utd. Scholes shows Beckham up for what he is; a flash c*** - more concerned with fame and fortune than football. I wish we had a Roy Keane in the squad just to grab that perma-tanned phoney by the throat and tell him how it is...’

World Cup 2010: Come back, number ten...

Glimpsed in South Africa (courtesy of Getty images): the maestro, Zizou - brooding, quite likely, on this tournament's dysfunctional Domenech-led French team, as opposed to the previous tournament's dysfunctional Domenech-led French team, whom Zidane nonetheless managed to drag, as if single-handed and Sisyphean, to the brink of a second golden trophy. Would that he were out on the field this time too, doing (some of) that voodoo only he can do...

Not yet glimpsed in South Africa: much quality or verve or excitement, despite the outbreaks of local enthusiasm. I don't require the glut of goals so much as the quality play, from sides looking a bit less glum and gone in the legs (so speaks the Supreme Athlete, from his bathchair...)

The home nation's impending exit (barring a great result against the dysfunctional blah-blah French) is a major downer. Spain's misfire last night has me gloomy, too. My man in black-and-white, Jonas Gutierrez, is being played by Maradona as a defender due to Argentine injury bother. And I don't intend to spend the next 3 weeks just cheering on Miroslav Klose (another version of My Kind of Player.) What's wanted is a bit of magic from The Man in the #10 Shirt - yes, shirt of Zidane, Maradona, Platini, Pele, Puskas. That's where the inciting genius is usually found. So play up, Kaka, Messi, Podolski, Fabregas, Sneijder! Make sure you'll all be around come the knock-outs, then go do that voodoo that you do so well...

Bookhugger column #3: Fit to Wear the Shirt

Newly posted on Bookhugger, with the World Cup coming down the pipe at us, this month's literary musing of mine is on the very serious matter of books about football. Let me say straight up, there are too bloody many of them, and most of them are bloody rubbish. But the good ones are really, really good. In the piece I reiterate my admiration for the gifts of such artists as Gordon Burn, Ian Hamilton, Richard Williams, Leopoldo Luque, Kenny Dalglish and Zinedine Zidane; and I rehash my by-now-even-to-me-tiresome dislike of the English national team - an antipathy that would be dissolved instantly (if but temporarily) were Fabio Capello sufficiently distracted to pick Bensham's Andy Carroll up front and put Steve Harper from Easington in nets.