IBC, MUNICH – So after 31 days, 64 games, 147 goals (2002 = 161), 28 red cards, 305 yellows and four penalty shoot-outs, another World Cup is over.
It’s been a long tournament for the Match of the Day team – most of us have been out here in Germany for at least five weeks. But what a fantastic experience! Being paid to work at World Cup is as good as it gets for a football fan.
Now it’s time to get in reflective mood, so I want to know what will you remember most about this World Cup?
To help jog your memories, here are the Match of the Day experts’ favourite moments of the tournament. Over at the Guardian they've also been listing their .
Continue reading "World Cup memories"
COLOGNE - The World Cup is over for another four years and Ricco and I are heading home.
We have just arrived in Cologne, where we will spend our final night in Germany, after a six-hour drive from Berlin. With the dust settling on the tournament I think it is a good time to reflect - after all I have witnessed much, learnt a lot and had a great deal of fun in my time in Germany.
Continue reading "Thank you Germany"
BERLIN - Marco Materazzi’s career has always had an element of car crash chaos – even during his brief spell at Everton.
And never has it been more evident than in his pivotal contribution to .
Continue reading "Everton flop Marco makes his mark"
BERLIN – Fletch and I worked out at that we are two of less than a million people on this planet to see to the current World Cup trophy lifted in person.
Obviously Fletch was comfortably seated in his press place for the whole game whereas I had to chance my arm in a late dash into the stadium, after the end of the action but before the prize was hoisted aloft.
Continue reading "Gate-crashing the World Cup party"
BERLIN - So that’s it then – a World Cup carnival that has taken me from Baden-Baden to Berlin via Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Cologne, Stuttgart, Gelsenkirchen, Munich and other stops too numerous to mention in five eventful weeks is over.
The circus is leaving town after the final between France and Italy and pitches up again in South Africa in four years.
So let’s look back at the highs and lows of this German summer – and let me hear your memorable moments, your heroes and villains.
Continue reading "Here's my World Cup - how was yours?"
BERLIN - as they saw Zinedine Zidane dispatched from the World Cup final, knowing it may have cost them victory.
None could explain his "idiotic act", but at the same time, they insisted France would remember him as a legend, and would not turn against him.
Continue reading "French stunned by Zidane"
BERLIN - What did you think of the ?
I thought it was a really enjoyable game in which the momentum changed sides several times and contained no little drama - , his early penalty which brought the game to life, the penalty shoot-out and some truly remarkable celebrations from the ecstatic Italian players.
Continue reading "A fitting final for the World Cup?"
