Day 5

After taking a day to recover from the Durban disaster, I can now
enjoy without anger tonight's games:

New Zealand-Slovakia: god help us if the kiwis pull off this one. The
bragging rights may be temporary after Italy and Paraguay bring them
back to reality but it would be unbearable.

Ivory Coast-Portugal: probably the sexiest contest of the first round
of group games. Drogba is back and CR9 gets to justify his existence
in the big stage after Messi's sublime display.

Brazil-Nth Korea: Dunga has been asked to marry panache and defensive
pragmatism, a bit like asking Radiohead to do a song with Mariah Carey. Expect a history lesson in the vein of 1994, where there
was no velvet glove in the iron fist. Duplicate the comments re CR9
for resident showboat Robinho, who will be playing Marty Feldman style
with one eye on the ball and the other roaming the crowd for Barca
president Joan Laport.

Have officially banished SEN from my car sound system after their
cumulative display of ill-informed crap re wc2010.

GP