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There’s not many decent football blogs out there (although the Guardian’s been fairly good during the World Cup). And the websites of most professional footballers are usually a wasteland of cliches whereby ‘you’re only as good as your next game,’ and you easily become ‘gutted for the lads,’ at the slightest mishap.

Into this vacuum steps Moritz Volz. Who he, you ask? He’s a German U21 international right back (even though he’s 23) and best of all, he’s one of our own. Fulham, bought ‘220’ as he’s known (think voltage in Europe) from Arsenal a couple of years back and he’s been great for us – a whole-hearted player if ever I saw one (and I saw him launch into the crowd at Pompey a couple of seasons ago to try and avoid giving up a throw-in). But the diary on his website is an absolute classic.

He’s German and he knows it, i.e. he knows all the stereotypes people have about Germans and he has the ability to poke fun at himself, while truly assimilatuing into English life – he’s just passed his maths A-level (sounds as if he’s doing four in all) for instance. He has a phrase book on his site where he translates phrases such as, “Wo ist der pool? Ich will meine handtuecher hinlegen/Which way to the pool? I would like to put my towel down,” and “Kannst du meine aermel abschneiden/Please can you cut the sleeves off my denim jacket.”

It’s hard to know when he’s being ironic and when he’s not, but this is the man that went into a Niketown in Londona and bought a pair of custom-made football boots with “Volzy.com” on one and “The Hoff” on the other, in honour of German’s obession with David Hassehoff, which he says “should be fun in close-ups in the Premiership next season.” He even has part of his site devoted to the Hoff.

When meeting Roger Milla (famous Cameroonian footballer from years gone by) at Cologne airport, he gets him to sign his Panini sticker album and has his pictute taken with him, captioning it “Me with Rog the Ledge.”

So much other funny stuff as he makes his way around Germany following the World Cup. You can read the lot here. Can’t link to individual entries, you’ll just have to page through, but it’s worth it. A fan’s diary written by a very professional footballer.

No, not the teams and the tournament, but its use as an educational tool.

With our wallchart almost complete, I wanted to share some of the things the boy has learned over the last month:

• He’s learned to fall over, holding his leg, waiting for the ‘doctor’ to come on and spray his leg, befofre immediately getting up and continue playing. Where on earth could he have learned that from?
• Flags – well where do we start? Within a week of the start of the tournament, he was waiting for a bus outside a pub displaying small flags of all the competing nations, he asked if that was Portugal’s flag he spotted next to that of Trinidad & Tobago? Why yes it was.
• Walking down Park Avenue last Monday, once the semi-final teams were known, there’s a French restuarant that for some reason was hanging large flags of Brazil, France, Germany, Portugal and Italy. He spotted them and asked if they had deliberately hung the flags of the four semi-finalists and if so, what was Brazil doing there too?
• Tears were shed when Sweden scored against England and when England went to penalties against Portugal in the quarter final.

As the torunament went on, we switched our attention to the second kits of countries, mostly the ones that had been knocked out. Just this morning I had this conversation:

Him: what’s Brazil’s second kit?

Me: Blue.

Him: What’s Switzerland’s second kit?

Me: White, I think.

Him: Oh just like South Korea! And speaking of South Korea, what’s their second kit?

Me: Erm, perhaps blue, I’m not sure.

Him: OK

Swap out those teams with any others in the World Cup and you have the basis of many conversations over the past few days.

Overall grade for the World Cup as an educational tool? A+, I reckon.

With the Coupe de Monde winding down, or up depending on your point of view, the Tour De France has been up and running (as has Wimbledon playing havoc with home life in Southfields, or Southfields Village as the estate agents call it).

But anyway, this being now, I figured someone must’ve put together Google Earth with the tour, a sure enough they have, and here it is (in fact it’s Google itself) and it tracks the race live. If you use the tilt feature you can ‘fly’ along the course.
If you haven’t got Google Earth already, why not? Go get it.

Good documentary on BBC this week and next on Trojan Records here. First part up till this Saturday, next part for the week after.

Do you think the BBC slipped this news out tonight, just before a fairly siginificant football match thinking nobody would notice?

Not sure wallcharts are such a big thing in the US – (unless you’re bettng on the NFL season or something like that). But they are a tradition in the UK for things like the World Cup. Every four years we would get one from the paper and meticulously fill out the results of each game and build the tables for the end of the first round etc (I suspect that’s more of a boy thing!)

With that in mind we searched around and printed out a few and M chose this one from The Guardian:

He would have worn his England shirt, but it was in the laundry as he wants to wear it the minute it gets clean (might have to get him a US shirt as they’re pretty nice).

He’s also got map of the world and some flags to cut out and this morning he picked out Angola and Ecuador from the list of flags, noting that they’re “in the World Cup.” How’s that for educational side effects of watching some blokes kick a ball around a pitch.

64 matches in one month? – we can’t wait, that’s for sure.

People fiddling with computers in the mid-1990s – well perhaps only men in their 20s/30s and then probably only those in northern Europe, anyway – may have been familar with the strangely-named PC game Sensible Soccer, a veritable classic of the genre.
While the various ‘official’ FIFA games saw the player sprout realistic heads and limbs, Sensible stuck with stick men, but highly controllable stick men. So controllable in fact that while watching lowly Fulham in the early 1990s (admittedly an activity given to being easily distracted) I found myself comparing one wayward pass after another with Sensi, as us aficionado’s called it. 😉

Now I see this in the Guardian and my interest in PC games is suddenly revived, as it says, “….Sensible Soccer is the greatest comeback of 2006.” Can’t wait to see just how great.

I have a funny feeling that Peter Crouch could be shaping up into an English national hero, if he continues to score and dance like this and this [all links to videos].

Tragic news that the local Wansdwroth brewery is selling up and more importantly, closing its brewery in Wandsworth High Street. Perhaps inevitable, given property proces in the area I guess, but having done my formative dirnking on the local brew and considering it’s been “round the bend since 1851” as a long standing ad hoarding says just round the corner, it’s sad news indeed.

They still do tours of the brewery, so get yourself along there if you can, while you still can.

Youngs used to be different. It reverted to delivering its beer by horse and cart many years ago after it worked out it got it there faster and cheaper than deliveing by truck. The horses still live within the brewery.

And how more English can you get than if you ask for a “pint of ordinary” in any of its pubs, you wil get a pint of best bitter, rather than someone looking at you as if you’re mad?

I’d have a Ram & Special to commiserate, if I could find one in New York.

I finally uploaded the pictures (sans kids) from our trip to Lancaster, PA in April, like this one but more here.