World Cup Diary July 4: Not always as glamorous as it seems

World Cup Diary / Jonathan Wilson / 04 July 2010 / Leave a comment Free £25 Bet

Beautiful stadium, pain in the backside to get home from

Jonathan Wilson gives us the latest on Daniel the taxi driver, World Cup exhaustion and the mystery behind Germany's success as they prepare to face Spain in a mouth-watering clash.

"This is the part of the tournament when everything starts to catch up with you. The breathlessness of the group stage is gone, the momentum of match after match, and all that remains is the terrible breaks between games, the aching exhaustion of the constant nights of four hours sleep, of no exercise and disappointing food."

After that rant about taxi drivers two days ago, it's only fair that I start by setting the record straight and give Daniel, the driver who took me to the hotel to get the bus to Soccer City (for that's how impotent those of us without cars are) for the Ghana v Uruguay game, his due. Not only did he turn up 15 minutes early, but he was dressed in the most extraordinary golf-pimp chic, and kept up a breathless diatribe on the inadequacies of every team he supported. His hopes on Friday rested with Ghana and Brazil, he said. Poor bloke.

That said, I still had to read the map for him, despite heading to one of Johannesburg's bigger hotels, which is right next to the famous Bruma Flea Market. Still, it's all about the service.

This is the part of the tournament when everything starts to catch up with you. The breathlessness of the group stage is gone, the momentum of match after match, and all that remains is the terrible breaks between games, the aching exhaustion of the constant nights of four hours sleep, of no exercise and disappointing food. It may sound
churlish to complain about a life spent watching football, but on the other hand after Uruguay's victory over Ghana, I didn't get back to the hotel until 3am. Not because I was out carousing, but because that's how long it takes to get back from Soccer City to a guest house near the centre of Johannesburg.

Then today it was up at 8 to work on follow-up pieces to Uruguay's win (I seem to be the only person not absolutely outraged by Luis Suarez doing what I'm pretty sure anybody would have done in the same circumstances), then an interview with Australian TV who very kindly gave me a lift to the hotel. From there I took the shuttle to Ellis Park, where I
wanted to be before 2 so I got a decent seat to see the Germany v Argentina game on television.

I don't know if I'm on my own here, but I'm not really sure how Germany do it. Bastian Schweinsteiger is clearly a very fine player and Mesut Ozil has the potential to be special as well, but the front three, who seem to run riot through opponents, all seem little more than competent. England and Australia fell to them because they played too high a defensive line and allowed Germany, with their pace, to exploit the space behind them, but Argentina just seemed mesmerised by players who ran straight at them.

Neither Lukas Podolski nor Thomas Muller are particularly skilful, and both Finland and Azerbaijan frustrated them in qualifying, yet teams at the World Cup seem to have been incapable of defending against them. Whether Spain will fare any better is debatable. Although they have conceded only twice in the tournament so far, their defence is
rarely tested because of how well they keep possession.

The suspicion must be that the intelligence and fluency of Spain's passing will undo a Germany defence that, with Arne Friedrich and Per Mertesacker at its heart looks rather cumbersome - particularly if Spain do what now seems inevitable and drop an out-of-sorts Fernando Torres to shift to the 4-2-3-1 with which they finished the game against Paraguay (Spain are [1.9] to go thrugh; Germany [2.08]). But then I made a fool of myself predicting a comfortable Argentina victory in the quarter-final for similar reasons.

The most important thing for now, though, is to get some sleep, and try to recuperate for the rest of the tournament.

Tags: Bastian Schweinsteiger, German footballers. Johannesburg, Soccer City, Spain v ermany, Tomas Podolski, Toni Muller, World Cup bets