Well another World Cup has been and gone, some great goals, some upsets, another England penalty shootout failure as predicted on these very pages!
Star(s) of the tournament for me were the african teams. Both Ghana and the Ivory Coast played with an excited vigour that seems missing from most teams, and I think that in 4 years’ time, with a little more wisdom and experience, these teams will be hard to beat.
It seems almost poetic that the Italian team won in the end, given the massive upheaval to their domestic game from the corruption trial. In the end, I didn’t care that much who won, as long as Portugal didn’t. Perhaps I am biased but their antics to me were unprofessional, and I hope that Ronaldo enjoys a year of taunting that will make Beckham’s annus horriblus look like a trip to a day spa.
And finally, before I put the World Cup to bed, I thought I would point you at an interesting article over at Adam Eason’s blog. I’m reading Adam’s book ‘The secrets of self-hypnosis’ at the moment, and he has posted an article about how the body language of the England team suggested that they were highly unlikely to win the penalty shootout. Well worth a read. I would imagine that many of the tools we talk about on this site would be perfect for preparing for such moments, and given the huge amounts of cash available to the England team, perhaps they might think about using NLP to help us win a penalty shootout for a change!
And so it’s goodbye Sven, hello Steve McClaren. And hopefully goodbye to diamond formations, multiple substitutions, treating the captain’s armband like a hot potato and hello to some national pride being more, or as important as the obscenely fat wages that our so-called heroes earn each week.
