A Football Report

By Dominic Vieira and Eric Beard

The World Cup has come and gone, so it’s time to give credit to those who deserve it. All behold AFR’s 2010 World Cup awards!

The Zidane Aggression Title: De Jong (Netherlands)

Top Team: New Zealand… they didn’t lose a match did they?

Best Pitch Invasion: (tie) Jimmy Jump trying to put a hat on the World Cup and Mario Ferri telling Marcello Lippi that he should have brought Cassano to South Africa.

Top Goalkeeper: Luis Suarez (Uruguay)

Star of the World Cup: Paul the Octopus

World Cup Circus Clown: Raymond Domenech

Anti-Football Trophy: The Vuvuzela

Most Solid Defence: England

Best Haircut: Tshabalala

Expected to be Player of the Tournament: Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal)

Greatest Disappointment: If Argentina won the World Cup, Maradona promised to run through the streets of Buenos Aires naked. If only…

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By Darshan Joshi

We learn plenty over the course of a World Cup, don’t we? We realise the unimportant things, like the ability Germany have without Michael Ballack, like the fact that we’ll have a new World Cup winner this summer, like the fact that we’re all now going to have vuvuzelas line our attics, and like the fact that once and for all, we now know that the England national team are made up of a rubbish bunch of overpaid princesses.

Of course, none of that matters. We’re done with the World Cup, and it’s time to look back at seven of the brilliant events that have overshadowed this summer’s extravaganza.

Nike doesn’t write the future, Paul the Octopus does (and Mani the Parakeet!) 

 We’ve covered the curse of Nike’s wastefully overdone advertisement, but where one fails, another (two) succeed. Step up, Paul and Mani. They hail from opposing poles of the World but have pretty much one thing in common: they’re challenging the Lord. They may still be Gods of the animal kingdom, but to mess with humans like this? No way, we won’t stand for this.

Paul, the more mainstream of the two, is the story of the World Cup. He is the symbol of South Africa 2010. He correctly predicted all of Germany’s matches in the tournament, and also predicted Spain’s triumph over the Netherlands. Ladies and gentlemen, Paul the Octopus.

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By Eric Beard

Anyone watching the Spain-Germany match witnessed what seemed to be your average hooligan invading the pitch like a proper idiot in the first few minutes of the first half. However, this hooligan, Italian Mario Ferri, is actually cult hero in his homeland. We all saw him get tossed around by security guards, but this isn’t the first time he has been ushered off the pitch in such a harsh fashion. In fact, this is Ferri’s third pitch invasion for a cause that quite a few Italians were supporting. This cause was simply to get fellow cult hero and Sampdoria footballer Antonio Cassano on Italy’s national team for the World Cup, which didn’t happen. Marcello Lippi, Italy’s manager for the 2006 and 2010 World Cups, did not want to deal with Cassano’s extravagant personality even though he had been in sensational form for Sampdoria.

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