Let’s be clear here, I may not be the biggest football fan in the world, but I’ll never call it soccer. Soccer is such a sanitised, polite word. People who play soccer are soft. Blokes who play football are hard. Gentlemen play soccer, but lads play football. In short, Americans play soccer and Europeans play football.

Even so, it was hard for me to muster up any enthusiasm for the World Cup final yesterday. I just couldn’t bring myself to watch a bunch of millionaire Italians chase round after a group of millionaire Frenchmen for two hours, only to have the whole thing decided on spot kicks. To my mind, deciding a major tournament on something as arbitrary as a penalty shoot-out is like deciding a close-run election with an arm-wrestle.

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