All In The Game

A World Cup miscellany compiled by MARY HANNIGAN

THE AMERICANS

THE United States’ second round game against Ghana was the country’s most watched football match ever, an audience of 19.4 million beating the previous leader, the 1994 World Cup final between Italy and Brazil.

The defeat to Ghana, though, burst the enthusiasm bubble just a bit, The New York Postproducing perhaps the headline of the month with: "This sport is stupid anyway".

Landon Donovan returned home a hero, though – well, to those who had heard of him. “That was your third World Cup, wasn’t it? Did you play for another country early on,” chat-show host Regis Philbin asked him.

FRANCE . . . WHAT THEY SAID

L'Equipe:"A stink bomb that keeps on exploding."

Gervais Martel (vice president of the French Football Federation): “This situation is catastrophic – we’re in the shit.”

Liberation: “We take them to be role models for kids who have lost their way in life, but in reality they are just bling-bling traders for a sport which yesterday lost a lot of credit in France.”

L'Equipe:"Patrice Evra has muddled the role of captain with that of a gang leader."

Eric Cantona: “It’s a good thing that France came home. One more week and they would have eaten each other. It’s best to avoid cannibalism.”

ITALY . . . WHAT THEY SAID

Luciano Moggi (former Juventus general director): “We wanted to avoid Holland in the last 16 – and we did.”

Il Fatto Quotidiano: "Azzurri, the mirror of a country, a country without memory, without identity, without an idea of the future."

La Gazzetta dello Sport: "The worst Italy we have ever seen go out. It was the darkest and most terrible day in the history of Italian football. Like Dorian Gray's mirror, on this afternoon in Johannesburg we saw the picture of an old, defeated team without a style of play or any ideas, outclassed technically and physically by a modest Slovak team."

La Repubblica(report from Italy's final match, their defeat to Slovakia): "I dreamt of closing my eyes and hiding my head in my mamma's lap – had she been next to me at the stadium – like children do at the movie theatre when the film gets scary."

Gennaro Gattuso: “My farewell was shit. We must look ahead. Four years ago we were heroes. Today, we are b****cks. We are shamed. We failed. It is a debacle.”

GET OVER IT!

EVEN Thierry Henry appeared to smile when his claims for a Uruguayan handball fell on deaf ears in France’s opening group game, which ended 0-0.

We, of course, are long since over “it”, but some of the folk attending French games in South Africa appeared not to have moved on. Bless them.

ENGLAND - WHAT THEY SAID:

Richard Littlejohn ( Daily Mail): "Thank Heaven The Few didn't defend as badly as England's footballers in Bloemfontein, otherwise we'd all be speaking German."

Ken Bates (Leeds chairman): “The trouble is that England in the old days were battling bulldogs – all of a sudden they are mollycoddled little do-daas.”

Daily Mirror: "A legend turned into a myth before our eyes at the Free State Stadium yesterday. Fabio the Tyrant, Fabio the Great Dictator, Fabio the Scourge of the Baby Bentley Brigade, Fabio Our Saviour: lost in a fetid pool of disillusion and dismay."

Philipp Lahm (German captain after win over England): “We want to beat Argentina now so we can finally say we’ve beaten a big team.”

Gary Neville: “One minute they’re talking about (Fabio) Capello (above) as world class, now they need a fortnight to decide if he is the man for them after all. What are they waiting for – to see what’s in the newspapers?”

THE FRONT PAGES

URUGUAY'S journey to the semi-finals became a thing of beauty on the front pages of the country's El Paisnewspaper where, more often than not, they allowed the picture tell the story.

Their celebration of Luis Suarez’ two goals against South Korea and the quarter-final victory over Ghana, in which Sebsatian Abreu scored the winning penalty in the shoot-out, were two memorable highlights.

DODGY GOALS:

The goal that wasn't– Frank Lampard v Germany: The German press, with a hearty chuckle, described it as "revenge for 1966", while goalkeeper Manuel Neuer was having a bit of a laugh too when he said: "I saw what actually happened on the television in the doping control office. I knew it was tight – probably about two metres."

The goal that shouldn't have been– Carlos Tevez v Mexico: "I know I was offside, I know it was selfish, but as long as they say it was a goal it's okay for me and the team," said an unrepentant Tevez after his blatantly offside goal against Mexico in the last 16. Diego Maradona? Your view? "The goal looks like it was absolutely normal." Fair play.

Another goal that shouldn't have been– Luis Fabiano v Ivory Coast. The referee was spotted asking the Brazilian if he'd handled the ball in the lead-up to the goal the official had already allowed. "Noooooo," was the gist of the reply. He had, in fact, handled it twice. "It seems as though the ball hit my hand and the second time it hit my shoulder," he said after the game, "but to make the goal more beautiful there needed to be a bit of doubt." Never has a double handball sounded so poetic.

The goal that would have been, only for . . .The Hand of Luis Suarez v Ghana: His goal-line handball in the last minute of the game deprived Ghana of a place in the semi-finals. Suarez was sent off, Asamoah Gyan missed the resulting penalty and Uruguay won the penalty shoot-out.

“The hand of God now belongs to me,” said Suarez, who was “congratulated” by Dutch goalkeeper Maarten Stekelenburg, his Ajax team-mate. “I sent him a text message saying that he has been the best goalkeeper of the tournament – I think he should get the Lev Yashin award.”

ON THE BALL:

Julio Cesar

(Brazil goalkeeper)

“It’s terrible, it’s like a ball you’d buy in a supermarket.”

Craig Johnston

(ex-Liverpool and the designer of the Adidas Predator boot)

“Asking players to shoot or pass with this ball is like asking Picasso to paint a picture without bristles on his brush.”

Marcus Hahnemann

(United States goalkeeper)

“Technology is not everything. Scientists came up with the atom bomb. Doesn’t mean we should have invented it.”

Luis Fabiano

(Brazil forward)

“It’s very weird. All of a sudden it changes trajectory on you. It’s like it doesn’t want to be kicked. It’s incredible, it’s like someone is guiding it. You are going to kick it and it moves out of the way. I think it’s supernatural, it’s very bad.”

Sepp Blatter

(Fifa president)

“I like the Jabulani, it’s very pretty.”

MARADONA’S MONTH

“My impression is that the refereeing was horrible. Baldassi was very bad. And the linesman was Andrea Bocelli.”

– Blaming the blind Italian tenor for a missed offside.

“Pele should go back to the museum. Platini? We’ve always had a distant relationship. Hello, goodbye! We all know how the French are – Platini is French so he believes he is better than the rest of us.”

– Sending warm greetings to his fellow legends.

“In the end it is about whether God wants us to be in the final – but I know that is what God wants. This time we will not need the Hand of God, because it is the will of God.”

– As it proved, he misread God’s signals.

“What’s the matter Schweinsteiger? Are you nervoushh?”

– Baiting Bastian before the German game. Bad move.

“I am 50 in October and this is the toughest day of my life. This is like a kick in the face. This was a punch from Muhammad Ali. I have no more energy for anything.”

– After being floored by the Germans.

PUNDITRY

IN the World Cup punditry stakes it was hard to imagine anything topping the moment Denis Irwin and Didi Hamman were asked by RTÉ to don sombreros before France played Mexico, their evident discomfort a rib-tickling sight to behold. BBC Radio’s David Pleat, though, nudged Denis and Didi off top spot with his quite sublime take on Slovakia’s third goal against Italy in their final group game: “The Italians caught cold at the back . . . Cannavaro caught sleeping . . . for sure, Italy can say ‘AU REVOIR!’”

WORLD CUP SPEAK: SOUTH AFRICA 2010 IN QUOTES

“Green Fingers – One disastrous spill the Yanks won’t complain about.”

– The Sunday Timeson Robert Green’s mishap against the United States.

“They must be clever and forget their ego to realise that the only thing that matters is the team, not them. If they don’t understand that, I will need a gun.”

– French coach Raymond Domenech talking before the World Cup. See next.

“Go **** yourself, you ***** son of a *****.”

– Nicolas Anelka, at half-time in the defeat to Mexico, discussing tactics with Domenech.

“There is traitor among us. We must eliminate him from the group . . . there is no little mouse in the dressingroom, this comes from someone who is on the team and wants to hurt the team.”

– Patrice Evra on the mole, as opposed to mouse, who leaked Anelka’s chat with the manager to the press.

“My name’s Pavlos and I’m looking for a toilet.”

– Pavlos Joseph introducing himself to the England squad after he ended up in their dressingroom following the draw with Algeria.

“I am a human being, and like any human being I suffer and I have the right to suffer alone. I feel a broken man, completely disconsolate, frustrated and an unimaginable sadness.”

– Cristiano Ronaldo, a bit gutted.

“If Lamps’ goal had stood it would have been 2-2 and then the game would’ve turned on its head. We’d have been at full throttle. I’m sure we’d have gone on to win it.”

– Rio Ferdinand. It’s the way he tells ’em.

“Every four years people say England will win the World Cup. What happens? They don’t win it and they get hammered for six months – and then they say okay, we will win the next one.”

– Arsene Wenger on England’s bouncebackability.

“This World Cup has been very bad. A disaster. Football-wise, there is nothing new. Bad matches and few goals. The teams play bad, they are very defensive, there is not a single player who breaks the monotony.”

– Carlos Valderrama, the big-haired Colombian midfielder, dozing off in South Africa.

“Pele said an African team would win the World Cup by the year 2000 but I think it’s going to take a bit longer than that.”

– Alan Shearer and the lost decade.

“In our language, when we say ‘We kill you’, it means ‘We’re not happy with you’.”

– Nigeria team spokesman Idah Peterside on alleged death threats received by midfielder Sani Kaita after his daft sending off against Greece.