World Cup Fever is in full flow at DTW and while we haven’t been laid low yet, even the non-football lovers in the office are definitely looking a bit peaky.
Early World Cup memories trend towards the iconic rather than the mundane – Account Manager Chris Sealey watching the acrobatic Hugo Sanchez scoring a trademark bicycle kick for Mexico in the 1986 competition; Director Pete Whelan remembers David Platt’s injury time swivel volley against Belgium in 1990 while MD Chris Taylor and Social Media Manager Guy Bailey had just opened their bottles of American cream soda when Bryan Robson put England ahead of France in 27 seconds in 1982.
Italia 90 looms large in our collective favourite tournament although the revisionist views says that unless you’re English, Irish or German, it wasn’t one for the ages although Pete Whelan now understands that this tournament was the exception not the rule for the boys in White or Red. Chris Sealey bravely stated that Brazil 2014 would top the lot but he did reply before Luis Suarez turned up.
Most impressive team seen at a championships tends to gravitate towards the winners with the French vintage of 1998, the current Spain team (again written before the Holland and Chile games) and the boys of ’66 although everyone’s favourite other team – Brazil 1982 gets a nod.
We like our ball-playing midfielders at DTW with Gazza, Steven Gerrard, Zico and Sergio Busquets getting votes for favourite players on the biggest stage and we thought the winners would come from a narrow field of Spain, Argentina, Brazil or Colombia – Guy Bailey enjoying the vicarious thrill of an outsider coming in on the rails.
Regardless of how the rest of the tournament turns out, we all hope that at the end of the day, football is the winner. Unless it’s Uruguay, in which case they can bloomin’ well stage the whole thing again.