Yesterday brought the end of the World Cup group stage.<\/p>\n
England qualified for the knockout rounds and now face DR Congo.<\/p>\n
Scotland packed their suitcases.<\/p>\n
Uruguay, twice World Cup winners, headed home with just two points.<\/p>\n
Three countries.<\/p>\n
Three very different emotions.<\/p>\n
Which got me thinking.<\/p>\n
Whatever happened to expectations?<\/p>\n
If you’d told England supporters before the tournament that they’d qualify for the knockout stages, most would probably have taken it.<\/p>\n
Perhaps not with quite so much sideways passing along the way, but they’d have accepted it.<\/p>\n
If you’d told Scotland fans they’d be heading home after the group stage, there would have been plenty of disappointment…<\/p>\n
…but probably not complete surprise.<\/p>\n
Hope springs eternal north of the border.<\/p>\n
Reality, unfortunately, has a habit of catching up.<\/p>\n
Then there’s Uruguay.<\/p>\n
Two-time world champions.<\/p>\n
A proud football nation.<\/p>\n
Yet after three matches they found themselves on the plane home with just two points to show for it.<\/p>\n
Sometimes football has a wonderfully cruel way of reminding us that history doesn’t score goals.<\/p>\n
And that’s the funny thing about expectations.<\/p>\n
The result often matters less than what we expected the result to be.<\/p>\n
One person gets promoted at work and is disappointed because it wasn’t the job they really wanted.<\/p>\n
Another gets offered a steady job and celebrates all week.<\/p>\n
One family complains because the hotel only had two swimming pools.<\/p>\n
Another is simply delighted to have escaped the rain for a fortnight.<\/p>\n
The same outcome can feel like success or failure depending entirely on what we imagined beforehand.<\/p>\n
Football supporters are exactly the same.<\/p>\n
Before a ball is kicked we’ve already decided who’s going to surprise us, who’s going to disappoint us and who’s destined to lift the trophy.<\/p>\n
Then the tournament politely ignores all our predictions.<\/p>\n
Which is probably why we keep watching.<\/p>\n
Of course, I should admit that before the World Cup started I’d worked out exactly how I thought it would unfold.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, the tournament has already ignored several of my brilliant forecasts.<\/p>\n
Apparently the Football Gods don’t read my notes.<\/p>\n
Perhaps that’s for the best.<\/p>\n
Football has always had a habit of rewarding hope while punishing certainty.<\/p>\n
And maybe life does too.<\/p>\n
The older I get, the more I realise that expectations can be both a blessing and a burden.<\/p>\n
Hope keeps us going.<\/p>\n
Expectation sometimes sets us up for disappointment.<\/p>\n
The trick, perhaps, is to enjoy the journey and let the destination take care of itself.<\/p>\n
Mind you, I’ll still be expecting England to beat DR Congo.<\/p>\n
Some lessons clearly take longer to learn than others.<\/p>\n
Anyway, what do I know?<\/p>\n
I’m just a grumpy old man.<\/p>\n
Were England lucky to get through? About as lucky as me persuading you to post a comment?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GOM World Cup Diary #18 \u2013 Whatever Happened To Expectations? Yesterday brought the end of the World Cup group stage. England qualified for the knockout rounds and now face DR…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,13,53,82,111],"tags":[91,156,125,155,79,145,154,102,106],"class_list":["post-1180","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-dr-congo","tag-england","tag-expectations","tag-grumpy-old-man","tag-scotland","tag-uruguay","tag-world-cup-2026","tag-world-cup-diary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180","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=1180"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1183,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions\/1183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}