Much as I expected, the final of the World Cup amounted to more than two hours of turgid crap, with Spain not surprisingly chalking up their favourite scoreline of 1-0. Much was made beforehand about the clash of styles; the BBC must have spent a fair packet on what seemed to be an endless stream of high-production mini-movies that punctuated the tedious pre-match pitter-patter of Messrs Lineker, Hansen, Shearer and Dixon. Everyone seemed to expect a classic, though anyone who had actually watched these two teams throughout the tournament would have known that it was going to be little more than a tedious borefest won by the odd goal in one. Read the rest of this entry »