So the first stage of the World Cup is almost over . It seems that the politics has returned to the background, and the football has assumed pride of place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However , it has not gone according to plan. The experts were suggesting that it was between Argentina, Brazil Germany and Belgium for the semi finals. Their predictions look a little ill-advised now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First of all Saudi beat Argentna, then the next day Japan beat Germany and later Morocco beat Belgium, so that the Belgians and Germans are packing their bags.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Should we be surprised? No!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let us think back to the 1st Division in 1966. How many foreigners were in the 1st division teams. Foreigners then, would have included Scots, Welsh and Irish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then came the Premier League and much more TV revenue, and the top foreigners were from Germany, Spain France Holland and Belgium. To a certain point, you could say that is true now, but think. of the players from Asia Africa and South America \u2013 People like Sane and Sallah or Son. Close to home we have at Brighton, MacAllister from Argentina, 3 Ecuadorians, Sarmiento, Estapinyan and Caicedo, Lamptey for Ghana and the Japanese Mitoma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These people are playing in what is generally acknowledged as the best quality league in the world. If this is true in England, it is just as true in the major leagues in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These players from the \u201cfootball third world\u201d are now very skilled players and the difference between these countries has becme less and less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It may be that Brazil, Argentina Spain France or even England will win in the end, but even if they do, there may be more surprises on the way. It is not far-fetched to believe that Japan could beat Croatia, or Senegal send the England team home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think this World Cup will be hailed as being a major success, despite everything which went before. I know the lack of certainty has made the games much more enjoyable to watch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some thoughts on the World Cup II, What do you think? So the first stage of the World Cup is almost over . It seems that the politics has returned to the background, and the football has assumed pride of place. However , it has not gone according to plan. The experts were suggesting that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sport"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shavuatov.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shavuatov.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shavuatov.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shavuatov.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shavuatov.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shavuatov.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282,"href":"https:\/\/www.shavuatov.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shavuatov.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shavuatov.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shavuatov.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}