Back from three days in Wiesbaden, a charming German spa town lacking only air conditioning. Even in this bourgeois and somewhat genteel place World Cup fever was in the air. And Big Sam was in the area, discussing tactics with Phil Gartside and other Bolton backroom staff outside a restaurant on Goldgasse on Monday night. Mr. Allardyce was kind enough to have his photo taken with my mate Murray and a couple of other eagle-eyed Premiership followers. And if he was rather more interested in a nice glass of red wine than the borefest that was Ukraine vs. Switzerland, well who can blame him?
On a recent trip to Luxembourg for an international one-act play competition, the peace of the charming town of Ettelbruck was routinely and alternately shattered either by a) packs of weekend bikers (lawyers, doctors, etc) roaring up and down the main street on their Harleys, or b) farmers racing from field to field in large tractors, harvesters and other pieces of farm machinery in a desperate attempt to get as much work done as possible on the first sunny day for weeks. Luxembourg, is a rather strange and gnomic place at the best of times, appropriately known only for its banking industry and EU bureaucrats, so the surreal experience of watching bike after bike, tractor after tractor tear past our al fresco dining table was both utterly surreal and yet totally in keeping with the spirit of the place.
In its infinite wisdom Fifa has decided once again to use football's showpiece event as a test ground for rule changes and a new match ball with an unpredictable flightpath. No doubt the same kind of chaos that we saw in the early rounds of USA '94 awaits in Germany over the next few weeks.
