Go deep, lads!

June 1st, 2006 | Posted by PostmanE

If your memory is acute - and by acute I mean you don’t have some serious memory disorder going on - you’ll recall Tuesday’s little World Cup warmup, a guide created in the hopes of introducing you to some of the more reliable WC information options out there.

Well, that was all well and good, but today I think we should delve a bit deeper, yeah? Alright, let’s go to it.

I nodded you over to ESPN SoccerNet the other day, and that was a no-brainer, but there are some specific things that - if you want to carry a serious level of knowledge into the Cup with you - you should read thoroughly. This example piece is a monstrous document, but entertaining in its analysis of the each first group’s teams - their tactical pasts, presents, and World Cup futures.

Again on ESPN, perhaps the most entertaining bit of “Insider” World Cup reporting has come not from any embedded journalists - but from an actual player. Jimmy Conrad, a solid U.S. defender, contributes columns and diaries and the like to ESPN all the time. He’s stepped up his stuff for ESPN, brilliantly describing his inclusion in the team here.

Back in the blogosphere, there are tons of World Cup blogs out there, but World Cup Blog, through AOL, provides some pretty in-depth discussion on the day-to-day lead up to the tourney. The New York Times is covering the hell out of the World Cup, even hosting their own blog. Other worthy soccer/World Cup blogs include We Call it Soccer, 116Street Soccer, and BBC’s reporters’ blog.

So there - get started.

In closing, I’ll nudge you again toward Football365.com, which absolutely never fails to be ridiculous and funny, and is a great window into foreign football culture. In particular, John Nicholson’s column today, which seeks to ease the Brits’ worries about their World Cup chances by shooting down everyone else:

Are England actually any good? Why does Peter Crouch look so much better than Michael Owen? Is Hargreaves even awake? Did Lampard just come on for the penalty and then go off again? It’s exciting and worrying in equal measure.

But fear ye not. Every other country has got plenty to worry about as well.

This pre-tournament sphincter-tightening is all par for the course.

USA have Charlton new boy Cory (are all American men now called Cory?) Gibbs out with an injury and they just lost to mighty Morocco and just scraped a 1-0 win over Latvia. But the pressure’s off them because only 48 Americans know they’re even playing in a thing called the World Cup. I know because they all write to me and they’re all ex-pats from Sunderland and Bolton who run vineyards, wineries and bars in California. Lucky buggers.

Ukraine are riddled with injuries and might even be without Andriy Shevchenko. Their manager says the mood in their camp is not good but it must be hard to be cheerful in the Ukraine at the best of times. Even during traditional pull-your-wife-with-a-tractor-and-win-some-cabbages week.

Hilarious stuff. We love the World Cup.