Last week, Cape Verde drew 0-0 with Spain.<\/p>\n
The experts were surprised.<\/p>\n
Then Cape Verde drew 2-2 with Uruguay.<\/p>\n
The experts were surprised again.<\/p>\n
At this rate, the experts are going to need counselling.<\/p>\n
You see, before every World Cup, football likes to organise itself into neat little categories.<\/p>\n
Big nations.<\/p>\n
Small nations.<\/p>\n
Favourites.<\/p>\n
Outsiders.<\/p>\n
Teams expected to challenge.<\/p>\n
Teams expected to make up the numbers.<\/p>\n
Everybody is assigned their place before a ball has even been kicked.<\/p>\n
The experts make their predictions.<\/p>\n
The statisticians build their models.<\/p>\n
The pundits nod thoughtfully in front of giant screens.<\/p>\n
And somewhere in all those calculations, somebody decides which teams are supposed to go home early.<\/p>\n
Cape Verde, apparently, never received the memo.<\/p>\n
They were expected to lose to Spain.<\/p>\n
They didn’t.<\/p>\n
They were expected to lose to Uruguay.<\/p>\n
They didn’t do that either.<\/p>\n
Now they head into a final match against Saudi Arabia with a genuine chance of reaching the knockout stages.<\/p>\n
Which is precisely why people love the World Cup.<\/p>\n
The funny thing about football is that it stubbornly refuses to respect reputation.<\/p>\n
A famous shirt doesn’t score goals.<\/p>\n
A glorious history doesn’t win tackles.<\/p>\n
And a favourable prediction is worth approximately the same number of points as a polite round of applause.<\/p>\n
None.<\/p>\n
Football has an annoying habit of judging teams on what they actually do rather than what everybody expected them to do.<\/p>\n
Personally, I think that’s one of its finest qualities.<\/p>\n
Modern life seems obsessed with labels.<\/p>\n
Everybody is categorised.<\/p>\n
Ranked.<\/p>\n
Measured.<\/p>\n
Analysed.<\/p>\n
Put into boxes.<\/p>\n
Football occasionally reminds us that people\u2014and teams\u2014have a habit of climbing out of those boxes when nobody is looking.<\/p>\n
The experts had already packed Cape Verde’s suitcases.<\/p>\n
Cape Verde responded by extending their hotel booking.<\/p>\n
And isn’t that wonderful?<\/p>\n
The World Cup isn’t remembered because the favourites behave themselves.<\/p>\n
It’s remembered because every now and then somebody unexpected refuses to leave.<\/p>\n
Somewhere this morning, a few pundits are revising their predictions.<\/p>\n
A few statisticians are updating their spreadsheets.<\/p>\n
And Cape Verde are probably getting on with preparing for Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
Which seems like the sensible approach.<\/p>\n
After all, if football has taught us anything over the years, it’s that knowing your place is vastly overrated.<\/p>\n
Anyway, what do I know?<\/p>\n
I’m just a grumpy old man.<\/p>\n
Feel free to leave a comment.<\/p>\n
Or don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll be grumpy either way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GOM World Cup Diary #12: Whatever Happened To Knowing Your Place? Last week, Cape Verde drew 0-0 with Spain. The experts were surprised. Then Cape Verde drew 2-2 with Uruguay. The experts were surprised again. At this rate, the experts are going to need counselling. You see, before every World Cup, football likes to organise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,13,53,82,111],"tags":[91,118,86,79,98,95,97,116,102,106,137],"class_list":["post-1155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","category-grumpy-old-man","category-humour","category-soccer","category-world-cup-2026","tag-british-humour","tag-cape-verde","tag-football","tag-grumpy-old-man","tag-modern-football","tag-sports-humour","tag-tournament-football","tag-underdogs","tag-world-cup-2026","tag-world-cup-diary","tag-world-cup-surprises"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1155"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1158,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions\/1158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}