A couple of days in and we are finding ourselves interested in Bosnia v Canada, Mexico v South Africa, USA v Paraguay and South Korea v the Czechs. Phones are tucked under pillows and buds put in ears, phones run out, we find ourselves watching or listening to matches beyond bed-time and early in the morning when we should be blogging.
It’s not the World Cup , it’s the beginning of it, we have another 100 matches to go. I filled out my predictions for the games on the First Actuarial spreadsheet I was sent, it took an hour to predict England winning in the final. I don’t think there are many other optimists.
I was four in the summer of 1966, I remember watching the game on a black and white TV with my Dad. I remember winning the world cup and 60 years on I feel as I have done most world cups since that England can win. This year we have Scotland too, I couldn’t get a Scotland v England final and when I emailed my spreadsheet to my friends in Manchester, I realised that the next few weeks were going to be impaired.
Is this resonating with any of my readers? Have you invested more emotional intelligence in the footie than in getting your work planned out? I am pleased to see that Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan staff are having problems getting in to work (so tired are they with less than 4% of matches played.
Why does reading this make me relaxed? I wonder!
I was saddened to read on that the investment banks are doing it not to give their staff a break but because they anticipate these staff will get stuck in traffic of fans moving around New York, New Jersey and Wall Street. We had the same prediction of Olympic-Gadon in 2012 in London, it never happened. But I bet that people in other time zones got sleep deprivation watching sport at unnatural hours to be awake!
Oh and then because it’s football, there will be requisite beers and cocktails to be drunk which will leave mornings tired and hung-over. Did no-one think of the consequences of expanding the world cup on the markets. We’re already seeing irrational behaviour with Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire as fund managers imagine the joys of data centres on the Moon.
Surely we would not have boosted Space-X as it has been boosted, if we were not blown away by the prospect of the USA beating Paraguay 4-1 (some sequential aberration here I know but you get my gist.
It will soon be two years since I went “dry”, I don’t do drugs or fags but I find myself obsessed by sport. I am sleeping in my Yeovil Town shirt and wearing it around the City and Windsor hoping that someone will come up and say “they’re my team too”.
I’m not an Arsenal or Man City fan (I do see people who I thought supported Tottenham and Chelsea looking sheepish). I think that sport dictates behaviour. The Arsenal fans I know (and I know many more than ever) are insufferable and so will citizens of whatever reason wins the World Cup.
This is my final misgiving with the world cup being where it is and the length it is. Not only will we be sleepless, but we’ll be anxious, disappointed and ultimately despairing that football will ever come home.
In the meantime, let’s all work at home till Sunday 19th July, it seems an act of humanitarian decency from investment banks. Forget the non existent risks of getting stuck in traffic, I suspect that those who take decisions and enforce them, have worked out that they’re not going to focus on office matters till Monday July 20th. My fear of the USA winning this world cup has been intensified by its opening 4-1 win, can we live with all the yanks turning into Elon Musks?
I don’t think I can bear the prospect of a “home win”. The World Cup’s screwing up my life. I want it back to when we all were kids!
