oisin bourke

Hi Marc,

I agree, Maradona's a terrible manager, but he's probably the greatest player ever (that I've seen anyway), so I think they chose him as a talisman. I figure the Argentines' tactic is to listen him rant on in the dressing room, ignore him and basically get the ball to Messi and Tevez. How hard can that be?

Incidentally, I heard a rumour that Maradona learned Judo as a child and he partly credited that for his superb balance. Wonder if it's true?

You can't write off the Germans, but I think Ballack is injured, so he'll be a big loss for them.

I'd forgotten about the Brazilian fans! Another reason to set the alarm for the 3:30 am matches!

I'm hoping that it being the first World Cup in Africa will give a big boost to some of the African teams.

The great thing about the world cup is that teams with great players sometimes fall apart (France in Japan, Brazil last time, Spain all the time)
while mediocre ones can sometimes gel and do tremendously:

Cameroon in 1990 (Roger Milla!) Bulgaria and Romania in 1994
Turkey and South Korea... The list goes on.