This article in The Guardian however did stick in my craw – yet another wormy diatribe from an ivory tower dweller about our good old friends the Romany people and the rather unfortunate news that the French government has finally started to crack down on their itinerant and criminal behaviour. So Sarko and Co. have finally woken up and realised that something needs to be done – resulting in the usual hysterical bleating from the usual circle of do-gooder scribblers.

What really gets me about journalists like Ethel Brooks, who decribes herself as an “US Romany” – whatever that may mean; I have never myself heard of Romany communities in the United States – is that they are more than welcome to house these people themselves. Give them a plot in your back garden, a room in your house, even a tarpaulin to attach to the shed in the back garden. Give them your money so that they don’t need to beg or send their children out to go a-pickpocketing. I could go on.

No, France’s actions do not constitute “state persecution” of anybody: it is simply an exercise in the removal of human effluence, an action that is well overdue. As far as I am concerned the removal of these people is no different from putting out the bins. If this sounds cruel, well so be it. I have seen these people in action all over Eastern Europe and there is a clear and glaringly obvious reason why they are disliked there with an almost visceral intensity; their flooding westwards is causing a similar rise in resentment here, too.

Twenty years ago the gypsy was some sort of mythical creature – the ruddy and gap-toothed violin-playing patriarch who would shoe your horse in his spare time, the loud yet happy matriarch who would be married off at the age of fourteen to breed, and the army of grubby little kids who might occasionally nick an apple from the market. They were rough and slightly primitive, but you didn’t have much to fear from them: it was all a bit Blytonesque. Remote and exotic – though perhaps not in an entirely good way – characters who could be found in the pages of a childrens’ book.

The reality is far from this rather idealistic picture however. It would not be an exaggeration to describe the vast majority of Eastern European Romanies as a form of human parasite, much like a flea that invades a host to do little more than breed and suck its blood. These people provide no great benefit to society and the world around them, and instead destroy whatever they encounter. Quite simply, if something is not firmly anchored to the ground, your Romany “businessman” will appropriate it and sell it.

Here’s the sorry tale. A young Romany – more than likely driving without tax, insurance and probably while drunk (something these sneaky journalists never bother to investigate) – evades a police roadblock. He is shot and killed. Well, boo-bally-hoo. The police didn’t shoot this individual because he was a Romany; they shot him because he was a criminal. The response would have been the same had the driver been a Frenchman, a Rwandan or a Martian. Cue rioting, violence and the flooding of this filth into previously peaceful communities. I can at a very firm push understand their attacking the police station, but a bakery, for pity’s sake. A bakery – hardly the local gathering point of the local anti-Romany hate committee.

Is it no wonder that the government has finally pulled its finger out if its collective derrière and decided to act?

Every time I read one of these bleating articles by one of these left-wing clowns with little better to scrawl about, I want to haul them out of their little bubble and throw them head first into some urban hellhole; the following just leaves me breathless:

This is the first time France has seen protests by Roma youth taking the form of violent disturbances; the current rioting was similar in substance, though smaller in scale, to the immigrant-led 2005 riots that broke out across France’s suburbs. Rather than sympathy for the families who lost their sons, or an apology for the police killings, the protests and riots were met with immediate state violence, expulsion and criminalisation.

What the hell? If these rioters had decided to stay at home and employ some form of reason instead engaging in wanton violence and destruction, nobody would have been killed. Why should the police have to apologise or express sympathy with the families of criminals? As for “criminalising” these people, well this has to be a joke – if I were to go out and throw a brick through a shop window, I would not need anyone else to “criminalise” me – I would have criminalised myself the moment I picked up the brick with the intention of throwing it.

It goes on:

France is not alone in its attack against its own Romany citizens and those of other EU member states. Leaders all over Europe have found it expedient to attack Roma as recessions have hit, political scandals have loomed or other kinds of threats to state power have emerged. Indeed, Sarkozy seems to have been taking lessons from his conservative counterpart in Italy, Silvio Berlusconi whose government has increasingly focused on Roma as targets of state violence and everyday xenophobia. Similar things are happening in places ranging from Slovakia to Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey.

Wrong. The governments of these countries are not “attacking” Romanies for the sake of it, but for that fact that they are – even down to the smallest child that is able to walk – criminals. I have seen these people in action. As a somewhat naïve visitor on my first of many forays into post-Communist Europe in 1993, I was truly flabbergasted when I encountered them – initially on a random basis when sightseeing. It look less than a week for me to determine which areas to avoid and which people to keep well downwind, though nothing of this was ever mentioned in the plethora of glossy guidebooks that waxed lyrical about Romany culture and babbled on about “racist” Czechs. When some of us students finally met one of these “racist” Czechs, he was an urbane, educated schoolteacher who simply confirmed all of the conclusions I had drawn myself in the space of a week.

Italian president Silvio Berlusconi may be the political equivalent of Jordan – vacuous and orange – but his government’s action against the horde of Romany interlopers has little or nothing to do with his wanting to look popular; it has everything to do with stemming what is a rising wave of crime created by gypsy criminals who are in Italy only on account of their being able to obtain a Romanian or Bulgarian passport. Even the Romanian government have suggested that the Italians are far too accommodating – not that they want these people back as their own crime rates have plummeted since joining the European Union. I don’t blame them; I’d reckon Bucharest is a lot safer to walk around at night than it was when I last visited in the late 1990s.

The Guardian’s resident “US Romany” signs off with the following:

Romany people should be granted the full rights of citizens to political participation, education, healthcare, freedom of movement, freedom against violence, dignity and respect.

Erm, OK. I’d just respond with the following:

Romany people should be granted the full rights to political participation like anyone else, so long as they attempt to integrate with the mainstream population, choose to make use of educational facilities that are offered, do not send their children out to beg in the streets, do not destroy other peoples’ property, refrain from engaging in violence and petty theft and treat their enviroment with dignity and respect – instead of turning every place they happen to congregate into a shithole.

It says something that this silly little man cannot differentiate between something that was a minor distraction – a bit of fun, to wit – and a serious belief system. Unless, of course, he believes that all of us here in the West are now adherents of a new-fangled and mysterious octopus cult, whose tentacles are ready to envelope and take over the entire world, covering all of its foes in clouds of black ink.

Or something.

…the Iranian president accused the octopus of spreading “western propaganda and superstition” … “Those who believe in this type of thing cannot be the leaders of the global nations that aspire, like Iran, to human perfection, basing themselves in the love of all sacred values,” he said.

Hmm. Says the man who is one of the leading mouthpieces for a mediaeval political movement masquerading as a religion that believes in… Human perfection? Sacred values? Oh never mind.

This cannot be said for a lot of what one can find online, where the ongoing battle be the first to hit Google with the killer headline has given way to shoddy writing, a glut of spelling and grammar gaffes and research that can best be described as piss-poor. It is as if the responsibility has been handed over to the work experience student or, worse still, the illiterate office tea monkey.

Take this Telegraph Online piece on Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, for example. The article itself tells us nothing new, and reads like a potted version of Stauffenberg’s Wikipedia entry puffed up with a few factoids gleaned from the Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie; through its rather misleading title, it offers the idea that the body found in Berlin-Wilmersdorf is that of Hitler’s would-be assassin, though when one actually gets to the meat of the story it is revealed that no positive identification has actually been made.

An historical society said it will apply to disinter the victims in the coming months to ascertain whether they are those of Stauffenberg and his helpers.

So what they are really saying is that we do not know yet – with the facts not quite hitting the same dramatic height as the sensationalist headline.

Curiously, I had always believed that Stauffenberg’s body had been cremated by the Nazis not long after his execution in order to prevent any burial site being turned into a martyr’s shrine; my feeling is that this story is just an attempt to puff up the Count’s legend on and around the 66th anniversary of the assassination attempt, but then it could just be me being mean-spirited.

The thing that struck me though was not so much the article itself but the image accompanying it – for me, the ultimate proof that the piece was put together and then approved by people who clearly don’t know or even care that much about the period. The figure in the image, wearing the uniform of an Untersturmführer in the Waffen-SS, is in fact Léon Dégrelle – the man often described as Hitler’s favourite Belgian.

The new hero of 20.07.1944? Léon Dégrelle.

One could possibly argue that this goes beyond a mere gaffe, in that Leon Dégrelle is man that could best be described as Stauffenberg’s polar opposite. I am not going to bother providing a biography: that’s what the Internet is for after all.

Of course, just in case the folks at Telegraph Towers finally twig and replace the image, I have saved a screen shot to preserve the moment. At least the Daily Mail sourced a correct photograph – though they fail to get the cigar on account of their shoehorning in an image of the Cruisemeister to satisfy their more plebian readership…

Journalists, eh?

Long have we had to put up with the constant droning wail from disproportionally loud media  mouthpieces of the so-called chosen people: they are forever being persecuted, and hiding behind every little corner is a potential persecutor. Polish politicians. German industrialists. Hungarian football supporters. A boatload of Turkish peace campaigners. British academics. Barack Obama – when he is not putting on his “Baruch Obama” mask. The otherwise insignificant government of New Zealand, who have voted to outlaw the way they slaughter animals. And so on and so forth – oy vey.

Switch now to that place I will for ever more describe as that “shitty little country” (hereafter slc™) – merci, Daniel Bernard – and the story of Sabbar Kashur, an Arab man found guilty of rape having had consensual sex with a Jew.

Did you read that right? Well, yes. I am not going to comment any further on the story itself except to say that if one were to go back some seventy years and switch “Arab” for “Jew” and “Jew” for “German”, we’d have the makings of a multi-million dollar Hollywood Holocaust blockbuster here. We could even get rape-expert Roman Polanski to direct it.

In fact, we have actually had a story. In Europa, Europa, a film based on a rather unbelievable life of one Solomon Perel, we see our young protagonist move from one part of occupied Eastern Europe to the next – and expertly changing his identity as he goes along. One moment he is a communist youth leader, the next a member of the Hitlerjugend. During his spell in the elite ranks of the HJ – where he goes to painful extremes to hide his origins – he gets to have his way with a local German girl played by Julie Delpy.

OK, Madmoiselle Delpy looks rather fetching in that Bund Deutscher Mädel uniform – starched white blouse, tight black ankle-length skirt, you get the idea – but that’s really not the point; if she had managed to discover Perel’s real identity, she would have run a mile – in fact, straight to the local office of the Sicherheitsdienst. Rather than the ending we get, our hero would have been charged with rape and shipped off on the first train east – having first been made to play a final barrack-yard game with his erstwhile HJ comrades.

Solomon Perel: celluloid hero who deceived the Nazis. Sabbar Kashur: eighteen months in jail.

The case against Sabbah Kashur is just bullshit anyway – if the “victim” had made even the slightest attempt to get to know the man properly in her pursuit of a “serious relationship” – roflmao – his identity ruse would have been rumbled long before she had managed to cut the hole in the sheet.

The sex therefore was obtained under false pretences, the judges said. “If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated,” they added.

Erm, if the woman truly believed the accused was interested in a “serious romantic relationship” – Jewish bachelor or not – she would not have agreed to do the deed in a “nearby building”. I would have have just laughed her out of the court.

This theatre is just another display of the double-standards and hypocrisy for which the slc™ has become famous for; it has become so ingrained that even a judge cannot see it. As for comparing the slc™ in any way with Nazi Germany – ooh, noo. That’s anti-Semitic, donchaknow.

“I’ve been out to Afghanistan and I think I understand much better as a result … why a lot of Muslim women want to wear the burka.

“For them, the burka confers dignity, it’s their choice, they choose to go out dressed in a burka. I understand that it is a different culture from mine but the fact is in this country women want to be free to choose … whether or not to go out in the morning wearing a burka.”

So, Mrs Spelman took her lessons about this nonsense in Afghanistan, eh? It’s simply laughable. I cannot claim to know much about the inner workings of Afghan society, but one thing for me is clear – many of these women do not “choose” to wear a Hallowe’en costume that provides limited vision. They do not “choose” to shuffle about in temperatures upward of forty degress Celsius clad from head to toe. They do so because some archaic convention compels them to, lest they elicit a reaction that can range from leering stares to physical beatings from crowds of strangers.

Some dignity.

Second-class travel, second-class citizens...

Many among the political elite truly believe that democracy has won through in Afghanistan, and that the wearing of the Burqa has suddenly become a matter of personal choice – when the horrid truth is that society in this mediæval hellhole is much the same as it was when the Taliban were running the show. Rather than make their own observations and draw their own asinine conclusions, the likes of Caroline Spelman should talk to the soldiers in the field, who – as mentioned in the article – gauge the level of threat from the Taliban in an area by assessing whether local women feel the need to cover themselves.

Note the key statement – “feel the need to” – which has little or nothing to do with personal choice.

In any case, what goes on in some bombed-out toilet in the back of beyond has little to do with how we operate in this country – to even imply that we can “learn” things from such a country is perhaps even more moronic than suggesting that the burqa is an instrument of female empowerment.

Then there is this:

“One of the things we pride ourselves on in this country is being free, and being free to choose what you wear is a part of that, so banning the burka is absolutely contrary I think to what this country is all about.”

Of course, in a free society one should be allowed to choose what they want to wear; I have no issue with the general argument. However, it only really works when we are talking about things that do not contradict these basic concepts of freedom: if a woman wishes to wear a miniskirt, a sleeveless top or even some morbid-looking leather and lace gothic ensemble, it truly is her personal choice – there are no cultural driving forces behind the decision, only her genuine desire to wear what she wants.

The burqa however symbolises something else entirely: it represents a particularly odious strand of a regressive culture that for the most part rails against the very idea of personal freedom. The woman that wears a burqa does so not because she truly wants to, but somehow feels compelled to by cultural mores that should by rights have no part in Western society. The burqa has little to do with about empowerment and everything to do with disenfranchisement; those who wear it are not expressing solidarity with simple religious beliefs, but with a fundamentalist ideology that uses the Muslim religion to achieve its own ends.

Rather than pander to this nonsense by offering mealy-mouthed politically correct soundbites, our politicians should be encouraging these women to cast off this cultural millstone.

While I did expect them to adopt the same negative approach that had been so successful in their quarter-final against Brazil, I didn’t expect the Dutch to be so dirty. Referee Howard Webb ended up dishing out enough cards to fill a shelf at his local branch of Clinton’s – fourteen yellow cards including a second one that resulted in the dismissal of Dutch defender Johnny Heitinga – but it could have been many, many more. The Dutch were lucky not to end the first half with ten men, and Nigel de Jong should certainly have been dismissed for his chest-high assault on Xabi Alonso: in the land that gave birth to Christiaan Barnard, it was little more than a crude attempt at open heart surgery. The match was not so much a tactical battle but simply a battle. It was bitty, fragmented, and deserved a penalty shoot-out – though it’s hard not to say that the result was the right one. The Dutch clearly came into the game with the same mindset as Carlos Bilardo’s Argentina side had done in 1990, and got exactly what they deserved.

The post-match analysis saw BBC pundit Alan Hansen in raptures – I couldn’t even begin to count the number of adjectives he threw out in describing Spain’s performance. Maybe I’ll tot them up tonight when I watch it again. OK, the right team won the final and Hansen finally got to have his orgasm – but let’s be blunt and say that for all their pretty passing and ability, Spain scored only eight goals in their seven games – the lowest number of goals scored by a World Cup winning side ever, and by a considerable distance. Their tika-taka was pretty to watch for ten minutes, but after that it always became rather tedious; if Germany had won all their knock-out matches 1-0 – even with their new-found fast-paced approach – Hansen would have put on his best sour-puss face and simply rolled out the well-worn terms like “solid, boring, efficient. machine-like”. Und so weiter.

Well I’m sorry Alan, but for all of their well-timed coordination and jiggery-pokery in midfield, Spain fitted this bill perfectly. Solid, boring, efficient, machine-like – doing just about enough to pass the opposition to death and win every game by the odd goal, with the exception of Honduras, who were rubbish. Then there was their constant imaginary card-waving, gesticulating and sneaky simulation. Didn’t notice that, did you Hansen you myopic dolt? Did you not see your wet dream hero Andres Iniesta fall almost immediately under the slightest challenge and escape a booking following what was a truly girly swing at one of those horrid ankle-hacking Dutchmen? Had Webb and his crew not had a Should have gone to SpecsSavers moment – first for not giving the Dutch a corner after an obvious deflection and then calling play back for a two-man sandwich squeeze on winger Elijero Elia – the game would have in all likelihood gone to penalties.

Poor Howard Webb. He clearly tried his best in what was a truly awful game, but ended up being criticised from all aides. First there was Dutch coach Bert van Marwijk, who felt that the nine yellow cards dished out to his team was harsh – clearly forgetting the fact that Mark van Bommel’s usual shenanigans went unpunished (OK, I love the guy when he’s in a Bayern shirt but hey…), Arjen Robben’s constant petulant whinging was bizarrely tolerated (ditto…) and his only presenting a yellow card for that tackle by de Jong. On the other hand the Spanish media laid into the official for not cracking down hard enough on the men in orange:

“Holland were able to count on an unexpected ally: referee Howard Webb, who allowed the Dutch to get away with brutal fouls time and time again”. (El Mundo Deportivo)

“He even handed out the cards equally until the situation was beyond repair. He was on the verge of destroying the final”. (Marca)

Ouch.

Still, when all is said and done the fact remains that Spain won the World Cup, and that’s all that really counts – though who knows how Germany might have played had Thomas Müller been on the field in that semi-final. And who knows how things might have panned out had the referee spotted Sergio Ramos‘ crafty knee-nudge on Mesut Özil. Who knows.

A Spanish victory had been on the cards ever since Paul der Kraken-Orakel had called it – it completed a perfect eight out of eight, with the seventh being Germany’s 3-2 win over a gallant Uruguay in the third and fourth place play-off match – which was probably the best game of the tournament and a final that might have been.

Both sides hit the crossbar once – with Diego Forlán’s last-second free-kick almost taking the game into extra-time at 3-3 – but here was a game played in a decent spirit and with both sides going for the result. Of course, there was little at stake save pride and the prize of a bronze medal – but both sides went for the jugular in a fixture that would usually be passed off as meaningless. Thomas Müller again showed what a revelation he has been by smartly latching onto a parry by the Uruguayan ‘keeper from a stinging shot from Bastian Schweinsteiger, Forlán showed again how underrated is he is with a stunning strike to put the Celeste 2-1 up, Marcell Jansen showed that he can do a Klose by nodding in a pin-point Jérôme Boateng cross, and captain-for-the-future Sami Khedira wrapped things up with a Ballack-style header.

For all the pitter-patter about Spanish tika-taka-tapas, the best players were on show in this game: Schweinsteiger, who has been a revelation since being made boss of Germany’s dynamic midfield; Özil, who despite having a quieter game than usual showed those sparks of magic that helped tear both England and Argentina apart; Forlán, who showed that not making the grade at Manchester United is not the end of the world.

Then there is Thomas Müller.

The Bayern starlet has been touted as the find of the tournament, and is a guarateed shoo-in for the Best Young Player award, which was won by Lukas Podolski in 2006. However I find it bizarre that he was only nominated for this prize, and not even put on the shortlist for the Golden Ball as player of the tournament which was won by Diego Forlán. As well as providing a youthful dynamism to the German side, Müller also ended up winner of the Golden Boot with five goals and three assists, following in the footsteps of Miroslav Klose. While some have questioned the use of assists as a tie-breaker in determining the winner of the award – Forlán, Wesley Sneijder and David Villa also scored five goals – it is perhaps worth noting that Müller scored his five goals in six games while the others needed the full set of seven. As for Klose, it was painfully unlucky that the combination of a bad back and flu kept him out of a game where he might have equalled or broken Ronaldo’s World Cup goalscoring record; he’ll have to make do with sitting alongside the legendary Gerd Müller on fourteen, which I suppose is no bad claim to make.

So it was a rubbish final, but this is a World Cup I will remember as a supporter of the Nationalmannschaft. A fresh, dynamic approach with a young team that already looks primed for future success. An intelligent and astute coach. The first team since the legendary Brazil side of 1970 to score four goals in a match on three separate occasions. Sixteen goals, double the amount scored by the eventual winners and four more than anybody else. Light years from the old-style approach of 2002, and a definite step up from 2006.

Roll on Euro 2012!

One might say that the Germany team that had impressed so many didn’t turn up in Durban on Wednesday, but truth be told the Spanish side didn’t let them. Jogi’s Jungs could have perhaps shown a little more courage in going forward, and perhaps they showed far too much respect for what was a well-drilled but not unbeatable outfit. Unlike the Euro 2008 final, there was genuine belief that this young side could pick off the Spaniards by focussing on their weak points, but the end result was pretty much the same as that night in Vienna.

Germany did have more than a decent case for a penalty just before half time – with replays showing Mesut Özil being tapped just inside the box – but even here it was the Spanish technique that won the day. Up against anyone else Özil would have won the penalty as the defender would have probably gone for the traditional slide – but not Sergio Ramos, who employed a technique clearly honed to perfection – the subtle knee-nudge. When executed well, this technique has the effect of making the fouled player look as though he is diving – hence the referee awarding nothing and waving play on.

That said, I had no problems with the referee, Hungarian Viktor Kassai. While one might argue that with another referee Germany might have had a penalty and Sergio Ramos might have ended up getting two yellow cards (one for the tap on Özil, the other for a nasty stamp on Podolski) the same principle could also have been applied to a few tasty fouls meted out by Philipp Lahm and Jérôme Boateng. What pleased me most was that Kassai was consistent, and allowed the game to take a natural course without the need to reach for his pocket – both teams were treated equally in what was by far one of the cleanest games of the tournament.

Many of those brought up on a diet of Alan Hansen have long believed that Germans are machine-like types with no sense of humour, but prior to the Spain game someone in Deutschland knocked up a very simple – and very funny – take on the match. It puts all of those creative types in the British media obsessed with Lancaster Bombers and tin helmets to shame.

It didn't quite turn out this way, but...

I feel like a glass of chilled Spanish orange juice now.

As for the reaction after the match, everyone in Germany took things in their stead. This young squad had performed way beyond pre-tournament expectations, and the way they reacted in defeat was a credit to them and German football. Win or lose in the third-place playoff match against Uruguay, they will be welcomed back as heroes. Of course, the same cannot be said of the England side, most of whom are now gracing the front pages of the tabloids for reasons other than football.

Which brings me to the curious attitude shown by a lot of the British media after Germany’s defeat to Spain. At last some good news for England fans: Tears flow in Germany as Spain shatter their World Cup dreams screams the rather predictable Daily Mail Good news for England fans? How so? Does Germany’s defeat change the fact that the England team were a piss-poor side that got walloped 4-1 in the second round?

It’s a curious take on the concept of Schadenfreude – where you revel not in your victory over your adversary, but in your adversary’s defeat at the hands of some third party. Perhaps these England fans should slick back their hair and stock up on Tesco value paella on Sunday. The truth is that such headlines only confirm their status as a laughing stock: the fact remains that in Germany Joachim Löw’s young squad are heroes, while Capello’s bunch of infighting misfits are still a bunch of overpaid primadonnas.

It is laughable in the extreme.

I am not sure what our tentacled friend Paul is going to say, but I am predicting that Spain will win a very tight final by their favourite score of 1-0. As for the third-place play-off, the Kraken-Orakel has plumped for the Nationalmannschaft. I will just be hoping that Miroslav Klose can overhaul Ronaldo’s record on Saturday – my birthday – and give the German fans one more thing to smile about.

Meanwhile Caroline is buying sushi tonight – and I have requested some tako. That’s octopus to all of you not in the know. Roll on Euro 2012.

So it’s Spain tomorrow, in a repeat of the European Championship final of two years ago.

Nobody thought this young and untried team could make it past the quarter-finals, and many commentators in Germany had suggested that the Argentina game would have been the Endstation. With that stunning 4-0 win however, the form books have all been torn up – and many have now started to believe that this new and refashioned Nationalelf can go on and win the whole thing; on top of that, Bayern hitman Miroslav Klose is also well-set to break buck-toothed legend Ronaldo’s record as the World Cup’s all-time top goalscorer.

I am more confident of the Nationalmannschaft beating Spain that I was in 2008, but the fact remains that no matter how bad the Spaniards have looked during this tournament they are still capable of lighting their own blue touchpaper at any time. Up to this point they appear to have been carried by their striker and current top goalscorer David Villa and have had a fair dose of good fortune – not least in their quarter-final against Paraguay – but there is this constantly nagging feeling that Fernando Torres might suddenly remember how to score goals.

Italy were seriously underestimated in 2006, and it would be foolish to rule Spain out – as far as I am concerned they are still the favourites, like Argentina were prior to their wonderfully memorable 4-0 thrashing.

Bye bye, Maradona!

Anyway, I am not going to start making predictions at this stage.

The second round and quarter-finals were witness to a barrel-load of controversy, starting with the goal that never was during the England-Germany game. Naturally, I was pleasantly surprised to see the linesman wave play on – but glad that it didn’t really make much difference in the end. Admittedly the momentum of the game would have swing in England’s direction, but even at 2-1 down they showed a distinct lack of tactical awareness in pressing too hard too soon. It should have been 7-2 anyway.

The Frank Lampard “goal” was still hovering in the memory cavity when Argentina scored from what was clearly an offside position in their game against Mexico – with the controversy heightened by the fact that some dingbat allowed it to be shown immediately on the big screen in the stadium. Cue the obvious recriminations, Argies scuffling on the touchline, and more loud calls for video evidence.

Personally I wouldn’t have an issue with using television as a fourth official, but to make it work it needs to be universal – and this, perhaps, is FIFA’s issue with it. It is one thing having a battery of high-tech cameras at the World Cup finals, but in order to be part of the “rules” this technology would need to be applied in every single FIFA-sanctioned qualifying game. It may not carry the big prize itself or generate the billions of viewers, but to the countries concerned any match can have its own controversial incident at any time; an Oceania group qualifying match between the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu is just as important for these countries as a quarter final game for either Mexico or England. If technology were to be implemented only in the final tournament, it would be grossly unfair on those teams that might otherwise have benefited from it in qualifying. It would also be hugely expensive.

FIFA chairman Sepp Blatter’s argument is that human beings should be responsible rather than technology, but the truth is that the game really doesn’t need to go down the road where every decision can be questioned by having a fourth official in front of a video screen: it just needs more human beings. Two linesmen on each side of the field, and a further couple of officials stationed on each goal line, as has been experimented by UEFA. In other words a system that can easily be applied universally, without the need for expensive video technology.

Not even video technology or half a dozen additional officials would have changed the story of what has probably the most controversial moment of the tournament however – the elimination of Ghana by Uruguay, and the incident involving Uruguay’s strike-cum-keeper, Luis Suárez.

It’s a difficult one to make a judgement call on: I have now read countless blogs have now laid into Suárez labelling him as a cheat, while other more sympathetic commentators have lauded him as some sort of modern footballing folk hero. Truth be told, nine-hundred and ninety-nine players out of every thousand would have handled the ball that day; it’s the last kick of the game and the ball is heading towards the net, and you know you are never going to get the required elevation to knock it away with your head.

The rules were then correctly applied: Suárez was shown the inevitable red card and dismissed, and Ghana were rightfully awarded the spot-kick. It wasn’t Suárez’s fault that Asamoah Gyan went on to hit the bar.

It may look like I am sympathising with this clear act of gamesmanship – and that is what is was, not cheating – but honestly I am not. Suárez played within the rules – which were applied to the letter – and walked off the field of play without complaint. Had he tried to conceal the handball, or if the referee had failed to spot it, then there would have been an injustice. As it happens, Ghana only have themselves to blame for fluffing the penalty, and then falling apart in the shoot-out that followed. Quite simply, they had their chance and they blew it. Twice. Had Gyan scored, Suárez’s last-minute save would have disappeared down the memory hole; indeed there would have been complaints from the other side that the Ghanaian free-kick that led to the handball incident had been earned with a move that Greg Louganis would have been proud of.

I had wanted Ghana to win the game, but by the time I had endured the painful post-mortem from the unofficial Ghana fan club – for that read the ITV pundit panel and its comedy cheerleader Marcel Desailly – I was glad Uruguay won. I just wish Suarez would have kept his mouth shut though – I would have extended his ban to two matches for his post-match babbling about his being the new “hand of God”. It’s one thing to save your team by stretching the rules; it’s quite another to rub your opponents’ nose in it afterwards.

But then Latin American footballers aren’t exactly known for their dignified behaviour. They have always preferred brash and bellicose.

Brash is a term one could have applied to Brazil during their quarter-final with the Dutch; when they had the lead it was all plain sailing, but when they fell behind everything went to pieces. Oh how I laughed. The fact is that I cannot stand Brazil, though this probably has less to do with the team themselves than the overpaid pundits who almost inevitably find themselves in a orgasmic frenzy every time someone clad in yellow performs a meaningless stepover.

We have the likes of Alan Hansen like some old record continually describing the bright and skillful German side as “dour, efficient, organised”, yet this same Hansen – who to be honest is the last person who should be describing anybody or anything else as “dour” – always seems to get into an excited flap when some Brazilian fullback with a silly name penetrates the solid wall that is the North Korean defence and scores a freak goal when he is clearly looking to cross. “Samba Magic”, we hear. Like hell it is – Brazil were probably one of the dullest teams in the tournament, and I’d rather watch no-shots-at-goal New Zealand than that pile of dunga.

Well, Hansen will be Hansen. He’s like some irritating Scottish fly you just want to swat. You can try ignoring him, but the monotone droning still manages to stab remorselessly at your head like some out of tune vuvuzela. Poor. Four-Four-Two. Poor. Only a couple of these German players will get into the England side. Messi. Kaká. Messi. Kaká. Messi. Kaká. Mertesacker is poor. Mertesacker is poooor. Mertesacker is poooooor.

Yawn.

And all this from a man whose only real contribution to the World Cup finals stage was his clattering into teammate Willie Miller to gift the Soviet Union’s Ramiz Shengelia a goal in 1982. (Have a look some 4:50 minutes in).

Poor, Hansen. Very Pooooooooooooooooooooor.

The almost pitiably dull Alan Shearer (what it is about pundits called Alan?) and chief clown Lineker aren’t much better; in fact, if Spitting Image was still being aired they’d probably have a field day with these three licence payer-funded twits in their expensive custom-built revolving Cape Town studio.

I mentioned it at the top of the article, but I am not going to say any more about Germany’s performance against Argentina. For a start, I am still trying to get over the fact that they pumped four goals past everybody’s favourites and reduced poor Leo to a gibbering Messi.

I am clearly being deluded again, of course.

There is clearly no sympathy to be had for the aggressive party in this case, Darius Antoine. Anyone who would carry a knife in his car and then use it in such a horrific manner is clearly in need of healthy jail term. However, this is a sad tale that might well have been avoided had the victims themselves displayed good manners and common sense.

The whole incident kicked off when a friend of the two victims hit Antoine’s car with a lolly stick; OK, there was no actual damage to the car and Antoine’s reaction was clearly beyond the scope of acceptable or civilised behaviour, but one has to ask how and why the lolly stick actually came into contact with the car in the first instance. Did it land there by accident? Did it hit the car’s windscreen as a result of some mysterious and magical force? Erm, no. It hit the car as a result of some stupid investment banker’s inability to locate a bin in which to place his litter.

I have a particular dislike of people who wantonly throw litter onto the street; after all, it is a crisp packet here and a lolly stick there that makes much of this country look like a shithole. I’d just love to be able to make the perpetrators of this urban crime pick up their detritus with their teeth, before arming them with a toothbrush to remove the blobs of cemented chewing gum that makes the street look like the brutally flayed skin of some monochromatic leopard.

As cruel as it sounds I am finding it very difficult to sympathise with the victims, who to me sound like a bunch of Hooray Henries who didn’t give a tinker’s damn about anybody else or the environment around them; the fact that they couldn’t bring themselves to apologise for the incident, pick up their litter and move on says it all. It clearly doesn’t justify their being stabbed, but hey – it’s their incredibly bad fortune that they happened to run into someone who clearly gave less of a shit than them.

The moral of the story is: to avoid seeing your friends being stabbed by some random nutter, put your litter in a bloody bin.

More on the World Cup later.

So, what do we have then? A wonderfully-illustrated photo of the German World Cup squad with certain players marked out for special observation – something that looks suspiciously like one of those grubby propaganda leaflets one might find clogging the drains in some of the grottier parts of the country. Contrary to the angle being tapped by this pair of disingenuous hacks, the decision by the German government to change basic citizenship rules was not part of some plot engineered by Kaiser Franz to strengthen the Nationalmannschaft, but a well overdue reaction to what had become a major sticking point in German society – issues that go way beyond the ethnic composition of the national football squad.

The fact that German football has been able to benefit from these societal changes is little more than a happy by-product, something that no doubt rankles with your average cauliflower-headed tabloid scribbler given that Germany now has a naturally talented youth base to go with its tried and tested methodology – an enviable mix of modern flair and good old-fashioned German discipline.

Not that the fellows at the Daily Mail give a tinker’s damn about politics or history – if it provides even the slightest opportunity to take a jab at ze Charmans, it’s a project worth pursuing. This is a publication that rolls out pointless stories about Herr Hitler for no good reason on a weekly basis just to keep its army of rooinek readers in the loop, for crying out loud.

Looking at the eleven players mentioned in the DM article, six of them were born in Germany – which pretty much kills any silly debate stone dead. We have the three Polish-born players, all of whom are ethnic Germans from Silesia – a region of eastern Germany that was handed over to Poland at the end of the war. That then leaves Marko Marin, who arrived in Germany from Bosnia-Herzegovina when he was an infant and Cacau, an unknown in the land of his birth who built up his football career in his adopted country – as opposed to being some mercenary who was not good enough to get into the seleção.

In contrast, one can look at the England cricket team which is for the most part comprised of expat South Africans with little or no connection with this country at all. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if the team talks are conducted in Afrikaans.

Hmm.