World Cup Fever Is In The Air Everywhere..... I Think

It has finally arrived. After a 4 year wait, the world was treated to a great opening game between Germany and Costa Rica. It ended up being a barn burner of a game and I for one, thoroughly enjoyed it. 2 fabulous goals and a very entertaining end to end football match. I am so happy that it is World Cup 2006!!!!!

Here is one of the happy England fans that just 'stood out' in the crowd. On that note, let's analyze the England team's overall perfomance.


The team played very poorly overall and I think Sven had better give his head a shake with his positioning and choice of roles that he has given some of the players. Joe Cole had a smashing game, Lampard was good, Beckham was alright, Gerrard was not even in the game and Owen did very little to squash fears about his overall fitness.

The team overall played like chalk and cheese. There didn't seem to be much chemistry at times. I hope they get things sorted out for the next game because they were doing my head in when I watched them. Gareth, a mate of mine who had come from Ulsan to see us, was watching the match with us and both he and I were swearing and cursing at the screen for most of the match. There were 2 other Brits sitting at another table and they had the same attitude as us; England played crap. You could see the ability and the creativity was there, but it just never seemed to open up and start. Cole played a wonderful game and the rest of the players should take a note from him and his style.


The rest of the games that we watched over the course of the weekend, weren't that entertaining, but I am not complaining as it still is the World Cup! I thought Argentina were very vunerable at the back and Ivory Coast missed some sitters!!!!! Sweden and T and Tobago was a snore draw. Again, Sweden could have had 5. Mexico were just mediocre against the ' no women allowed to watch football' team, Iran. I haven't seen any of the Portugal match, so I don't know if they were any good.

Sunday night, Dave and I, Kyoung Hee and Gareth, went to watch the Holland game. It was a good game and Robben had a really good game, but he still gets on my wick the way he falls over when he is touched. He really turns on the acting when he is fouled. Other than that, Holland pushed the ball around well, but were guilty a little like England of dying down during the game at different times. Dave was chuffed for them to win and it was better game to watch than the England one. We have found a place that we want to watch the Korea game tomorrow night that has a big screen tv and loads of atmosphere. There is a real buzz right now about Korea playing tomorrow night. It kicks off at 10pm our time, so not too bad.


I went to the gym everyday on the weekend and actually ran for 52 minutes straight on Sunday. I ran around 5.3kms or so, just running at a good pace and not trying to kill myself. I am a little tired today, due to all the late hours watching the football.

The eating healthy plan is going well, I ate very little meat on the weekend and ate lots of veggies and am eating fruit and having juice drinks. We had a meal called Shabu Shabu, which is really thin sliced beef, boiled in a pot. Each table has 2 pots, which are full of special broth, then you put in the sliced beef and an absolute shitload of vegetables, ranging from 2 or 3 different types of mushrooms, cabbage and bean sprouts and other stuff that I don't know what it's called in English. Either way, a very healthy meal all around.

Gareth headed back just before the start of the Holland game, as he had to be back early Monday morning for work. He was here from around 4pm Saturday until 9pm Sunday. He flew down here and then took the bus back. He had a good time and it was nice to just hang out with him and catch up on all his latest goings-on and what his plans are for the near future. He is here until next January. He extended his contract an extra 6 months, but he has said that when he leaves, it will be the last time that he comes back to Korea. He spent some time in China teaching before this, so Asia has become a little stale in some ways for him.