What’s wrong with this World Cup? Let’s just say it’s substandard. And enough of this sugar-coating about the Japanese!

I have survived the weekend’s utterly forgettable opening rounds of the World Cup, but I will not bore you with the highly sophisticated analyses you have already read everywhere about Morocco looking like Brazil and Brazil looking like any old Ancelotti side but without any strong centre-forwards, or about the “surprise” (but why, exactly?) of Turkey being beaten by Australia. England are playing tomorrow, and last Friday those Americans gave us a ‘welcome’ by taking our footballs and boots from a van parked outside the training ground in Kansas City. We should still have enough, though, just as I should have enough alcohol to get me through another match involving Curaçao and Cape Verde. I am not sure, though, whether I will be able to cope with the flood of rhetoric about Japan. All it took was for the Asian national team to play their first match for us to be inundated with articles, reels and videos identical to those from four years ago – about the Japanese cleaning the stadium where their team played, about the players leaving the changing rooms tidy, and about the fans in Tokyo celebrating in the streets but only when the traffic lights are green; when they turn red, they go back onto the pavements. What’s worse is the way you report on this in the Italian media, sighing about how lovely it would be if your own countrymen behaved like that too, whereas they always stand out as rowdy, pizza-and-spaghetti-loving mandolin-players. (continued on page two)

Even more predictable than the praise for the Japanese people’s good manners is the video of the Germany v Greece match featuring the Monty Python philosophers, posted by everyone who wants to appear a little superior to the vulgarity of those 22 men in their underpants kicking a ball about, yet who don’t mind coming across as sufficiently radical-pop to joke about football and culture. Enough already, thank you. I must, however, agree with La Gazzetta for once, and with its polite analysis of what’s working and what isn’t in this World Cup. I would have been more concise by saying that it’s basically rubbish. More teams means more money, more votes for Infantino and more ad breaks, but also more dreadful matches and completely skewed groups: any team facing Jordan or Curaçao is bound to have a better goal difference than one drawn in a group with Croatia and Ghana (to name a random group, of course), and we, forced to watch it all, will suffer greater testicular swelling than those who manage to avoid it all. Let’s not be surprised if the stadiums aren’t all sold out. Even though FIFA says it isn’t true – that the tickets have been sold – it’s just that the fans are standing in the aisles rather than in the stands. Of course, afterwards they go to the pub and order still water.