England made history last night.<\/p>\n
A 3-2 victory over Mexico at the mighty Azteca, a stadium where very few visiting teams have enjoyed themselves over the years, saw England book their place in the quarter-finals. England finished with ten men, VAR was once again busier than the referee, and by the final whistle the television pundits were already dusting off the old phrases.<\/p>\n
“Could this be England’s year?”<\/p>\n
Really?<\/p>\n
Is it?<\/p>\n
Is it really?<\/p>\n
Football has a wonderful habit of making fools of anyone who speaks with absolute certainty.<\/p>\n
One result and suddenly England are world beaters.<\/p>\n
One defeat and they’re apparently in need of rebuilding from the ground up.<\/p>\n
It isn’t just football, though.<\/p>\n
We’re all guilty of it.<\/p>\n
One sunny weekend and we’re convinced summer has finally arrived.<\/p>\n
One good month at work and we start looking at new cars.<\/p>\n
One disappointing meal in a restaurant and we declare we’ll never go back again.<\/p>\n
Everything has become instant. Instant opinions. Instant experts. Instant certainty.<\/p>\n
Then, just to remind us that football has a wicked sense of humour, Norway went and beat Brazil 2-0.<\/p>\n
Not just Norway.<\/p>\n
Erling Haaland and ten other Norwegians, if the headlines are anything to go by.<\/p>\n
Yesterday people were talking about Brazil’s route to the final. Today they’re wondering whether anyone can stop Haaland. By tomorrow somebody else will probably be the tournament favourites.<\/p>\n
Funny old game.<\/p>\n
England’s reward for conquering the Azteca is now a quarter-final against Norway and, more specifically, a very large centre-forward who seems to have developed the annoying habit of scoring whenever he feels like it.<\/p>\n
Will England beat Norway?<\/p>\n
Is football finally coming home?<\/p>\n
Has Haaland become unstoppable?<\/p>\n
Is it?<\/p>\n
Is it really?<\/p>\n
Perhaps we’ve forgotten that sport is at its most enjoyable because nobody actually knows what’s going to happen next. If we did, there’d be no point watching.<\/p>\n
So forgive me if I resist joining the chorus of certainty.<\/p>\n
I’ll celebrate England’s victory.<\/p>\n
I’ll admire Norway’s performance.<\/p>\n
And then I’ll wait to see what happens next.<\/p>\n
It’s amazing how often that’s the wisest approach, both in football and in life.<\/p>\n
Anyway, what do I know?<\/p>\n
I’m just a grumpy old man.<\/p>\n
Drop a comment. Misery loves company, and I\u2019m excellent company<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GOM World Cup Diary #26: Is It? Is It Really? England made history last night. A 3-2 victory over Mexico at the mighty Azteca, a stadium where very few visiting teams have enjoyed themselves over the years, saw England book their place in the quarter-finals. England finished with ten men, VAR was once again busier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,13,53,82,111],"tags":[181,125,164,177,79,80,129,180,178,124,102,106],"class_list":["post-1218","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-brazil","tag-england","tag-erland-haaland","tag-football-humour","tag-grumpy-old-man","tag-humour","tag-mexico","tag-norway","tag-quarter-finals","tag-var","tag-world-cup-2026","tag-world-cup-diary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218","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=1218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1219,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions\/1219"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}