Cod Almighty | Diary

And a little bit of Kevin-Prince Boateng

16 June 2014

Miss Guest Diary writes: Well, the World Cup has started and the wallchart is up and running. After spending a fiver on a magazine to get their chart, I've ended up using the (far superior) one that came free with the Radio Times. Is there some kind of metaphor in that, I wonder?

I've seen every match so far, but I don't think that's going to continue: some of the 11pm kick-offs later in the week are already filling me with inertia. Looking back, the last time I watched every single match of the tournament was in 1998. I was working in central London at the time and I seem to recall there were a lot of afternoon matches which had me leaving the office early and dashing to Euston for the train back home to Watford.

For three subsequent tournaments I was working from home so could down tools and watch whenever I wanted. But a lot of the time I didn't bother, and I couldn't even remember much about any of them. In searching around the web for something to remind me, I came across an article by one of my favourite writers, Nick Hornby, chronicling the 2002 competition, which reminded me exactly what is so great about the World Cup.

It's one of the things about football that are impossible to convey to non-fans: that most of the time the joy of watching international tournaments is not about which team wins or plays well or scores a magnificent goal. It's about the appalling refereeing decisions, the red cards, the comedy own goals and the underdogs who beat the favourites. And, of course, the bad hairstyles. I am ashamed to say it took Hornby's article to bring back memories of how brilliant it was when the strutting French were beaten in the opening game by Senegal, with a goal scored by Papa Bouba Diop – a player who spent much of his career at Fulham and Portsmouth. And the near diplomatic incident caused by Totti's sending-off against South Korea. Also that France, Portugal and Argentina all went out in the first round in 2002.

The two subsequent tournaments were rather dull by comparison, but this one is shaping up nicely. The penalty decision in Brazil's opening match and a succession of disallowed goals in subsequent matches bodes well for some game-altering poor officiating. We've already had three own goals and two red cards. Then there was the whole France no goal/goal debacle last night, which saw the commentators questioning the very goal-line technology they've been banging on about for years. And the weirdest hairstyle so far definitely has to belong to Paul Pogba.

The only giant-killing to date has been Costa Rica's defeat of Uruguay. I just hope that doesn't continue at England's expense, especially after we played so well on Saturday.

Iran v Nigeria tonight: bring it on!