I’ve always believed the Football Gods have a sense of humour.<\/p>\n
Not a cruel one.<\/p>\n
Just the sort that quietly smiles when life produces one of those coincidences that nobody could have planned.<\/p>\n
Yesterday was one of those days.<\/p>\n
Seattle was celebrating Pride.<\/p>\n
The city had embraced the colours, the music and the message of inclusion.<\/p>\n
Then the World Cup fixture list produced Egypt against Iran.<\/p>\n
If the Football Gods were watching, I suspect they allowed themselves a quiet chuckle.<\/p>\n
Not because of the people celebrating.<\/p>\n
And certainly not because of anyone’s personal choices.<\/p>\n
But because football has an extraordinary knack of throwing up little ironies that nobody could possibly script.<\/p>\n
You spend months organising a tournament.<\/p>\n
Years preparing a city.<\/p>\n
Thousands of people work tirelessly to make everything run perfectly.<\/p>\n
Then along comes the fixture computer and says, “I’ve got an idea…”<\/p>\n
That’s football.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps that’s life.<\/p>\n
The more carefully we organise things, the more likely it seems that reality will produce a coincidence that leaves everyone raising an eyebrow.<\/p>\n
I’ve noticed it happens outside football too.<\/p>\n
You wash the car.<\/p>\n
It rains.<\/p>\n
You take an umbrella.<\/p>\n
The sun comes out.<\/p>\n
You finally throw away a box you’ve been storing in the garage for ten years.<\/p>\n
The next day you discover you needed something that was inside it.<\/p>\n
Life has impeccable timing.<\/p>\n
So, it seems, do the Football Gods.<\/p>\n
Of course, I spent five minutes wondering whether someone had planned it before remembering that tournament fixtures are worked out long before anyone knows what else will be happening in a host city.<\/p>\n
Sometimes a coincidence really is just a coincidence.<\/p>\n
But that doesn’t stop it being amusing.<\/p>\n
Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I still love football.<\/p>\n
Not because it always gives us the result we want.<\/p>\n
But because every now and then it reminds us that, however much we plan, organise and prepare, life still has the final say.<\/p>\n
And somewhere, I like to imagine the Football Gods sitting in the stands, smiling quietly to themselves.<\/p>\n
Anyway, what do I know?<\/p>\n
I’m just a grumpy old man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GOM World Cup Diary #17 \u2013 The Football Gods Must Have Been Chuckling I’ve always believed the Football Gods have a sense of humour. Not a cruel one. Just the sort that quietly smiles when life produces one of those coincidences that nobody could have planned. Yesterday was one of those days. Seattle was celebrating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,13,53,82,111],"tags":[152,151,150,79,80,153,95,102,106],"class_list":["post-1176","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-coincidence","tag-football-gods","tag-football-life","tag-grumpy-old-man","tag-humour","tag-irony","tag-sports-humour","tag-world-cup-2026","tag-world-cup-diary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176","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=1176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1177,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions\/1177"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}