{"id":7679,"date":"2018-06-26T10:32:10","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T08:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7679"},"modified":"2018-06-26T10:32:10","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T08:32:10","slug":"2018-fifa-world-cup-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/7679\/","title":{"rendered":"2018 FIFA World Cup Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

I might have to take back what I said earlier<\/a> about the FIFA World Cup currently underway in Russia. I’d feared it would be a dreary affair but, while the standard of football hasn’t been that high, the games have certainly been good. Portugal against Spain was a cracker, with Ronaldo’s equaliser as sublime a free-kick as you’ll see. Iran gave Spain a good run, Morocco ran them ragged last night, and Iran versus Portugal was good albeit ruined by the VAR. I watched Sweden versus Germany in a pub with a solitary German and everyone else supporting Sweden; it pains me to say it, but Tony Kroos’ last minute goal was wonderful, and for that alone they deserved the win.<\/p>\n

It’s been most amusing to watch Argentina struggle against Iceland and then get thrashed by Croatia, who are looking good. Messi has long been accused of not playing well for his country and thus far in this tournament he’s been absent. France haven’t looked very impressive, but they’ve done enough and who knows what they can pull out of the bag? England have got off to a good start, and while people are downplaying their 6-1 thrashing of Panama, one must remember England traditionally struggled against the minnows and they can only play the team in front of them. I’ll miss the game against Belgium because I’ve stupidly booked myself on a flight to Thailand; even more stupidly I’d booked the return flight during the final, so I’ve had to re-book it for the next day at no small expense. Grrrr.<\/p>\n

Russia seems to be doing a good job of hosting the tournament with visitors being rather surprised to find happy, welcoming people interested in having fun instead of granite-faced thugs with shaved heads waiting to slaughter LGBTs in the streets. Not for the first time have foreigners discovered individual Russians are a lot different from how they are collectively portrayed.<\/p>\n

So in hindsight I was wrong: this tournament has been highly entertaining so far, and I look forward to the rest of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I might have to take back what I said earlier about the FIFA World Cup currently underway in Russia. I’d feared it would be a dreary affair but, while the standard of football hasn’t been that high, the games have … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7679"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7680,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7679\/revisions\/7680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}