These are not match reports

 If you're following the tournament through match reports, a lot of what you see looks like this.

Chadagascar came from behind to beat Balkanonia 3-1 today, in a tense encounter in Kentucky City. Balkanonia Manager Eric Krestovnikov became the oldest manager at a World Cup game at 134 and 3 months, until Jordistan kicked off against Vanuvalu 3 hours later and the record passed to Neil Warnock.

Balkanonia's teenage sensation Eric Krestovnikovnikov scored with an overhead kick after just 7 minutes, but was sent off 10 minutes later under the new FIFA regulation limiting players' farts to 5 seconds or less. His manager's protests were disregarded by the VAR team, who said they had no grounds to overrule the referee's nostrils.

Etc etc. You may have noticed that you don't get much of that kind of thing here. I don't disdain it, it just isn't in my skill set. The World Cup isn't a zero sum game, the match reports don't stop existing just because I'm doing this. You won't get goal summaries from me, but then you won't get much on Iggy Pop or why the World Cup is better than Christmas in the match reports.

Anyway, I just don't have the energy. I used to do match reports when I was middle aged, but there were a lot of matches even in those days, and the group phase was quite fatiguing. I'm an old man now, plus the tournament has expanded from 64 games to 104 and I'm very sorry but I just don't have 104 match reports in me.

I can give you some football news of a kind, which is that Scotland are almost certainly fucked now. They need the other third placed teams to do badly, and as each group's final games are played the third placed teams do better and better, or if they don't the fourth placed team wins and jumps into third with a better goal difference than Scotland.

It's your own fault, Scotland, you threw it away against Brazil. If you're playing Brazil and you're Scotland, you don't play it out from the back, you kick it a long way away and get yourselves into two lines of four plus the keeper and a couple of spares to go wherever Vinicius Junior is going. Your goal isn't to win the game, it's to get out of it with a tolerable goal difference. By all means sing your little song about that time you sent the English home to think again, but don't fool yourselves, football isn't Bannockburn and Brazil aren't Edward II so you need to get it sung and put it out of your mind before kickoff. This whole thing has become your Brexit, and beer, noise and nationalism are coping strategies rather than strategies in the wider sense. Think on, or more precisely think again.

[STOP PRESS: From looking at my traffic stats, it seems likely that some of you are getting notifications when I do minor edits of typos in previous posts. Given that I often find myself doing this very early in the morning, there is a distinct possibility that I am making your devices ping when you're trying to sleep. Sorry about this.]



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