And now.... a pause... A REST!!

 

I noted a few days ago that the FPL website is up-and-running for the new season again; but I also warned that it is a very bad idea to get dragged into obssessing about the game - or even thinking about it at all - until a few days before the first deadline (this year, on the evening of Friday 21st August).

After the excitement of the World Cup, I shall be aiming to take a complete break from the game.

My regular Friday series of bons mots will continue, and I might post the occasional video I find interesting; but there won't be any other new content on here for at least a couple of weeks.

I'll probably start re-posting some of my classic 'How to...' basics on selecting the initial squad just before the Community Shield game, and then attempting some more in-depth preview stuff on the season ahead in the final week before things kick off.

Enjoy the downtime!!  It is a rare treat!!

Thoughts after the 'Round of 16'

The Balogun fiasco

First off, I can't see why there was any whingeing about the original decision, or any discussion about its being potentially 'harsh'. That was probably the worst foul we've seen in the tournament: the US striker came chasing after Bosnian defender Tarik Muharemovic and crashed into him, bringing his foot down with full force just above the opponent's ankle and folding his foot over sideways. It might have been 'accidental' rather than 'malicious' (though that is far from clear; if there wasn't an element of conscious intent in it, it was very, very clumsy), but the severity of an 'endangering the opponent' offence now takes no account of presumed intent, only of the possible severity of the consequences. That was a potential leg-breaker; and it is a small miracle that Muharemovic doesn't even appear to have suffered any serious ligament damage either, but is largely unscathed. It is probably the most clearcut and unarguable red card offence I've seen all year.

But then, yes, the notion that FIFA's Judicial Committee can arbitrarily suspend a red card (properly awarded!), without even giving any rationale, at a couple of days' notice, in the middle of the world's biggest tournament... is utterly outrageous. Red cards in the World Cup are unappealable: that is the way it has to be, to ensure some clarity and certainty and consistency in the disciplinary sphere. Some red cards may be harsh, some may be savagely unfair; but once they've been awarded, we just have to accept them. FIFA's ridiculous action here - apparently again just pandering to Trump, whose lackeys complained to Infantino that he wasn't pleased about losing the US team's star player - sets a disturbing and potentially very disruptive precedent: national football associations might now be forever challenging suspensions issued to their players. A dark day in football history, and one that slightly blights what has otherwise been a terrific tournament.

The one positive note in the story, really, is that we're all spared any more immediate embarrassment over this madness because the USA promptly crashed out of the competition, thrashed by Belgium. One wonders if the US team just died of shame - because it was a shockingly lacklustre performance from them, far below the standards they'd shown in the previous four games.

A decline in the refereeing standards?

Well, maybe. I've said a few times here on the blog recently, and elsewhere online, that I've been generally very impressed with the standard of the officating at this tournament. And complaints in this round have been greatly over-exaggerated, I feel. There were only two games with rather poor officiating; and even there, it wasn't absolutely terrible (in fact, the problem was more with the VAR team; and that might be down to protocols about thresholds for intervention, as much as the competence or otherwise of the particular officials); and it might have been just a statistical blip.

People who got up in arms about what a bloodbath the Paraguay v France match supposedly was are obviously Millennial 'snowflakes' who've never seen a genuinely dirty game of football! The stuff Mbappé jokingly referred to afterwards - and he was being fairly light-hearted about it! - was mostly gamesmanship and shithousing, not violent play. Yes, there was something amiss in the fact that only French players ended up with bookings, when Paraguayans had committed at least as many, and rather worse fouls. And because the referee had let too much go in the game, there was a danger of gradual escalation, and tempers were getting frayed towards the end. But nothing really bad kicked off, no punches were thrown, no-one had to leave the pitch injured. All a bit of a storm-in-a-teacup. While the on-pitch referee Ilgiz Tantashev was at fault in not being a bit more stringent and a bit more consistent in his issuing of yellow cards, the larger problem lay with the VAR team backing him up, since many of the niggliest incidents were happening off the ball, and were inevitably missed by Tantashev. 

There was a similar problem in the Mexico v England game. Nico O'Reilly clearly appeared to have flicked his elbow into the mouth of Jorge Sanchez just as the players were going to the second-half drinks break; but the referee apparently missed it, and we were not informed that the VAR team had looked the incident over or discussed it with their on-pitch colleague - although O'Reilly was then booked over the confrontation, so... somebody must have seen something. And then in the closing period, when England were pretty much continually under siege in their penalty area, our defenders were shamelessly grappling with their Mexican counterparts every time there was a set-piece delivery into the box - but nothing was ever said about it. Again, if things like this are being missed by the on-pitch referee - as can easily happen in such a busy game! - the VAR team needs to step in; but they're not doing it. That was why these two matches fell so far below the high standards we've enjoyed in most of the rest of the tournament.

I was distressed to see that Thomas Tuchel was suddenly slagging off the refereeing in the tournament yesterday. He really has no cause to do so, as the only beneficiary of the poor refereeing in  Sunday night's game was England! Of course, he omitted to give any specific examples in his remarks, to try to avoid getting into trouble with the organisers, but... he must surely have meant the Quansah sending-off and the penalty given away by Kane. And those were both absolutely 100% unarguably correct decsions. When a manager comes out and says shit like this, it looks as though he is just doing it to curry favour with the more rabid elements of the England fanbase, whose delusional tendencies I was ruing the other day. That kind of pandering is not a good look for Tuchel; I wish he wouldn't do it.

And of course the online dingbats are having a field day with the unfortunate denoument of the Argentina v Egypt game last night. It was a most unhappy coincidence that a late Argentine breakaway for the decisive goal in stoppage time should have started with two potential fouls on Egyptian players, one of them Salah, in the Argentine penalty area, and thus potentially demanding a probably decisive penalty award to Egypt. But both incidents were thoroughly innocuous, and rightly dismissed by the VAR team. It was even more unfortunate that an earlier breakaway goal in the first-half by Egyptian forward Mostafa Ziko, which would have been one of the great team goals of the tournament, and possibly even the best goal of all, had to be chalked off because VAR discovered that Marawan Attia had clearly committed a double foul on Lisandro Martinez right at the start of the move. The only cause for discontent there is with the current framing of the rules themselves, that it is perhaps excessive and inappropriate to insist that VAR screen all possible fouls in the build-up to a goal, even those that may have happened 20 seconds prior, at the far end of the pitch. But that is the rule we have in place, and it was properly applied: no room for any conspiracy theory nutjobs there. 'Unfair' as these two incidents may appear to have been to many - well, obviously to all Egyptians, and to a great many neutral supporters who were rooting for an underdog win - they were both perfectly correct, and actually pretty straightforward and uncontroversial. But you'll never persuade the legions of online dingbats of that.....

The best World Cup game ever??

It is, I think, a great pity that those two inflammatory talking-points to arise from the Argentina v Egypt match may detract from a simple appreciation of what a thrilling spectacle it was. It was truly a match that had everything, skill, physicality, drama, constantly swinging fortunes, big refereeing decisions, and lots of fantastic goals. I was still a lad during that legendary 1982 semi-final between Brazil and Italy; and I was enraptured by that, I didn't think I'd ever see it topped. But that game last night.... I think it might just have done so. It's certainly got to be well up there amongst the top handful of most fabulous games of football ever played.

Sleepytime for me...

As I noted at the weekend, the relaxation of the game schedule from here on is a welcome relief to me. I had been full of good intentions that I would now diligently watch every single minute of every single game from here on, and as much of it as possible actually live, but... the USA v Belgium game yesterday morning defeated me! Either my alarm somehow didn't go off, or I managed to sleep right through it: 9 or 10 hours of solid slumber.... for the first time in three-and-a-half weeks: blissful.

Unlucky Alf

We must spare a thought for poor Jordan Henderson, who has just etched his name into football's history books in the most unfortunate manner possible - by becoming the first-ever player (surely?) to pick up a yellow card and a serious injury at a game in which he was not even participating. I half-suspect Tuchel had just asked him if he fancied starting at right-back in the Norway game, and it was a sudden surge of joy that impelled him to try to vault over that advertising hoarding...  [For the title reference, if unfamiliar, refer here, and here.]

The rise of the 'slow starters'

Apart from the excitement of Egypt so nearly taking down mighty Argentina, this round has seen the almost as great - though, frankly, not nearly so unexpected - excitement of Norway putting out Brazil (who, apart from the sensational form of Vinicius Jnr, had looked severely under par in this tournament). Switzerland holding their own against the impressive Colombia (and nicking the tie on a penalty shootout), and Belgium trouncing the previously rather formidable-seeming USA were also somewhat surprising results. And, frankly, not many people had been making England favourites - certainly not strong favourites - to get a win at the Azteca. So, for me, the 'theme' of this round has been the striking improvement of teams who'd almost been written off after somewhat faltering starts to the tournament. Belgium had laboured to impotent draws in their opening games against Egypt and Iran, while Switzerland had likewise struggled to a 1-1 with Qatar in their opener, and England had made heavy work of beating a poor Croatia and then got embarassingly held to a goalless draw by Ghana. I confess, my hunches went against all three of those teams in this round (although I'd held off on taking players from them, or their opponents, because I'd judged these fixtures too close to call with any confidence). But often this slow building of momentum is a good sign in a tournament: sometimes teams need to struggle to find the right solutions, to battle against adversity, in order to grow - to develop more resilience, determination, confidence, fluency. I would not have risked my money on England or Belgium a week ago, but now.... I just might. (Not favourites for the win, but suddenly with a much better chance of reaching the semi-final or the final than I'd thought before. Switzerland were always one of my 'dark horse' picks for the tournament - belatedly starting to earn my belief in them.)

The great Quarter-Final conundrum(s)

With a number of moderately 'unexpected' results in this past 'Round of 16', most of us are looking at some rather alarming holes in our squads now. I had bet heavily on Brazil and the USA, so I'm now hurting for that. In total, I've lost 6 players to elimination. This puts me in a dilemma that's going to be rather typical for this quarter-final round: should I leave gaps on my bench, or spend points for additional transfers (beyond the rather niggly allowance of 4 Free Transfers we're being given for this round)? Answers to this dilemma will vary, depending on your view of the upcoming fixtures, how confident you are in your core players to return reliable points - and whether you still have your Wildcard available. 

Since extra transfers in this game only cost 3 points, rather than the 4 points we're used to in Fantasy Premier League, it is quite tempting to just spend willy-nilly on as many transfers as you need; particularly as MatchDays in this tournament have tended to be rather more high-scoring than a typical FPL Gameweek. In FPL, it's generally only a good idea to spend points on filling a hole in your starting line-up caused by injury or suspension or disastrous loss of form; but with the active in-game substitutions available in Fantasy World Cup, every player is effectively a member of your starting line-up, so there is just as much reason - well, almost as much reason - to fill in holes on the bench as in the original eleven. However, a player you're subbing out for a bench player has almost invariably earned you some points: rarely less than 2, sometimes perhaps as many as 3 or 4. So, it's not really worth spending points on a new player beyond the core eleven unless you have high confidence that they can deliver >6 points. And if you're planning to Wildcard for the semi-finals, there's no harm in leaving some holes on the bench in this round.

There's also a common dilemma for many about when to use the 'Booster' chips. [I wrote a little more on this the next day.] A lot of people still seem to have the 'Maximum Captain'; I think this will probably go best in the Final, In earlier rounds you can usually 'maximise' your captaincy return fairly well by just rotating the armband through different players until somebody gives you a decent haul: in the Final, you can't do that - and I think the advantage of definitely having your best possible return in that game will probably be greater than the usually low (or zero) advantage you might get in other MatchDays from having a perfect captain rather than a good enough captain (most people are settling on 10 or 12, and rarely having a later player get any more than a few points higher than that). In the quarter-finals, I'm set to rotate through Mbappé, Yamal, Bellingham or Haaland (haven't decided yet: coin toss!), and Messi - which looks promising. If you still have any of the other chips, you probably play them in whichever round you don't have to use your Wildcard in. I feel I can hang on until the semi-finals to Wildcard; others have been harder hit by eliminations already, and would like to drop it for the quarter-finals.

Although France, Spain, Argentina, and (much less strongly!) England are favourites in this coming round, they're all facing strong opponents who are well capable of causing an upset. I think we should probably expect to see at least one of those 'favourites' go out. I think I've got my squad pretty well balanced - but I have taken the gamble of going quite heavily for France and Spain, the two teams in whom I have the highest confidence. If either of them let me down, I'll be in quite a bit of trouble. If the results go as I hope/expect, I'll only lose 3 players, and won't have to worry about using my Wildcard at all. If things go badly, I could lose up to 10 players (with already a couple of empty spaces on my bench). I don't think they will go that badly, but.... that's why you save your Wildcard in a tournament like this.

Two final words of warning

I only discovered the other day that while this Fantasy World Cup game allowed you to roll 1 transfer from one MatchDay to the next during the group phase (when you'd almost certainly have no opportunity to do so!), for no good reason, it does not allow you to do so during the knockout phase (when that facility could be incredibly useful!). I find this really quite a huge pain-in-the-arse.

Also, I had thought that the 'Clean Sheet Bonus' chip supposedly extended clean sheet points to players who'd conceded up to two goals. I can't check on that now, because they haven't actually filled in the details of this chip yet on the 'rules' page, and the information is removed from the 'Booster Activation' pop-up window once you've used it! It would appear that in fact it only extends it up to players who've conceded a single goal - which is actually far more sensible; but I'm fairly sure it's not what the original description of the chip said, and it does make a hell of a difference.

So, the game is shoddily, incompetently put together, and we can't rely on it to treat us fairly, remember our team selections, or even (I fear, in my most paranoid moments...) count our points accurately. But hey, it's still a bit of fun, right?

But you have been warned!

BEST OF LUCK FOR THE QUARTER-FINAL ROUND, EVERYONE!!!

The REVENGE of ITVx

 

I didn't get very far with my recent resolution to try to watch all the remaining World Cup games live...  Last night's tie between Argentina and Egypt actually started at a reasonably accessible 11pm for me; but, alas, the UK coverage was being carried on the independent TV channel's ITVx streaming platform - so, I knew I was likely to be fucked.

ITVx has been so notoriously BAD, for so long (annoying UI, archived programmes impossible to search, and - worst of all - a glitchy and unstable stream, with unusably low speeds for any high-demand live event; I recall the Queen's Funeral being about an hour behind actual time by the time I eventually managed to finish watching it!), that I've gone through extended spells of giving up on it altogether and not even trying to make it work. I skipped most of England's qualifiers for this World Cup because they were on this useless bloody channel.

But, to be fair to them, I have been pleasantly surprised recently: they do seem to have - finally - invested in some substantially upgraded server capacity, and their stream has been more stable and less prone to freezing.

Until last night. I suppose a crunch game for Messi's Argentina, against the also highly popular Mo Salah and Egypt, was likely to be one of the biggest worldwide draws of the competition so far - particularly with the way Messi's been playing in this tournament. During the first-half, I suffered a few bothersome mini-freezes; and about midway through the second-half, just as things were getting really interesting, the dratted stream started breaking down altogether.

In the further interestts of fairness, I should also acknowledge that the issues might not have been entirely with ITVx this time. My VPN kept breaking down as well; and a few times, the Internet in my guesthouse dropped out altogether for a few seconds. So, it was more likely to be a problem with my local network - whether censors attempting to interfere with a recognised VPN routing (I've had that happen to me a few times), or just a demand overload as half the neighbourhood stayed up into the early hours streaming this same match. The final outcome was somewhat spoiled for me by a huge cheer from a coffee shop a couple of hundred yards away - about 20 minutes or so after I finally gave up on my errant stream,... and decided to try to watch a full re-run this morning.

Watching the footie from the far side of the world is a constant challenge, I'm telling you....

[Bugger! A week later, when I tried to watch the France v Spain semi-final, the ITVx stream froze on me after just a few minutes. It would appear that their server capacity is indeed still wholly inadequate for really popular live events - especially those occurring in 'prime time' back home. I had to make do with an early morning re-watch (here in Vietnam; safely the middle of the night back in the UK).

However, I have finally managed to solve the long-standing irritation that the control bar at the bottom of their full-screen view refuses to 'go to sleep' and continues to detract from what you're watching permanently; which is quite a big problem, since the bloody thing is massively oversized, taking up nearly 25% of the screen. I have quite often made do with the regular viewing pane, which, although much smaller, is at least unobstructed. I spent quite a long time last week ploughing through several potential 'solutions' suggested by Google; but, of course, since that once-great search engine is now addled by incompetent AI 'helpers', all of its suggestions were either years out of date or completely bogus. But then.... I finally stumbled on the 'answer' for myself: on my laptop, at least, I have to move my mouse-cursor off-screen to the side - not the top or bottom. Strange; but I swear it works. Do give this a try, if this ITVx display glitch has been bugging the crap out of you too.

But thank heavens that the Final is going to be on both BBC and ITV. I know which one I'm going to be watching on.]

[Well, no, as it happened, the BBC iPlayer proved to also be susceptible to lag and freeze-up problems with the enormous streaming demand on its Final coverage. ITVx - probably because far fewer people were trying to watch it! - actually proved to be my better option for the last game.]

Five Levels of Self-Delusion

 

I rather fear that England's football fans may be some of the most obnoxious and objectionable in the world. It is one of the reasons why I abandoned the country to set out on my globetrotting adventures 30-odd years ago.... and I have seldom been back since. But, of course, you can never completely escape them. In just about every sports bar I've ever visited in Asia, the most loudmouthed, offensive, unreasonable punter in there is almost invariably a Brit (in fact, 9 times of out 10, it seems to be a Spurs fan;... but that's another story). And now, of course, they're all over the online forums too.

It would have been nice to be able to enjoy a rare moment of success for England, the gruelling victory in the Azteca stadium yesterday morning, without having to suffer all of these dingbats crowing about how we trounced the host nation and it was a thoroughly dominating performance, and.... all manner of other horseshit. I even saw one poor lamb today averring that it was the best England performance in the World Cup since 1966; I can only assume that he's less than 30 years old and thus has nothing in his memory to compare it to. An important win is not necessarily the same as a great performance. (And, alas, all too often for us a great performance has not been rewarded with victory. Our defeats to Argentina in the 1986 quarter-final and to Germany in the 1990 semi-final were by far the best England performances I've seen in the tournament.)

Now, to be fair, I think this was much our best performance yet in this tournament (though that is fairly faint praise), and included many elements that should be greatly encouraging: Pickford emphatically getting his mojo back, Saka being fit again at last, Bellingham continuing to look as if he's a man determined to steal Messi's last Ballon d'Or. And our determination and discipline in defence was especially impressive, as we grimly clung on to our narrow lead with only 10 men. Many online commenters have also asserted that it was part of Tuchel's gameplan to surrender the bulk of possession to Mexico, confident that they weren't incisive enough to hurt us too much (that was surely the case in the opening period; but not thereafter - I fear they were just better than us at keeping the ball).

And I have an inkling that the manner of this victory, the huge flood of relief at having managed to pull it off in such demanding circumstances, may prove to mark a decisive momentum-change for us, giving us the emotional boost we need to kick on and play better, more successful football from here on. (Although, I am also anxious that our players won't be able to completely recover physically before our quarter-final against Norway. By the end of the game in Mexico City, both teams looked utterly, utterly knackered, and I really don't think any of them could have played 30 minutes of extra time. After all the thunderstorms in the vicinity earlier in the day, the humidity in the stadium was apparently up around 85%, and all the players were completely drenched, perspiration dripping off their faces, from the opening minutes. I think that might have been one of the sweatiest games of football I have ever seen!)

However, having given credit where it is due,.. I cannot countenance all of this absurd hyperbole that instantly sprung up around the game - how the result was so thoroughly deserved, how we had completely outplayed our opponents.

We did not. Mexico - even before Quansah's (entirely uncontentious) sending-off - had had the lion's share of possession. Overall, they saw twice as much of the ball as us, and created nearly five times as many attempts on goal (the majority of those actually before the sending-off; we contained their threat much better once we'd 'parked the bus'). But for some uncharacteristically 'off' finishing in crucial moments from Raul Jimenz, and a couple of absolute world-class saves from Jordan Pickford, Mexico might have won fairly comfortably. In fact, but for Jude Bellingham's astonishing last-gasp clearance when Cesar Montes had been presented with an open-goal opportunity at the far-post to equalise at 2-2, seconds before the half-time break - I feel fairly sure Mexico would have gone on to win in the second-half, even without the Quansah sending-off.

Moreover, Nico O'Reilly was very, very fortunate not to have become our second sending-off, when he petulantly flicked out an elbow at Jorge Sanchez's face just before the second drinks break (it doesn't matter that it 'wasn't that hard', or 'barely made contact'; you can't usually get away even with making a gesture like that). And we clung on to our precarious lead by our fingernails for the whole of the last half-hour, resorting to a 5-4 low-block - and even taking Kane off in the closing minutes to bolster the defensive ranks even further.

And the thing that soured me most about our victory was that during that siege of our penalty area in the closing stages of the game, we resorted to peak Arsenal tactics of wrestling opponents in the box every time they had a set-piece delivery, practically ripping the shirts off their backs on a few occasions. We committed more than enough holding fouls to have conceded 2 or 3 more penalties, but the referee and the VAR team were mysteriously sleeping, and we were allowed to get away with every single one of them.

So, all this talk of 'deserved' and 'dominant' quickly began to rankle with me. You can celebrate a success without being dismissive of your opponent's performance in a game. If England lose a game in circumstances like this, we whinge about it for the next 50 years. So, it seems to me to be only fair to acknowledge that on this occasion our gallant opponents were somewhat hard done-by. Yes, we played well; but all the breaks went our way as well - and without that, we wouldn't have won.

After an hour or so perusing the Internet forums yesterday, I concluded that we could attempt a classification of just how out-of-touch England fans were being in their assessments of this game. So, I give you.....

The Five Levels of Self-Delusion 

(about the Mexico v England game)

Level 5: England fans who insist we must have been the 'better' team simply because we ended up with (narrowly) more goals. [Football 101: the final scoreline is not always an accurate indicator of desert.]

Level 4:  England fans who 'didn't see' any of the numerous holding offences we committed in the later stages of the match, simply because the BBC commentary declined to draw attention to them.

Level 3:  England fans who think Nico O'Reilly did nothing wrong - because the Mexican had it coming to him, or similar. ['Retaliation' is not a defence, lads.]

Level 2:  England fans who don't even think Mexico should have got the penalty that was awarded to them. [A 'thought experiment': imagine Harry Kane is in the opposition box, raises his leg high to meet a falling ball and gets there first, but a defending player behind him decides to try to kick the ball anyway and instead kicks through the back of Harry's calf with full force. What would you say then? Eh, Mr Shearer??]

Level 1 (the most extreme form of this mania):  England fans who don't even accept the Quansah sending-off!! (They are depressingly numerous.)

It is astonishing and dispiriting how the environment of 'anonymous' discussion on the Internet seems to lead people into a total loss of any sense of objectivity. So many England fans are intent on spinning themselves this fantasy narrative about how this was the most wonderful, wonderful England performance ever and Mexico were hardly in the game. And they will rapidly get surly and abusive with anyone who rains on their parade by daring to point out any facts inconsistent with this comforting lie they want to keep on telling themselves.

All I'm arguing for is a little bit of balance and open-mindedness. I'm an England fan, I like to see us do well. I'm pleased that we have progressed to the quarter-finals. But I resist the pressure to buy into this absurd narrative that every important victory must also necessarily have been a flawless performance and our finest moment ever. There were still a lot of problems in this performance, and we've certainly had many finer moments. And I do find it difficult to exult about a victory in a game where we really should have had a second player sent off, and should have conceded another penalty.

Not AGAIN??!!

 

Yes, the FIFA World Cup Fantasy game is doing my head in again.

To be fair to them, this time it is my own fault - for not taking care to read all the fine print of the absurdly over-long, over-elaborate, over-finicky rules.

But to be fair to myself - and every other poor schmuck trying to play this game - it is absolutely fucking absurd to allow the rolling of unused transfers during the group stage but not during the knockout stage (when they're likely to be far more needed, and there would be far more tactical subtlety in being able to plan to do that). [The Fantasy Football Scout summary of the rules - which I confess I have been relying on, rather than the rules on the FIFA site itself - entirely fails to mention this rather important wrinkle. (And I find it rather worrying that FIFA label these rules as 'guidelines' - as if they're not going to feel bound to actually follow them all the time! Oh, wait, it's FIFA: no, of course they won't!)]

So, in addition to having two or three times 'lost' - or simply had the game site refuse to accept - an attempted captaincy switch, and having been misled into retaining a player in my scoring eleven who'd got a far lower score than I thought (because I didn't realise he was still my 'captain', and there was nothing obvious in the display to alert me to that fact!!), and, most momentously of all, having also seen my selection of Mbappé as my '12th Man' on MatchDay 2 mysteriously unsaved the next day,.... I needlessly saved a transfer before this 'Round of 16', anticipating that I'd need at least 5 (not the measly, entirely inadequate 4 the game allocates to you) for the following Quarter-Final round; and indeed I do find I need 5 transfers, but I've only got 4 available because of this ridiculous - inconsistent, unnecessary, unreasonable, hidden - rule. I am grinding my teeth to powder over this game. It has robbed me of at least 20 points now; but I'm somehow still in the top 200,000.

The LULL

After three straight weeks where we've had three or four games (occasionally six games!) every single day, now... we only have 16 games remaining over the next fifteen days. There'll only be 1 or 2 games per day from now on. Heck, we'll even have five days with no football at all - I don't know what I'll do with myself!

It is a bit of a relief, I have to say. While I think the expansion of the tournament this year to 48 teams is a thoroughly good and necessary thing - in giving more teams and players the opportunity to compete on the biggest stage in the sport, and giving more countries and supporters the ability to experience a direct emotional investment in the competition. And we might also be seeing, soon if not already, a more indirect but also joyous benefit - that we'll all have the opportunity occasionally to see great players in this tournament who would previously have had no chance of qualifying (it is a bit of a tragedy that the likes of Georgie Best, Ryan Giggs, and George Weah never got to play in a World Cup because they represented such small nations). The one downside of the expansion has been that.... it is now an overwhelming watch. There were 8 more games in the group phase alone than we have seen in the entire competition before, and we now have twice as many knockout games as previously to get through in the last two weeks. And I've been finding it all just a bit too much to keep track of.

For most of the previous World Cups in my lifetime (at least since I was about 4 or 5!), I have somehow or other managed to watch just about every single game in its entirety. But this year, I've probably only managed a quarter of them (and most of those not actually live: the games are all on in the middle of the night in my timezone!). I haven't even bothered to watch proper extended highlights for all of them, but only the rather shorter reels that pop up on Youtube - and even them, I fear I'm sometimes skimming through with glazed eyes, not really paying much attention. There are probably a few games that I've overlooked entirely. Oh, the shame.  I am committed to trying to watch every single minute from here on in (and, as much of it as possible actually 'live').

We're probably all unaccustomed to this much larger roster of participating countries, and perhaps we'll adapt and deal much better with the memory challenge it presents in the next iteration of the enlarged event. But I am starting to fret that there is perhaps a problem with my aging brain as well: I'm really finding it a struggle now to remember what order the games came in, or what all the results were, or who was in who's group originally, or who scored the goals in a certain game,.... or who Curacao's goalkeeper is. You, the important details are not staying put as they used to. I hope it's just a lack of sleep rather than the beginning of the long decline into senility....

Best World Cup ever?? (Some thoughts after the 4th Round)

How does this tournament compare to those of the past - is it possibly the best ever??

I really think it might be!

1970, of course, had some moments of unbelievable magic - mostly from Pelé. But the combination of some brutally hot weather, unaccustomed elevation at some of the venues, and the generally much lower level of physical conditioning in those days meant that the matches were mostly played at walking-pace. 1974 and 1978 were illuminated by the dazzling 'Total Football' of the Dutch, but not that much else; and they were, for me, and many others, ultimately somewhat marred by the chronic injustice of that fabulous Holland side twice being robbed of their deserved victory in finals against the host nation. 1982 and 1986 were surely the pinnacle - mainly thanks to the legendary Brazilian and French sides of the first half of that decade; although, of course, Germany, Italy, Argentina, Uruguay, Holland, and even England were also very good for most of the 1980s, and 1986 was further enlivened by Michael Laudrup's wonderful Denmark. 1998 and 2006 weren't bad; but really, all the tournaments since the 1980s have, I think, been somewhat disappointing - until now.

Over the past quarter of a century or so, the increasing physical demands of the modern game have taken a heavy toll in injuries and fatigue towards the end of domestic seasons, and we've usually had to suffer a number of the expected stars of a tournament either being missing completely or at least operating well below their best. But this time, apart from Jamal Musiala (who missed much of last season after breaking his leg in last summer's Euros) and Nico Williams (injured again at the moment, but hopefully available for the quarter-finals, if not this next round), all the big names are present - and in absolutely banging form. I really don't think there's been another World Cup where there were so many leading players all looking absolutely at the top of their game. And who would have dared to hope that 'over-the-hill' Leo Messi would somehow produce his best World Cup performance yet??

Tournament hosts have often had weak teams who might otherwise have struggled to qualify, and couldn't make much of an impression in the competition. But this time, the three hosts, Mexico, the USA, and Canada, have all looked very capable - and I'd expect at least one of them to reach the quarter-finals.

We've seen lots of drama already, especially in this first knockout round: tight games, late winners, late equalisers, extra-time and penalty shootouts. And there have been some intriguing tactical battles as well. While the 'hydration breaks' have been universally derided (they are necessary for player health in such hot and humid conditions; but they don't need to be more than 30 or 60 seconds long - and they could happen under FIFA supervision, well away from the coaching areas), they have added to the tactical intricacy of matches by allowing coaches a major reshuffle three times each game instead of just once.

Most previous tournaments have also been marred, at least occasionally, by erratic, sometimes outright poor refereeing. But this year, I really think the refereeing, and the operation of the VAR room, has mostly been exemplary. In the 'Round of 32', I felt there were a few penalties that were strangely missed, and one or two goals that were perhaps wrongly disallowed; but these were all tight calls, arguably "50-50s", not really egregious errors. Prior to this, there hasn't really be any major controversy at all. I remarked last time how remarkable - and enviable - it was that in 70-odd matches so far, we'd seen fewer dubrious decisions than we typically get in any single week in the Premier League!

The expansion thoroughly vindicated

Though many people have carped at the enlarging of the tournament, I think you have to accept the value of giving more of the 'smaller' footballing nations a chance to participate. And in fact, it has only been an enhancement to the entertainment of the competition; most of the 'expansion teams' were more than half-decent, and a few of them proved capable of threatening a major upset. Cabo Verde's astonishing performance, deservedly finishing second (in a tough group!), and then just scaring the bejesus out of Argentina in the first knockout round, has been the great story of the tournament so far - and should serve to shut up all the naysayers who've been ridiculing the enlarged format.

A proper shootout for the Golden Boot

We've seen much the highest rate of goal-scoring in modern times (an average of very nearly 3 goals per game!), with very few 0-0s - and even those have often been very entertaining games. There have been some absolute belters amongst those 257 goals to date; it's going to be really hard to pick a 'Goal of the Tournament' this year (although I suspect Sidny Lopes Cabral's extra-time equaliser today for Cabo Verde may claim it, as much for the emotional impact it had as for the sublime technique). And the race for the Golden Boot is just ridiculous: Messi now on 7 goals, Mbappé on 6, Haaland and Kane on 5; Vinicius Jnr., Oyarzabal and Dembélé on 4; Cunha, Quinones, Saibari, Manzambi, David, Balogun,.... and Cristiano all on 3 (that's just among those who are still playing). I don't think there's ever before been a tournament where so many players were all scoring so freely. Often, the title has been cruised to with a relatively modest total haul, mainly from one or two big performances in easy group games right at the start. This time, it looks set to be a proper contest, going right down to the wire.

'Boring'???  Are you kidding??!!

So,... I really don't understand people online whingeing about how 'boring' this tournament has been! I think they must not have been watching many of their games. Or they're peeved that their team hasn't done as well as they'd hoped. Or... they just don't understand football. It's been an absolutely fucking brilliant tournament.

It may be too early to call it as the 'best of all time', when we're only half-way through. Obviously we'd like to see some more thrills-and-spills in the later rounds, and a big final with a deserving winner. But it looks very much as if we're going to get all of that. I think it's going to be between France and Spain, and Brazil and Argentina; but teams like the USA, Mexico and Morocco are certainly in with a shout as well.

My 'crystal ball' mojo is back

I'd been having a pretty wretched start to my perennial 'Nostradamus Challenge' with my best friend, predicting relatively few correct results, and almost no exact scorelines during the Group Phase. But in this 'Round of 32', I nailed 5 exact scores (and was very close on Argentina v Cabo Verde!); only Egypt's hard-fought draw with Australia (I thought Australia would win!) and Paraguay's surprise win over Germany eluded my precognition this time.

Fantasy strategy recap

I went into the strategy considerations for this tournament in some detail at the start of the week. I feel fully vindicated in recommending the use of the 'Qualification Bonus' chip in this Round just past. I achieved a maximum haul of 24 points from it. (That gave me my first ton of the competition so far; although I was also very close on MatchDays 1 and 2, and would have breached it on MD2 as well if the damn game had allowed me to enroll Mbappé as my '12th Man'.) [But, oh no, wait - in fact it was only 22 points, because they apparently don't double the bonus for your captain. That seems unnecessarily petty; and I don't recall seeing that explained anywhere...]

Every batch of games from here on is just going to get harder to call, I fear; so, those who didn't play the 'Qualification Bonus' in the last round are likely to suffer - it will be very difficult to achieve a maximum return from the chip now. In the upcoming 'Round of 16', only France, Morocco, Spain, and Argentina look likely to be able to progress fairly comfortably (and even venturing that much may be 'tempting Fate'...); the other four fixtures are a bit of a toss-up. However, I feel it should be safe to play the 'Clean Sheet Shield' chip in this round, since it's hard to envisage any of the top teams conceding more than 2 goals, even if they do have a bit of a rough time. '12th Man' and 'Maximum Captain' will probably do quite well in the quarter-finals or semi-finals; although I might save the latter until the final. (You have a pretty good chance of 'maximising' your captaincy anyway in the earlier rounds by rotating it through your best players until one of them strikes a big haul. In the final, you can't do that.)

I'm a little nervous about how long Messi may need to recover after having to play a full two hours in that thriller against Cabo Verde. It wouldn't surprise me to see Nico Paz start instead of him against Egypt on Tuesday. But the form he's in, he can probably register an attacking contribution even with a short run off the bench; so, I imagine everyone will be keeping him in their Fantasy squads. (It really is astonishing that his ownership in the game is only at around 52%. The way he's been playing, 95% would be low!!!)

Fantasy irritations

I had thought that the 'Date of next game' option had been restored to the during-the-Matchday display on the FIFA Fantasy website during MatchDay 3 - but it seems to have disappeared again (which is a bit of an irritation when you're trying to remember when you need to bring in your substitutes or swap your captain's armband around). 

And I've suffered another of those infuriating glitches where a 'saved' captaincy change somehow got unsaved again, denying me 6 extra points from Kylian Mbappé in this MatchDay - Gggrrrrr......

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!!!

Ooops - they did it again!

I am cursed with Kylian Mbappé! In the group stage, the damn FIFA Fantasy webpage wouldn't 'save' my selection of him for the '12th Man' booster chip on MatchDay 2. When I brought him into the main squad for MD3, it failed to save my selection of him as captain. And now, on MD4, the same problem. I've had problems with the captaincy on other players too, but.... there does seem to be a particular obstacle about accepting the selection of Mbappé! 

So, now I'm left hoping that Yamal or Messi can save my MatchDay. But I very much doubt they'll match Mbappé's 16-point haul. Bugger.  [Indeed, no. I suppose I shouldn't complain about a 10-pointer from Leo. Although I'm bummed he was denied the assist for the winner.]

The Nostradmus Game

For many years now - at least 20, I suppose - my best buddy from college and I have regularly been indulging in our 'Nostradmus Game' during summer footall tournaments: each round we'll trade lists of predictions for the scores in every game, and see how well we do.

I have almost always been well ahead on the number of exact scorelines guessed, but I felt bad for him that he often seemed to notch up a lot more 'near misses' than I did. So, I devised a scoring system where we get 5 points for a spot-on scoreline, 3 points for a correct result that's only out by a single goal, and 2 points for a correct result but inaccurate scoreline.

I'm pretty sure this tournament so far has been my worst ever. In fact, until the weekend, my buddy was actually ahead of me; and he's still got a lead in exact scores, which is what he still cares about the most.

In general, during the group phase, at least (when ties are often a bit unbalanced, results against the weaker teams usually rather easier to predict), I mostly get the right results about 70%-80% of the time, and the exact scoreline a least once in every 5 or 6 ties. This time,... I've only hit the nail on the head once in every 18 games, and I've only even had the right result in 42 of the 72 matches (less than 60%). Of a potential maximum of 360 points from the opening phase, I've only garnered a paltry 128 points. Oh, the shame!

I believe this tends to confirm my general impression that this has been a more than usually topsy-turvy kind of tournament so far, one that is particularly hard to predict. Most of the supposedly 'weaker' teams were not as poor as generally expected; even the weakest of them weren't really complete pushovers. And a number of the big names stumbled out of the starting-blocks rather. Nobody foresaw Qatar taking a point off Switzerland in their opening game, or tiny Cabo Verde holding European Champions Spain to a draw, or Ecuador nicking a win off the mighty Germany, or Congo frustrating Portugal, or Turkiye going down to Paraguay, or Iran and Ghana holding Belgium and England to impotent goalless draws.

I am not a great fan of gambling: I am wary of its addictive potential, disdainful of the supposed thrill of risking money you can ill afford to lose. But I do like to back my own judgement occasionally; I like to think of it more as 'investing'. I only make bets very occasionally, and only when I feel fairly sure that, even if I have less than 50% confidence of success, at least the odds on offer are strongly in my favour, and so, if I make enough of these well-judged bets, I should come out with a net profit. And I almost invariably do - not usually a very large profit, but some.

Unfortunately, what tends to happen is that I get well ahead during the group phase of a tournament and the first round or two of the knockouts, and then start pissing my winnings away again - usually only redeeming myself with mostly successful pre-tournament bets on the semi-finalists and finalists. I've realised that my weakness is sentiment; in the later rounds, I am more inclined to back the teams I want to win, rather than assessing the pros and cons of betting on them more objectively. I wonder if I can finally reverse that trend this year??  (Well, I won't have the chance to do so with an actual betting campaign this time, since I've lost my UK bank card, and am thus unable to top up my online betting account. Bother. But, given how badly I've been doing with my Nostradamus-ing so far, perhaps that card loss was a happy accident; it might have saved me from a first loss-making campaign. Funny how 'luck' seems to have a way of balancing itself out like that!)

Oddly enough, though, despite my thus-far fairly disastrous attempts at prognostication on the results, I'm having one of my best-ever campaigns in a summer Fantasy tournament. It is a funny old world, indeed.

[It really was a bit of a rollercoaster tournament, this one, with a fair few very 'unexpected' results, and even the more expected ones rarely going completely to plan, ending up closer and/or higher-scoring than had seemed likely. I salvaged some respectability with decent returns - 5 exact scorelines, and 11 out of 16 correct results - in the 'Round of 32'; but overall I only claimed only 11 exact scores and 180 points from 104 games - barely half the success rate I usually manage. I only prevailed over my perennial nemesis by an almost non-existent margin, rather than asserting my usual overwhelming superiority. I will hope to recover my mojo for the next Euros in 2028.]

Cabo Verde's finest

I mentioned the other day that we probably shouldn't have written off Cabo Verde - just because they're a tiny nation that most people have never previously heard of... in any capacity, let alone as a footballing nation. I myself made that mistake prior to the tournament, having not been able to follow any of the qualifying from around the world. But I pointed out in that earlier post about how things were shaping up after the 2nd Round that Africa has become such a strong footballing continent now that we should probably be wary of anyone who gets through one of their qualifying groups. And, frankly, apart from the outstanding Morocco, the little Cape Verdean team have been looking the best African team so far - and one of the most impressive defensive sides in the entire tournament. It seems rather cruel that their stronger-than-expected finish has landed them a 'Round of 32' tie against Argentina. (Apparently the bookies have them at around 15/1 to get through that. I'm almost tempted to have a wild flutter on them.)

Many people, I suggested, might not even have recognised the name of the little Atlantic island nation, a former Portuguese colony. But, for various reasons, a very good friend of mine happened to be a fairly regular visitor there throughout the 1990s, and so I learned a little of the place through his stories. And I was particularly glad that he introduced me to the music of Cesária Évora, the islands' national treasure, one of the most remarkable female singers you'll ever hear - a voice so rich and drenched in emotion, it will send shivers down anybody's spine. The performance of Bésame Mucho above is from a celebrated show she did at Le Grand Rex theatre in Paris on 5th April 2004. It was recorded in full for a concert film, Live D'Amor, which you can currently watch on Youtube here.

Another vexing flaw in the FIFA World Cup Fantasy game

 

I noted last week that among the many irritating shortcomings of the FIFA World Cup Fantasy game website is the inability to deselect your captain. However, I had thought this only a minor annoyance, since you can change your captain by selecting another player to replace the current incumbent.

But I've just discovered a further wrinkle to this - one which has the potential to be quite damaging. In fact, it is a huge bloody booby-trap in the game design!

The dratted game won't let you change your vice-captain into your captain (or vice versa).

And that is something you're quite likely to want to do. Especially if you have - reflexively, as a result of always naturally doing this in Fantasy Premier League and other such Fantasy games... - made your second-best player your vice-captain at the start of the MatchDay.

Again, it is possible to get around this. You have to appoint someone else as vice-captain, to 'free up' your current vice-captain as a potential captain selection. The problem here is that, later in the MatchDay, you might be running out of players you can transfer the vice-captaincy to (although the vice-captaincy is utterly otiose in this game, it won't let you transfer it to a player who's already played).

If Messi should have a poor game today, I find I'll have to transfer my vice-captaincy to Nuno Mendes, so that I can take a chance on Haaland with the captaincy. But if Haaland also disappoints, I won't then be able to try my luck with Nuno Mendes as well.

I'm annoyed with myself that I didn't realise this sooner. It is actually a pretty huge deal. Since the vice-captaincy is utterly irrelevant in this game (it is inactive, unless you fail to make any manual changes to your team during the course of the MatchDay - and who's going to do that??), except in this maddening obstruction that it creates in freely circulating the captain's armband, we must get it out of the way - by selecting a vice-captain who plays at the beginning of the MatchDay.

Also... I'm going to have to set an early alarm tomorrow, so that I can get up in time to move the captain's armband to Haaland if Messi has delivered only modest points. Damn, this game is exhausting....

Mr Fate dons his taunting-hat again...

 

I like Mikel Oyarzabal, I rate him very highly. And Spain, despite their flakey start to the tournament, are still one of my favourites to take the trophy (though it's a three-way battle with France and Germany, I feel).

So, I made the Basque forward one of my three picks up front in my MatchDay 1 squad. 

And he had a dog of a game, fluffing a number of decent chances as Spain were held to a goalless draw by lowly Cabo Verde. Oh, woe!

So, of course, I dropped him. And in the next game, against the much more formidable-seeming Saudi Arabia, he's on fire and notches a 13-pointer (despite being withdrawn at half-time). Bugger. There is a lot to be said for sticking with players - especially forwards - through one or two disappointing performances.

Well, I swapped him for Messi. So, that might still work out for me. But I'm not confident. Luck is not my friend. If the great Leo blanks in this one - I'm sorry, everyone, it was my fault: I must have jinxed him.

Hoping for THE WORST....

With the mercurial Frenchman looking bang-in-form, and with a tempting-looking fixture (though it might turn out not to be a stroll in the park...) against Iraq up next for France, I decided I wanted to use my '12th Man' booster chip on Kylian Mbappé in MatchDay 2.

Alas and alack, that selection was not 'saved' by the game! (I already inserted a brief gripe about this into my review of MatchDay 1 a couple of days ago.) 

It might be that I was merely flummoxed by the perversely idiotic game design. Although the final 'Confirm' button on the Team screen is large and prominent - it simply shouldn't be there, and so you don't look for it, don't notice it. Activating the chips (and selecting captain or vice-captain) is carried out through a completely separate pop-up window; and that process appears to have been fully completed and confirmed when you close that window. There shouldn't be any additional step required to 're-confirm' the selection you've just made. And, if there is, there should be a bloody prominent pop-up notice on screen alerting you to this fact - and there isn't.

But... I had already run into this problem with the captaincy, so I am pretty sure - 80% to 90% confidence - that I had 'confirmed' this chip selection on the Team screen too. And I had seen Mbappé appearing as the extra man on my MD2 teamsheet. But the next morning,... this chip activation had disappeared again! And, since the new MatchDay had started, it was too late for me to try to activate it again. (This too seems harsh, unnecessary. There is no need for chip activation to be 'timed out' like this; you should be able to activate them at any time during the MatchDay - so long as the relevant player or players haven't played their game yet.)  It thus seems horribly likely that the FIFA Fantasy site is subject to the same sort of gremlins that beset the Fantasy Premier League site, that occasionally (probably when site-traffic is peaking) it will glitch.... and just 'lose' apparently saved team selections.

Now, with such an over-abundance of booster chips in this game, and since I don't really fancy the Final as an attractive option for playing any of them (except possibly... the 'Maximum Captain'?), I am faced with having to play a chip in every round from here on.

What's more, I now find myself crossing my fingers for a poor performance from Mbappé, so that I won't be left regretting how much this glitch has harmed me. (One wouldn't want to wish injury on anyone. But... perhaps a little soreness in the calf that forces him to sit out this one game???)

The awful design of this Fantasy game has strangely worked out in my favour once already. In MatchDay 1, I somehow wound up with my captaincy on Oyarzabal before Havertz - and didn't notice (because the bloody game doesn't tell you who your captain is). I was fuming when the Spaniard missed multiple chances and returned a blank. But as it turned out, that left me free to move my captaincy to Haaland - who, of course, delivered a monster 17 points. If I'd started with the armband on Havertz, as I'd intended, I would certainly have stuck with his initial return of 13 points (26, when doubled for the captaincy), and would have missed out on 4 extra points. I very rarely get conspicuously lucky with any of these Fantasy games; but there I did.

It is inconceivable that Dame Fate should rescue me from disaster like that twice in succession. A 20-pointer from M. Mbappé is surely incoming....

[Well, damn, he did manage another brace of goals for a very useful 13-point haul. Not as bad as it might have been for me, but still rather galling. I now have to hope that I can do at least nearly as well as that, if not a little better, from playing the '12th Man' chip in one of the knockout rounds. Yes, unfortunately, since I don't fancy my chances with any of the chips during the final round of the group stage, I am now left having to use a chip in every round thereafter. There are too many chips in this game!]

FIFA World Cup Fantasy is already starting to piss me off...

Is Haaland captain? It's anybody's guess! 

The tournament itself is shaping up just fine. Some of the 'minnows' have proved to be quite formidable after all. Some of the more fancied teams - Brazil, Switzerland, Holland, Spain - have stumbled embarrassingly out of the starting-blocks (and I'd bet that at least one or two from France, Argentina, England, and Portugal may do likewise!). Some of the more 'mid-tier' contenders like Morocco, the USA, and Australia have produced the kind of performances that make you start wondering how far they could go in the competition. And we've already seen some absolutely cracking goals. These first five days have really given us everything we could have wished for.

It's just a pity that visiting the FIFA website to check how we're getting on in the Fantasy game is such an utter pain-in-the-arse.

The UI design is beyond-awful, really some of the most perverse and inadequate I've ever seen. Why is the 'business area' of the display - where you're actually going to view your team and make changes to it - restricted to this tiny 'letterbox' that's only about 25=30% of the total screen area? And why is even that extensively cluttered and obscured with overlarge action buttons and annoying pop-ups? Because it was designed by cretins, seems to be the only possible answer.

Also, although order of appearance during the MatchDay is crucial for deciding who to put in the original starting eleven and when you might want to make substitutions, you lose the ability to select this as the main 'player attribute' to display when the MatchDay is in progress; it's there when you're making selections for the next round, but disappears when showing you the current MatchDay - so, you're left having to scroll through the fixtures at the bottom of the page to remind yourself who's playing when. Here, the default 'player attribute' is 'scheduled opponent': that I think I can remember; but the exact order and kick-off times of the games I need to constantly double-check. Why would anyone do something this daft and annoying???

The thing that's vexing me most is how bloody fiddly it is to select your captain (and vice-captain). Instead of having a small pop-up screen with just that option available on a right-click over the player, you get a huge, screen-filling pop-up that initially shows you almost nothing beyond the player's name. You have to scroll down to find the options. And often the scrolling function seems to freeze; so, you have to refresh the page in order to be able to do anything. And even worse, there's no reassuring confirmation of the choice that you've made; the pop-up screen promptly disappears again.

That fiddliness in the selection procedure is, in fact, only the second most annoying thing about this UI. The most annoying thing is that it's impossible to see who your captain is. For some unfathomable reason, the designers of this UI have chosen to make the 'captain' (and 'vice-captain') symbol into one of a plethora of tiny, almost featureless grey discs denoting various aspects of player status: a collection of obscure symbols, picked out against a light grey background in thin lines that are only a slightly darker grey. Even with the display size on my laptop screen ramped up to 200%, all of these symbols are utterly indistinguishable from each other. Again, it is a basic rule of UI design that icons conveying important information like this should be large enough to see and recognise easily, and clearly differentiated from each other by having distinctive shapes and/or distinctive colours and/or being placed in different parts of the relevant display frame. These bastards are all tiny and round and grey, and all in the bottom left of the player panels. It is utterly fucking ridiculous.

And oh, it does get even a little worse than that: when you click on a player to view his large pop-up details panel, it doesn't actually tell you whether you currently have him selected as captain or vice-captain; you just have to infer that from the fact that these action buttons are now 'faded out', presumably indicating that these options are not available to you. (But that could be because the player has already played his game, and thus can't have the captaincy transferred to him, rather than because you've already placed the armband with him. God help you if you've forgotten who your captain and vice-captain are - because there really doesn't seem to be any way to find out, other than by making the selection all over again.) And.... you don't seem to be able to deselect a captain by clicking on the player; you can only do that by appointing another captain in his place. Could they have thought of any way of making this more clunky and user-unfriendly???

I've been particularly annoyed about this over the past 24 hours, because I thought I had my captaincy on Havertz - who'd returned a very nice 13 points in the demolition of Curacao. But it seems the armband was with Oyarzabal - who had a dog of a game the next day. It would be very unlike me to make a mistake with the order of matches (I am quite sure I had planned to move my captaincy, if necessary, from Havertz to Oyarzabal, and then from Oyarzabal to Haaland); so, I am now worrying if this FIFA website is prone to the same sort of glitches we occasionally find in FPL, where team data suddenly gets lost or scrambled. I hope not; it is conceivable, I think, that I blundered because of the fiddliness of making the selection, and the near-impossibility of checking what selection I'd made.

And yes, oh dear, the next mistake definitely was my own fault. This morning, having reached the point where my original eleven starters had all played, I could cast out the low returners to make way for my subs. Yesterday, of course, I had been fuming to discover that Oyarzabal was - unexpectedly and unwelcomely - my captain; but acting in haste this morning, that unhappy fact again slipped my mind: I moved out all of my 2-point and 3-point players - not realising that bloody Oyarzabal was one of them; his total was displaying as 4 points, because of the phantom captaincy.

Hopefully, I can redeem myself with a decent captaincy return from Erling Haaland (or Marcel Sabitzer or Nuno Mendes...). But I've thrown away a least 1 point with this unfortunate Oyarzabal cock-up - and possibly a lot more through missing the expected captaincy return on Havertz. (Despite all this woe, I'm actually having a very decent MatchDay 1. I usually get off to a terrible start in Fantasy competitions, and often fail to make up the lost ground despite a much stronger performance from there on. This time.... it's looking like I could actually do pretty well overall, if I can keep this early form going. Mustn't get the hopes up too much! This is a game that punishes hope!)

[It looks as though some of these unfortunate UI problems might have been addressed already. The 'letterboxing' issue seems to have disappeared now. And the captain/vice-captain symbols are now a little more distinct, and displaying at the top right of the player box rather than the bottom left. And I have found that by cranking my display size up to the max 250%, I can just about make them out now; but only these two symbols, not the welter of other ones, they're still an indistinguishable mystery to me.]

Well, that was QUICK....

 

The advent of the World Cup nearly took me by surprise this year!

With the expanded format, I suppose it's starting about a week earlier than usual - after our domestic season, with its many 'international break' interruptions, now lingers a week or so longer than it generally did in the past... and we have European Finals extending into the week beyond that. We've had less than two weeks' break from football: barely any time for the participating teams to get in any warm-up friendlies (England's second one isn't until the day before the tournament officially begins!).

And yes, the opening games are kicking off on a Thursday this year (for the first time ever??) - what's up with that??!!

So, damn, we're barely more than two days away from the greatest sporting event in the world getting under way again. And we Fantasy Football enthusiasts have really had next-to-no-time to get ready for this. I am in a frantic rush today to put together my initial squad for the official FIFA World Cup Fantasy Game.

I am excited, yes - but also a little trepidatious. Trying to follow the unfolding drama from a timezone where most of the games take place in the middle of the night is going to be a royal pain-in-the-behind.

Home, sweet 'home'...

 

After a month or so on the road, I have arrived back in Cambodia (Siem Reap, for now).

I have spent most of the last quarter-century in East Asia, and nearly a dozen years now in South-East Asia. For the last six years I have been mainly based in the Lao P.D.R., which has many points of appeal; and I've spent a fair bit of time in Vietnam and Thailand, for which I also have a considerable fondness. But somehow,... Cambodia chimes with me that bit more than any of its neighbours. Arriving back here after a spell away - even stepping off a bus or a plane into the noise and stink and tumult of Phnom Penh - always feels strangely reassuring, comforting to me,... like a big warm hug for the soul.

And so it does again. I've been having a bit of a stressful time over the past year or two; and especially in the last few months. But now, back in Cambodia, everything suddenly feels all right again. (It isn't. But it feels like it, for now - and I'll take that.)

A beer so good they named the country after it...

The beer's pretty good too.