And so the whole crazy shebang shimmies onto the pitch but we’re still waiting for the samba soccer.
Instead we got stiletto finishing from a side who look nothing like Big Phil’s rough and tough team who won in 2002 with a mixture of great defence and great strikers. This Brazil side looks callow by comparison.
And if that’s the favourites for the trophy then the World Cup is wide open. Even Australia might start to fancy their chances.
A father and son have arrived in Brazil on their tricycle after an 18-month trip to reach the World Cup.
For Elias de Souza, 48, of Mexico City, it’s the seventh World Cup he’s attended. He’s been an ever-present since Italia ’90.
At 3am, seven hours after Germany’s 4-2 win over Costa Rica, a 60-year-old pianist was banging on his old Joanna in the middle of Munich.
Outside the Town Hall, he was cranking out ditties to a motley crew of crazy Costa Ricans, drunken Germans, moustachioed, sombreroed and short Mexicans and two Welsh guys high as red kites on 2006 World Cup fever.
The opening game is less than 48 hours away but the Mexicans are in pole position to be the best fans here.
After four days in Brazil, I wouldn’t have said the country has been in the sort of frenzy that usually grips England ahead of the tournament.
Probably due to conflicted feelings across the country given political debate on whether it should host the tournament, Recife and Natal have seemed muted.
Until the Mexicans turned up today, that is.
A striker and goalkeeper clashed going for the ball, two yards away from goal. Both fell over in the sand, the ball a yard away.
The striker, lying prone, looked like Fidel Castro in his prime – bearded, barrel-chested, slight pot belly, but muscular.
Recife is revving up for Thursday’s opening match when Brazil take on Croatia.
The papers are full of it and this touching story caught my attention more than the usual previews in the sports supplement.
It’s about a one-legged footballer, and is featured in the Jornal do Commercio.
GUEST POST: from irregular Biffo, from Milford Haven, who lives in Splott.
We completed our album last week. The final 21 stickers arrived by post.
Wandering round the city today, the biggest sign of World Cup fever I found was this gang of Panini sticker collectors.
At least 80 people were circulating with A4 lists of swaps and needs on a street corner in the Boa Viagem area. And most of them were adults. And probably half were women.
It’s official, Esso brainwashed the Welsh into supporting England at the 1970 World Cup. We should sue.
As a vulnerable, easily-led, seven-year-old in Llangunnor, Carmarthen, I collected the coins via my old man, who visited the Esso just the other side of the bridge out of the town centre .
I blame the Dutch for everything, good and bad.
Continue reading Chewed lips in Amsterdam – Holland 2 Wales 0
The Pele Museum in Lugansk is, frankly, utterly surreal.
Thousands of miles away from Brazil, near the Russian border, it’s a shrine to Nikolai Khubodin’s childhood infatuation with the greatest player ever.
Nikolai, who played for his home town team Zorya Lugansk, heard about him on the radio in 1965 when he was ten.
Yes there really IS a Pele Museum in Lugansk.
Lugansk is in Ukraine. Twenty miles from the Russian border, it is the easternmost major city in the country and has about 500,000 inhabitants.
There is a Pele museum in Santos, where Pele played for the local team, which is about 7,000 miles away from Lugansk. I hope to visit the Santos museum later this year.
Miles from Nowhere 