A few take aways from the 1st round including a bucket of Vindaloo.

This morning saw the conclusion of the first round of 24 games in the group stages. All 48 teams have now played one game, so it is a good time to do a what have we learnt so far style review.

I must start with an admission, I have only watched seven complete games, plus three first halves of other games. This means there are 14 games where I have only seen the highlights which are readily available. Despite that I am ready to share my observations with you all.

The English premier league reigns supreme. In the previews. we discussed the increase in size of the tournament, how the minnows would fair and other such topics. I think the jury is still out on the increase, as I mentioned above, speaking as an average fan, I have watched a tad over twenty five percent of the games, that is not very high, there are just too many games. Obviously, the time of the games due to the location has been a factor, but also there are too many that are just not worth the effort.

What about the evil empires so called lofty ambition of giving more nations a chance to participate?  Obviously on a base level this is true, but this is where the opening line in this section comes into play.

The Democratic Republic of Congo team that admirably held Portugal to a draw had five players that play in the English premier league, a few others in the French first division. There is not one player in the twenty-six-man squad who plays in the local league. The Oranjeboom had 8 premier league players in their starting eleven. Even Ze Shermans had a few.

With the proliferation of football, that can be found on the internet and the insatiable demand of top European clubs to find the newest talent, the so-called minnows are not so small anymore. This is definitely the case with Africa, the Arab countries still lag behind here.

There is also another important point to mention here, one which is a major talking point all over the world and has nothing to do with football and that is migration.

Going back to the DRC, only five of the twenty six man squad where actually born in the DRC, The Moroccan team that faced Brazil comprised of eleven players who were born in Europe to parents who had left Morocco in search of a better life.  

I heard an interesting stat that there are fifty-three players in the world cup who were born in Paris France (as opposed to Paris Texas) and yet only five of them play for France.

An interesting subject to discuss at the water cooler for people not that interested in football, but who want to join in the conversation.

To sum up, there is a certain European superiority complex when thinking about lesser teams and this needs to be revised for the reasons listed above.

It is now time to talk about some football, one thing that is very noticeable is the improvement in the flow of the game due to the rule changes we mentioned in the previews. We are hardly seeing players staying down after tackles. unless they are really hurt. Throw ins are actually only taking five seconds as we see the referees counting down with their fingers. In the DRC game, Portugal was awarded a corner when the goalkeeper took too long restarting the game. The last point here is that due to the hydration break, injury time always will be 3 minutes plus the actual injury time.  

Two very important clarifications. Firstly, a corner that has been incorrectly awarded can be changed to a goal kick by the Video Assistant referee, but a goal kick cannot be changed to a corner.

Secondly, and this is probably the most important and will help your health. One of the things common to all fans watching on TV is the shouting at the screen that a player is offside when the side they are supporting has conceded a goal. It happened in the EnGerLand game yesterday. The Croatian who nodded the ball on had his arm in an offside position as he jumped to head the ball. It will help to remember the song we all teach our children to learn body parts. Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes can all be offside, but arms cannot be offside as you cannot score a goal with your arm.

this is not offside even though it looks it.

How have the true minnows performed? to be honest as expected, with an obvious exception, and this is where the expansion falls down. Ze Shermans duly quaffed on the Orange Liqueur of Curacao with a 7-1 picnic. However, mark my words, Ze Shermans looked frail at the back. We will have to wait to see them face better opposition before we can truly say if they will go far this time round.

The game for Ze Shermans was basically a training session and was completely pointless from a competitive point of view. We are very happy that Curacao scored a goal, but do we really need to have the extra games just so that Curacao or Qatar or Jordan can say that they scored at a world cup.

Iraq and Jordan both lost heavily, as did Tunisia who are a more established African side who then promptly sacked their manager after one game. Who would be a football manager?

I have already mentioned the DRC, their draw with Portugal was well earned, but I will contend that the comments I made about the cork boys of Portugal suffering dearly if they insisted on playing Crybaby Ronaldo were vindicated. It was nice to hear the legendary Thierry Henri agreeing with me in his post match analysis.

Crybaby was obviously under enormous pressure after the performance of his great rival Messi in Los Gauchos 3-0 victory over Algeria. However, I want you to watch this clip and explain why Messi was not shown a red card for this tackle and even more importantly, why did VAR not even look at it?

The last game in this section is the draw between the blue sharks of Cape Verde and the flamenco dancers of Espana. This is the type of result that vindicates the evil empire in their eyes. The Cape Verde goalkeeper played like Superman. Espana suffered from a severe dose of complacency and while it was fun to watch because the castanets failed to click, it was not competitive. Are we watching to see one team playing in an Alamo style bunker or two teams, cutting and thrusting and parrying with each other a la Zorro? I know what I would prefer to watch.  Again, as with the Ze Shermans, this was no more than a training exercise for Espana, and I can see them improving from here.

Other games worthy of mention were the ones between the Samba Kings and Morocco and the Rising sun against the windmills. Of course, we cannot forget the Senegal derby, where Les Bleus were lucky not to be trailing at half time and eventually came out on top. I also feel that I must point out that probably the best frog player on the night was born in London!

Honorable mention must go to Scotland who managed to beat Haiti with a very deflected goal and thus win their first group game in 32 years and to the bushmen who led the Turkish baths on a walk about into the outback and lost them there. The Tartan army has also made its mark drinking Boston dry. an impressive achievement.

To finish off, the game between EnGerLand and the boys from kings Landing was an instant classic, it was a vibrant display of how the beautiful game should be played. There is still a long way to go before the fans should start thinking about whether football is coming home, but it was good start

There were two groups where both games ended in a draw, so it is all to play for in those groups with the next round starting today.  I'll be back in a week, feel free to leave comments and I hope I have given you things to talk about.