Just so no one shall be able to say that a ball is simply a ball at afoe, and since it’s a weekend, I’ve decided to tell you, gentle readers, about a quick’n’dirty short film concerning the “true meaning” of the “Miracle of Bern” - Germany’s surprising victory in the 1954 world championship - that [...]

“Thirty years of hurt
Never stopped me dreaming.”
I don’t think that England can count on own goals from all of their opponents, though.
(Comments in the main thread, pls.)

Let’s keep this in one thread from now on.
…The Guardian and the NY Times will liveblog everything.

We’ll get the first one out of the way early: Twenty-two men played. In the end, Germany won.
(Over Costa Rica, 4-2 just for the record and so anyone who pulls this post out of the archives years from now will have the context at hand.)
Predictions for Poland vs Ecuador?

Before we all get caught up in World Cup and ignore everything else for a month, a few items that will be calling for our attention when we get back.
* All of the problems that the EU Constitutional Treaty was supposed to solve are still there, and they still need to be solved. A rotating [...]

Anyone taking Costa Rica tomorrow? For the sheer perversity?
Just wondering.

Yugoslavia used to have a hell of a team. They were regular visitors to the World Cup, advancing to the elimination rounds more often than not. They went to the quarter finals in 1990, and there are plenty of Serbs and Croats who will tell you that they actually came within a whisker [...]

Assuming that you, gentle readers, are not yet entirely absorbed by your preparations for the upcoming month of watching simple games of 22 men runnung after a ball before, well, Gary Lineker will hopefully be proven right again*, here’s some more interesting information about the country that is now officially run from the FIFA headquarter [...]

There is not much market for reviews of books published almost a decade and a half ago, so without further ado, my thoughts on The Prize, by Daniel Yergin. This evaluation is overdue because I started reading the book when I bought it, back in 1997. I put it down around page 400 (which is [...]

When I lived in Vienna, in 2001-2002, I lived in the 11th District, Simmering, a roughish working-class suburb struck through with railway lines and motorway spurs. Specifically, I lived in one of the four huge brick gasometers of the former city gasworks, once Europe’s biggest, now redeveloped as a mixture of shops, flats and a [...]