With a week to go before the 2010 World Cup comes to an end, it's time to tell you that next Sunday
will also, sadly, see the end of
Some People Are On The Pitch.
After four years of blogging about football and all its interesting facets, I've decided that the
time is right to bring an end to this humble little project of ours.
Click on the links below to revisit some of the best bits from the
Some People Are On The Pitch
Archive:
Well this is it then. We appear to have reached the end of the road as far as
Some People Are On
The Pitch is concerned. After four years and around 1,300 posts, it's time for us to go.
As I mentioned last week, this isn't so much a 'goodbye' as a 'bye for now'. As from next season,
I'll be writing on an occasional basis for Football Fairground along with Terry Duffelen, Graham
Sibley, Chris Nee and anyone else that gets roped in.
Taking inspiration from a blog article by Richard Johnson, here's something similar from me -
namely a look back at the World Cups in my life so far and the way they intertwined with life
itself.
Spain ‘82
Aside from the hazy image of tickertape streaming down onto an Argentinean football pitch – one
that the BBC rightly included in its opening title sequence for World Cup Grandstand – I remember
virtually nothing of the 1978 World Cup.
Saturday 10th July19:30 Uruguay v Germany, FIFA World Cup 3rd/4th Place Play-Off, ITV1/HDThe penultimate match of the 2010 World Cup sees two purveyors of positive football playing in the
one game no team really wants to be in.
Four years ago, Germany were here, as now, playing out a 3-1 win over Portugal in front of a
grateful home crowd.
Freeloaders of the world unite...
28 Entities That Thought It Would Be A Good Idea To Ask Some People Are On The Pitch To
Promote Their Products Or Services During The 2010 World Cup For Nothing - No Incentive At All -
Despite The Fact That Many Of Them Generate Thousands And Millions Of Dollars In Company Profits
Every Year
1.
Major League Soccer's World Cup participants are back in the USA to pick up their domestic season,
and made a telling contribution upon their return.
Toronto FC began the week's action, hosting
Houston Dynamo in a spiky encounter north
of the border on Thursday. The visitors had a goal wrongly disallowed before the hour mark, and
both teams went down to ten men a couple of minutes later when Joseph Ngwenya and Nana Attakora
clashed angrily and Julian de Guzman got involved to earn himself a walk down the tunnel alongside
Ngwenya.
And so the players in the World Cup Final have been decided. Join us for another one of our
legendary "book-end" podcasts as we watch and ruminate over Spain's 1-0 victory over Germany.
There's even a new game we can all play called 'Spot the Cliché'... what more could you ask
for?
You can listen to the podcast here or if you right-click on that link, you can download the MP3.
Join us for another of our, by now, world-famous 'book-end' podcast. This time the chaps thoroughly
enjoy Spain's 1-0 victory over Portugal.
If you're unfamiliar with the format of these podcasts, we record a segment before the game, at
half time and just after the final whistle.
You can listen to the podcast here or if you right-click on that link, you can download the MP3.
By way of adding a final entry to this feature which we started right back in the early days of
SPAOTP, we give you one of the oddest kits ever to be worn in a World Cup. Be it home kit or away,
there have never been any quite as personalised as those worn by
Zaire in 1974.
On the face of it, they were nothing special (the kits, that is – not the players).
(All times - UK)
Tuesday 6th July
19:30 Netherlands v Uruguay, World Cup Semi - Final, ITV1/HD
Say what you like about the ethics of the last remaining South American team's presence in the
semi-final - there is a wonderful sense of romance about the first ever world champions making it
to the latter stages of the first ever tournament to be held in Africa.
Don't you just love Word Clouds? They're those fabulous pictograms that show the frequency with
which certain words are used within a passage of speech. The bigger the word appears, the more it
was spoken.
We thought it was about time we started producing some of these word clouds as a tribute to some of
the most admired people in the world of football.
And so to the only four teams not signed up to the big three kit manufacturers (Adidas, Nike and
Puma).
England's kit has never been supplied by any of those three (and we shudder to think what
that might look like if it ever were). For the bulk of the last fifty-odd years it's been Umbro's
privilege to do that and after numerous shirt designs they arrived at the 2010 vintage which was
entirely white, save for the England badge and Umbro's red diamond logo.
Friday 2 July
15.00 Netherlands v Brazil, Quarter Final, ITV1/ITVHD
I have an uneasy feeling about this one; I reckon this could turn really ugly. What on paper should
be an amazing game will be broken up in moments of handbags and simulation. Annoying and
frustrating but if it's only slightly peppered with moments of absolute genius, we might just
forgive it.
Seeing red
The 14 Players That Have So Far Been Sent Off During the 2010 World Cup
1. Nicolás Lodeiro (for Uruguay v France)
2. Abdelkader Ghezzal (for Algeria v Slovenia)
3. Aleksandar Luković (for Serbia v Ghana)
4. Tim Cahill (for Australia v Germany)
5.
