A World Cup Miscellany

Spot the difference: Taking the guess-work out of the penalty shoot-out for goalkeepers

THE DAYS when goalkeepers would have to wade through dozens of Betamax videos to research the habits of penalty takers are gone.

All Iker Casillas and Maarten Stekelenburg (if he recovers from his hip injury) have to do before the final is visit Castrol’s football site. There they’ll find handy little graphics showing where Spain and the Netherlands’ penalty-takers have placed their last 10 efforts.

Should the final go to penalties, the statistics are a little worrying for the Spanish: nine of the last 11 penalties taken by their forwards have been missed, with David Villa failing to convert four of his last eight, including the miss against Honduras (right).

Casillas will, you’d imagine, have noted Robin van Persie has hit seven of his last 10 to the right, all of them successful, while “Rafael van der Vaart goes for the corners every time”.

Mind you, that’s not a huge help: he’s gone top left, bottom left and bottom right, so it doesn’t narrow it down much.

Not that you Stattos will need to be told, but World Cup midfielders are the worst penalty takers of the lot – “they only convert 58 per cent, compared to strikers’ 74 per cent and defenders 69 per cent”. So, giving that penalty to David O’Leary wasn’t such a mad idea after all.

Et tu Bruno? Cesar had better watch his back

EVEN BEFORE business is concluded in South Africa, Fifa is turning its thoughts to 2014 in Brazil, with Sepp Blatter and Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva unveiling the logo for the tournament in Johannesburg.

According to a report on the BBC website, Flamengo’s Bruno Fernandes also has 2014 on his mind: the goalkeeper is intent on ousting Julio Cesar as his country’s number one.

Fernandes, though, is in a spot of bother at the moment, having been arrested in connection with the gruesome murder of his former girlfriend.

It’s a connection he has denied – “In the future Ill be able to laugh at all this” – but, said the BBC, he’s a touch worried about the affect it might have on his Cesar-ousting efforts: “Mr Fernandes has expressed regret that the allegations could damage his chances of playing for Brazil in the 2014 Fifa World Cup finals.”

A bit of a career hiccup alright.

Analyse this:Telly team that would talk a good game . . . but not a great game at the end of the day

IT’S NOT easy picking a World Cup Pundits XI when, like Arsenal, you have no goalkeeper in the squad, and you’re also a bit short in the natural left back department. But, you must make do with what you have and ask the lads to be a bit flexible.

Eamon Dunphy, then, wins a place in the side – mainly for fear he’d cause unrest on the bench, especially if he found himself sitting beside Gary Lineker. But he’s between the posts – not a great position for him, but good enough.

If it wasn’t for Denis Irwin we’d have know nothing about Landon Donovan’s on-off relationship with Bianca, so for that he is rewarded with a place in our back three. Marcel “Domenech is compleeeeetely CRAZEEEEE!” Desailly is in the middle, with Alan Hansen out in left field, where he has often been during this World Cup (“Capello will obviously be delighted with the performance” . . . the one against Slovakia).

We had a wealth of midfield talent to choose from, so we’ve had to omit several legends, opting instead for an RTÉ FC quartet. All four would probably prefer to be in the centre, but Chippy Brady can do some damage on the left and Ossie Ardiles can make the ball his lubber on the right.

And God help anyone who tries to Van Bommelise Graeme Souness and John Giles in the middle.

Up front we reunite Newcastle old-boys Alan Shearer, Patrick “two-feeted” Kluivert and Kevin Keegan – you can’t be sure they’ll link up all that well, but as they demonstrated the past month all three of them are one-offs.

Which is a bit like Keegan’s declaration that “England have the best fans in the world and Scotland’s fans are second-to-none”.

Mick “Good chance there for Jong Tae-Se” McCarthy is our manager.

Let the games commence.

Nigeria could be in bit of a fix

AS YOU’LL recall, President Goodluck Jonathan was so irked by Nigeria’s performances at the World Cup he suspended the team from international competition. He backed down when Fifa said they wouldn’t tolerate such interference.

According to the BBC’s Newsnight, though, Nigeria might need all the Goodluck it can muster if their investigation in to match-fixing allegations amounts to anything. Fifa, they said, were warned before the World Cup of “fears that Nigeria could be vulnerable to match-fixing”, while a Uefa investigator in South Africa “raised concerns, including suspicions over betting patterns”.

Alarm bells started ringing, apparently, when Greece managed to score – twice! – against Nigeria, to break a duck in a World Cup finals match. Conclusion: Fix!?

Headline acts: Channel hopping brings on Orange rage while Puyol plays cool

HET PAROOL’S headline yesterday about a Dutch football-related row must have caused an Orange heart or two to sink. Mercifully, it’s only the Dutch football federation (KNVB) and public broadcaster NOS who have fallen out, the KNVB selling exclusive access to the players at their home-coming ceremony in Amsterdam to rivals SBS. “It is a vulgar act of revenge,” said the head of NOS, referring to his channel’s refusal to bid for rights to the Netherlands’ home games.

Your heart had to go out to the Ajax players pictured on the front page of Het Parool yesterday, under the headline “Ondertussen in Oostenrijk” (Meanwhile in Austria). The sight of the fellas who didn’t make it to the World Cup cooling off in giant buckets of iced water after a pre-season training session in Austria showing the less glamorous side of the game.

In the other camp, Spanish paper Marca had an almost smiling Vicente del Bosque on their front page, the manager pictured holding the world in his hands – literally – but insisting while his team has done a lot so far, “it’s not enough”.

“Congratulations, boys,” said AS’s front page over a photo of Queen Sofia visiting the Spain dressingroom after their semi-final win, Carles Puyol just managing to cover his crown jewels with a towel in time.