Once again, things have gone a bit quiet around here but I have been producing some writing for the Internet at Russell Brown’s Public Address blog for the last week or two. Hadyn, Peter D and I have been World Cup guest-blogging and you can read my contributions here, here, here and here. My final piece, trying to reach some conclusions about the tournament, will appear after the Final is concluded some time next Monday.
On the subject of the World Cup, I came across this article at The Guardian today, again trying to sum the tournament up with two games to go:
As we saw in this year’s European Cup, and are now seeing in the World Cup, football is going through a phase in which the science of coaching has the upper hand over the technical skill of individual players. That emphasis gives an advantage to the rich European clubs, and by extension to their national teams, who benefit most immediately from the rising levels of tactical sophistication.
Which seems a reasonable conclusion to come to, I guess, but quite different to what was being said a fortnight ago. I would add that the argument about the primacy of the coach is confirmed by the success of New Zealand (the best coached and led side at the tournament?) and the failure of England, whose coach failed to overcome the negative influences of player-power and media bullying.
Anyway, the World Cup has taken a lot of my time recently, and the Film Festival kicks off in Wellington next Thursday so that’s another fortnight spoken for. Indeed, I have been beavering away at screener DVDs from the Festival for my Capital Times preview which goes to print next week – and I’ll post it here (and at Wellingtonista) as soon as I can.
