Things we learnt about the football during lockdown: a note to the reader of the future

The future, brought to you by Ask Jeeves

This can go one of two ways. In 80 years’ time, the reader of the future takes one look at this blog and is utterly baffled by talk of pandemics, lockdowns and The Queen’s Nose*. Or else said reader of the future becomes all at once furious, seething over the trivialities of a) having a blog and b) dealing only with pandemics, lockdowns and fondly remembering ‘90s TV shows that showcase Gary Mabbutt scoring a hat-trick.

A job not even Jesus wanted

In your FACES, doubters

Imagine, if you will, 92 bits of fruit and veg. Actually, be a bit less ambitious – it’s the end of the week and you might be tired, or an idiot. Imagine 92 apples and onions. Quite a lot of fruit and veg that, isn’t it? Only it isn’t. Not when just six of the 92 bits of fruit and vegetables are apples. Then it becomes rather more like a massive pile of vegetables with little to no fruit in there at all. What happened? Did you forget to write out your shopping list properly? Aren’t you in favour of a balanced diet? DO YOU WANT TO SMELL LIKE ONIONS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?

Football as Art: a retrospective (a.k.a Sachin Nakrani’s Tweet, the Totti/Heskey advert and Gary Mabbutt in the Queen’s Nose)

"So, I've been having some weird dreams ..."

‘They’ say that people are experiencing extremely vivid dreams during lockdown. Apparently, Google searches of “weird dreams” have doubled year-on-year. According to an article in the Independent at the end of April, a Tweet asking: “Is anybody else having really weird/vivid dreams during this whole lockdown or is it just me?” got 4,600 likes, which perhaps says more about Twitter than it does about dreams.

It's Coming Back

GET AWAY FROM ME

Turns out we were mega-prescient, as usual, and were only a couple of days ahead of the government in declaring coronavirus to be completely over and looking forward to football coming home back now we can all just do whatever the hell we want without consequence.

The returning face of football

The new-look Old Trafford, post-covid-19

Well, it only took a pandemic that has seen more than half the world’s population on lockdown to get us out of semi-retirement. We’ve gone 10 weeks without football in the UK and so, in time honoured fashion, here we are with our two-penneth when every horse bolted weeks ago and all that’s left are the donkeys*, some onions, and the stable door smacking us in the balls. Even the horses with underlying health conditions have finished isolating and bolted. EVEN THIS METAPHOR HAS BOLTED.

England Expects (Way Too Much. As Ever. Ad Infinitum)

"You know what we said pre-tournament about getting to the knockouts being a success ... FUCK. THAT. Final or you're shit."

Well well well. It seems by all accounts that England have become the first ever side in the history of the World Cup to get a bye to the final. Clearly a huge oversight on behalf of FIFA, seeing as though they wouldn’t even award us hosting rights to the tournament. Or maybe it’s their way of keeping us sweet? Either way, it’s a hell of a development for a side that have only won five knock-out games at a World Cup since 1966 (and only three of those inside 90 minutes).

A lovely game of charades

"Lads I can't use it to check where your Uber is"

Now the dust has settled on the group stages, let’s address some of the things we’ve learned from the World Cup so far. In short, Germany are rubbish so we don’t have to worry about them in tournaments ever again, England are going to win it, four games in one day is NOT too many and no one has been kidnapped, poisoned or otherwise defiled by the Russian state (that we know of). All in all, something of a success.