World Cup blog: Who needs football?

Instead of only dominating the sports pages, the French team have taken it upon themselves to fill every page of every French newspaper.

Since they lost last Thursday, a player has been sent home for verbally abusing the manager, the players went on strike and refused to train, a physio was pulled away from the French captain during an argument caught on cameras and to cap it all off the French Football Federation’s Managing Director resigned…. out of embarrassment I presume! Definitely not the most conventional way to approach a big game - let's see if it pays off for the French!

Les Bleus face South Africa in their third, and more than likely last, game of the tournament on Thursday.

Crazy Europeans

And it’s not only the French who are flying the crazy flag for Europe, England are getting in on the act too. After being booed off the pitch last Friday following their draw with Algeria, English striker Wayne Rooney, sarcastically, said into one camera “It's nice to see your own fans boo you. That's what loyal support is.”

Then ex-English skipper John Terry (who was stripped of the captaincy earlier in the season, after allegedly sleeping with a team-mates partner) decided to tell the media that he and the rest of the players were going to air their grievances with the manager, saying “If it upsets [the manager] or any other player, so what."

But according to today’s media, the meeting didn’t go ahead as not only was the manager not interested in talking, neither were his team-mates. England too are only days away from a must-win game against Slovenia.

One thing both the French and English teams can be sure of however, is that their post-World Cup biographies will be bestsellers.

And I should probably say something about football as this is feeling more and more like a gossip mag.

So...Brazil look ready to take on the mantle of favourites after dominating the Ivory Coast last night. They join the Netherlands as the first teams to qualify for the second round. While Cameroon have suffered the opposite fate, becoming the first team to be knocked out, after losing to Denmark on Saturday. And Portugal clocked the biggest score of the tournament hammering poor old North Korea 7-0.

• World Cup blog: Ireland dons the sombrero
• World Cup blog: It’s raining goals. Hallelujah!
• World Cup blog: Loud noise and lousy football