Football Daily | The ongoing adventures of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo
Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!
While last week’s win by 10-man Bolivia over Colombia in an Air Miles World Cup qualifier might have raised a few eyebrows, it shouldn’t really have come as much of surprise. Not content with the controversial advantage playing home games at high altitude in La Paz used to give them, the Bolivians have recently and quite literally cranked things up several notches. Moving another 560m uphill, they played their last two home games more than four kilometres above sea level at the Estadio Municipal de El Alto, where the air is so thin visiting teams might as well be trying to play in outer space. Sadly for La Verde, they also have to descend the Andes to play away from home and in this week’s qualifier against the World Cup holders, they came seriously unstuck.
Re: yesterday’s Football Daily. I am now torn between wanting England to lose all their games so as to dismay those xenophobic fans and editors, or to win them all and reward the admirably composed (and well-qualified) Mr Tuchel. The latter, win-win option would have the extra merit of seeing reverse ferrets all round. And in any case, it is surely now written in the stars that England will win the next World Cup final by beating Germany thanks to a stoppage-time winner awarded by goalline technology” – Trevor Field.
It would have been interesting to see how the rag-tag, ultra-in-disguise that is the English tabloid press had reacted if Jürgen Klopp had gotten the job. As a Canadian national team supporter which previously had an Englishman (John Herdman) and now an American (Jesse Marsch) in charge – each of whom has taken the team to, for us, major successes (return to the World Cup after an absence of 36 years and the unprecedented semi-finals of Copa América 2024), I am happily unfussed by a ‘foreigner’ in charge. And we Canadians don’t judge them on whether they can sing our anthem (in two languages, no less)” – Michael Pearson.
I like Thomas Tuchel primarily because he was involved in that wonderful example of scenes we do not like to see (but really do) with Antonio Conte while manager of Chelsea. But, for the life of me, I can’t look at Herr Tuchel without thinking how much he resembles the effigy in Edvard Munch’s The Scream. And judging by the response to his appointment from the unhinged wing of the English press, I have a feeling Munch’s masterpiece is a premonition of the pressure he’s signed up for” – Colin Reed.
