dawson didn't even get a look in...

world cup review >> england

cheer up people, stop crying about the goal that never was. it's under seven weeks until the premier league kicks off again! less boo hoo and more woo hoo please! i for one can't wait to see:

- wayne rooney control a football.

- fat frank score 20+ belters from the edge of the area.

- glen johnson willing to chop down a rampaging opposition baring down on goal at the expense of a yellow card.

- steven gerrard orchestrate an entire game from CENTRAL midfield.

- matthew upson able to judge the flight of a pub league style 70 yard punt, and also not repeatedly sand wedge the ball out of play when in possession and under absolutely no pressure.

- john terry not believing he's playing a zidane type free-role and staying in his own half.

- five midfielders stretched across a midfield preventing their slick opposition passing the ball through them.

- and emile heskey remaining where he has spent most of his recent playing days, on the substitute's bench.

pretty much what we've just seen from our £100k per week players in south africa right? oh. maybe not.

and to top off all the embarrassment that has just passed, i've had to use up four of my transfers for my fantasy team. bloody cheers capello! cheers england!

warning! can cause permanent hearing damage and world cup heartache

world cup review >> england

while watching the make or break world cup nail biter between england and slovenia yesterday i experienced something for the first time during this tournament that i hadn't previously felt, joy. this was in part because of the win and the emergence of my favourite non-wolves player joe cole finally coming off the bench, but it was more down to the surprisingly clear head i was experiencing. this was not down to a lack of alcopops, no, this was because i heard something i hadn't heard for weeks in a football match... singing! ok, singing is not the right word to describe the vocal talents of a gang of fat naked bald men, let’s call it chanting! oh my god, i could actually hear the cries of our drunken brits abroad above those BLOODY VUVUZELAS! i could make out the drums and trumpets of our touring barmy army and i could hear our LOYAL support (fuck off rooney) passionately belting out our (just the right length) national anthem! amazing! my tv for the first time wasn’t on mute (it also helped that the game was on bbc rather than itv) because finally the headache-inducing swarm of a wasp hum was swatted by our lion's roar.

the england fans literally sang us into the next round. they are the twelfth man so many other countries crave, but we shouldn't need them. on paper we have some of the best players in the world (shame they have to play on grass then), but there are nations out there who really do need a 'twelfth man' - none more so than the host nation south africa. when south africa were effectively knocked out of the world cup in only their second game losing 3-0 to the fantastic forlan and his uruguain chums, i'm sure the south african players would have been boosted after going behind, by some patriotic chanting and encouragement rather than the ear drum-aching hooting and tooting from a plastic tube. maybe i'm missing the point that these are a symbol of south african history and culture, but this is modern day football and the encouraging swear word-filled songs give the players the confidence and kick up the backside that is sometimes lacking on a football pitch.

so come sunday when those of our boys who can't take their premier league form onto an international stage (fat frank) face those bloody kuntz, we'll once again need to be that twelfth man. let’s sing and swear our hearts out, and for gaaawd’s sake (and my ears’ health) leave the vuvuzella at home.

"fucking come on england!"

time flies when you're having fun

music >>

while waiting at bethnal green tube station the other morning i noticed a poster advertising oasis' latest money grabbing rehash of 90's classics. i'm sure there was something very similar to this last year called 'stop the clocks'? anyway, 'time flies' is a singles collection, all 5627 of them. some are outstanding ('supersonic', 'cigarettes & alcohol'), some are truly awful ('sunday morning call', 'i'm outta time') but it got me thinking about 'the old days'. the days of blur vs oasis, the days of jarvis at the brits, the days when bands had personalities, the days when i had album release dates etched in my gsce revision drained memory and marked on my jet from gladiators calendar. what happened to those days?

why don't we queue up at virgin megastore at midnight anymore to buy a new album? ok, that's a bad example because virgin no longer exists, but those were the days when bands were exciting, albums were events, and music was front page news. maybe i'm showing my years and my ever receding hair line here, but the kids of today (did i really just say that?) don't know what they're missing.

i don't blame the internet, i fucking love the internet, great for arty pictures of the female of the species, or so my friends tell me, but leaking albums is the norm now and we're never going to get back to the excitement of going 'daan taan' to buy that shiny new cd, and racing home to listen to the eleven or so songs on repeat. now we know all nine or so songs well before the official release date and tend to be bored of the offering before it hits the grey metallic shelves. this has it's advantages. our pockets are lined with extra sterling to spend down the local boozer, but we're now faced with a lack of excitement in purchasing new music, and also awol is the camaraderie and personality.

previously mentioned bethnal green tube poster reminded me of what had passed, and what we lack now. our folks had lennon, jagger, pressley and rotten, we had gallagher, albarn, cocker and mike flowers pops, but who have the youth of today got? turner? maybe if he gets back to his sheffield tracksuit routes. doherty? he can barely open his eyes long enough to voice an opinion. that bloke from kasabian who wants to be russell brand? not exactly news of the world stuff is it? we had weeks of excitement, saving of paper round pennies, and midnight queues, today it's torrents and bit rates. so come on today's bands, step up, lets hear about your tv throwing, mistress madness and narcotic naughties, that after all is the romance and charm of rock n roll that can never be taken from us, virgin megastore or no virgin megastore...

oh man did we have fun

festival review >> isle of wight

a few weeks ago, while trying to avoid my daily mind numbing workload, i decided to write a festival guide. not just a load of text with a “don’t forget your wellies and wet-wipes” note to round it off, no this was on a new level of festival geek. written with a load of ‘computer code’, this all singing, all dancing guide would tell you everything; prices, line-ups, directions, photos, toilet cleanliness etc but it also included the odd sly dig at festivals that had failed to impress me in the past, or those that for some unknown deep-rooted reason i felt particular negativity towards. the isle of wight festival was one of those. i’m not sure why, i’d never been. it was possibly because i went to bestival last year and had one of the best weekends of my life, and therefore had decided that if you were ever going to go to this small island to enjoy music, you’d do what i’d do (which is surely right?) and go to bestival…

all this changed massively when a couple of weeks ago i was greeted with the news from my other/better half that she had got us free tickets to the isle of wight festival! never one to pass up a freebie, all ill feeling quickly disappeared. i was going to the isle of wight! for free! woo! and to top it off, the tickets were vip meaning i’d get the opportunity to run over the geldof sisters backstage in a golf buggy!

musically the line up was not up to much, it was quite v-like, in terms of acts like the saturdays and pink drawing bigger crowds than the brilliant bombay bicycle club. but there were two names on the bill that got my heart beating slightly quicker than the off-road golf buggies… the strokes and paul mccartney. obvious choices? yes, but the strokes are possibly my third favourite band of all time (we’ve all got a top five in our heads) and macca is just macca, the closest thing i’ll ever get to seeing those scallys from merseyside, so it was a gig i was never going to miss.

both were brilliant. paul mccartney was amazing in a kumbaya round the campfire, one massive jolly sing-a-long way. it was a night i’ll never forget but i do wish i’d been a little closer to the action just to throw him some ‘macca guns’*. the strokes played a classic set, all the songs we, the fans wanted to hear and throw our drunken sun burnt arms aloft to – the kind of set noel gallagher always threatens when oasis play, but then throws in some crap liam song just to piss everyone off. we heard ’someday’, ‘last night’, ‘new york city cops’, ‘under control’, ‘reptilia’ and many more but sadly one of my favourites ‘12:51′ was omitted. but 12:51 or no 12:51, i found myself moved by their set. emotionally moved, i couldn’t take it all in. i’d been drinking (heavily) in the sun all day and there i was watching the strokes blow thousands away with their thumping drums and amazing guitars. oh, and a leather-biker-jacket-clad jules wasn’t too bad on vox either. not wanting to look like a big baby, i held back the tears in front of the girlfriend, but i’m not ashamed to admit this gig, this festival, isle of wight did something to me. maybe it was the sun, maybe it was the booze, or maybe, just maybe, ’cause it was the fucking strokes.

*in-house joke, sorry.

10

venire sull'inghilterra! (italian for "come on england!" - very roughly, cheers google)

world cup review >> england

fabio capello is loaded. fact. he earns a whopping £6 million a year, for overseeing about ten games a season. he picks up £500,000 a month to continually select a striker who has domestically scored less goals than the nigerian national keeper this season (the nigerian has 8, our lump of a forward heskey has 2), £115,384 a week to pick wright-phillips over adam johnson who he lost his place to at man city. £16,438 per day to continually ignore joe cole, the one player we have who is capable of unlocking the tightest of defences, £684 per hour to play gerrard, the most influential central midfielder in the world out of position on the left, £11.41 per minute to pick ledley king, a centre back with no cartilage remaining in his knee (yep, it's just bone on bone - ouch!), and 19p per second to blow on hair dye to stay looking 'fab'...

but before we turn on fabio capello, with his cute broken english, let’s remember we have probably the best manager in the world cup. tell a lie, actually the top dog is possibly the unofficial manager of north korea, kim jong-il whose conference call half-time team talks of "win or your family gets it" seem to get his repressed players fired up... i never said that by the way, before i face a firing squad.

in our £6 million a year man, we have a leader who oozes authority. he's been successful wherever he has been and perhaps half his problem is that he got us to the world cup with such relative ease that we seemed to all suddenly believe we were going to stroll through the tournament easier than a fox in an east london family home.

ok, so he's not perfect, some of his selections have left us all a little miffed (carragher?! - based on his apparent players in form policy, it should have been craddock!), but lets show some faith! this could still turn out to be amazing! in four weeks time he could be knighted for bringing home the custard covered arm cup. let’s for once ignore the ignorance of the daily mail et al and go mental for england and capello. wave your flags, paint your faces, get so drunk you forget robert green's next howler, shout at the tv, laugh, cry, but above all be grateful you're not north korean...

as strange as it may seem, there are wolves in south africa!

world cup >>

usa ’94, four years after the glories of italia 90; gazza’s tears, roger milla's jig and pavarotti's belly, we had a summer of ‘soccer’ to look forward to, albeit with no involvement from graham taylor’s less than mighty three lions.

from the moment diana ross missed a penalty in the opening ceremony i realised this world cup would only be appreciated with an open mind. i was 14, the plan was to watch the games at ‘yoof club’ with a bunch of girls i was trying to get off with. during the opening game (germany v bolivia) a girl who i won’t name (caroline) asked who the team were in black... give me strength! stupid questions aside this was a confusing time for a 14 year old boy. girls or football? girls or football? after caroline's question it had to be football... (the ref and linesmen if you still haven't got it).

the following weeks (at home, minus the distractions of ‘yoof club’) i found myself suddenly feeling and looking rather green thanks to wolves’ officially-world-cup-class striker david kelly taking his place in ireland’s squad of journey men, who qualified as irish thanks to their grandma’s next door neighbour visiting dublin once in the 60’s. after ray houghton’s winner against italy, my (now open) mind turned to setting loose a horse on the local council estate to mark my new adopted nationality*. so come this summer, with no wolves players in the once more mighty three lions squad (where's craddock?!) i’m supporting algeria. come on adlene guedioura! make wolves proud! oh hang on, just remembered algeria are in england’s group. bugger. make us proud anyway, just not against england…

*note to the rspca, this did not happen.