Its not possible to watch 3 matches a day, or two and highlights, and reply to as many emails as I would like.
Or put up replies here very often .
When I refer to the Swiss coach as “a wily veteran”, I realise that fatigue is kicking in.
I’ve succumbed to cliche and footiespeak.
This from Laurent :
Myles,
Keita cheated. That’s my view too.
But Myles, you should not write a line like “is it too much to expect sportsmanship from African players?” because:
1) Africa is not a country
2) Keita did something wrong, just like an English player can do something wrong without anyone attacking European players, or English players as a group for that matter.
3) If you were to talk about African players as a group, they suffer more from diving and bad sportsmanship than players from other continents.
One TV station caught Lucio deliberately trying to target Drogba’s broken arm. We should not then draw from that that Brazilian players show bad sportsmanship. Maybe he has just hung out too long around Jose Mourinho and turned into a “bandit” as you would put it.
The sad thing about the first World Cup in Africa is that the African teams have simply not done well. Football in the continent is at a cross-roads. Many African countries – Cameroon for example – has players from Turkey, Spain, England to South American leagues. Most are born outside Africa and there is a clash of footballing philosophies within such a diverse group.
It is similar for most countries who are net exporters of talent. A new way of management needs to be found for such situations. Luckily for the south American teams, their players tend to play in Latin leagues in Europe that carry on the same football philosophy as in South America.