So what am I supposed to do now? There’s no more tennis, the World Cup is over (in case you missed that) and the new football season doesn’t start for almost 4 weeks!! The European Championships are 2 years away and the next World Cup not for 4… and a half, because they have to be played in winter due to the abject stupidity and institutionalised corruption of (old; I’m hoping) FIFA awarding the tournament to (fucking) Qatar. Which is too hot for camels in the summertime, never mind pale and pasty Scandinavians. In the winter it will be a cool and moderate 47 degrees, which is fine. Note: fans take fans.

The Men’s final at Wimbledon produced the right result, ie: tennis players 1, big serving giants, lost. But it was unspectacular. Anderson had simply run out of serves after his 6 hour serve-a-thon semi-final on Friday and his type of player has no ‘plan B’. Most players don’t have a ‘plan B’ against Djokovich and if they do it generally fails anyway.

So with Novak (as I call him, fellow tennis players, you understand…) strolling to victory it was time to change channel for the football. Though the BBC is so brilliant you didn’t need to even do that, they did it for you. They pushed the tennis to BBC2 so you didn’t have to go to all that effort of picking up the remote and clicking. Giving you more valuable eating time. Though personally, I chose to change location. Not to Russia but to Lila’s house. On the grounds that even if the football is shit, it’ll be loads of fun with the baby.

Which it undoubtedly was, but the football wasn’t shit. It was fantastic. And controversial.

World Cup finals tend to be rather conservative affairs; very defensive, everyone worried that the first goal might be the last so they’d rather prevent it than score it. No-one said footballers were clever. But this game was played by the two most exciting teams, played with flair and skill and power and pace. Then the French, typically, started cheating. Griezmann went down in a tackle in which, it was later seen, again, and again, and again, there was no contact with the defender until after Antoine was on the floor and already writhing in ‘agony’. Free-kick, own goal, 1-0. But Croatia equalised quite magnificently with a brilliant goal. So the French used the VAR ticket to appeal an incident that was never a penalty in a million years. But that would be the million years before they invented Video refs. And if you slow it down sufficiently, it looks a bit like a handball. At full speed it certainly isn’t, just unintentional contact. So the ref changed his decision and awarded the penalty. 2-1 to France.

To be fair to the French, something I’ve spent a lifetime avoiding, they then just ran away with the game in quite spectacular style. Even the world’s most potentially brilliant but generally as useful as a cricket bat on a fishing trip, player, Paul Pogba, realised at least some of that potential.

Hugo Lloris had a mad moment, which he does and it ended 4-2. The highest score in a World Cup final since VAR was introduced. The most goals… blah, blah, blah.

Then we all cried as the captain of SPURS went up to lift the trophy. And some of us thought… just for a moment… if you screwed up your eyes a bit…

So what am I supposed to do now then? Eh??

Happy end-of-the-world (cup) Monday

A xxxx