Taylor Swift

Too right. You don't invite a load of vegetarians around for dinner and then serve up steak tartar while showing 'em the photos from that bullfight you went to. That analogy isn't fit to describe the situation. The proper analogy is: You're invited to dinner at a foreign friend's place. You both like steak, but since his wife is cooking, she'll be pouring a 'special' sauce on the meat made using her own recipe, and you'll act like a nice, polite guess and eat the steak, even if you think the sauce is shit and the steak's less tasty because of it. Then you go home and complain to your own wife that the sauce was shit and that you'd have preferred it if they just served fish and chips.

Whoever wins the Portugal v Ivory Coast match tonight will pretty much qualify, imo; both teams will beat NK and both teams will lose to Brazil.

They still have a right to do what they want, though. Am I right?

When the Brazilians and the Spaniards rock, no one else will be able to use it as an excuse.

Who's blaming them for the poor performances? Why were the Germans so good and the Argies pretty decent then? Me thinks it's a convenient excuse and it actually has more to do with players underperforming (England, Italy) and shit coaching (France) than the vuvuzelas.

It's not affecting the football that much, though. It's affecting the communication between the players on the field, in the same way that a loud and boisterous St James' affects the visiting team's play, which is not that much if the team is actually any good. Let's be honest, there isn't much communication when you play football. It's not like Torres has to shout 'pass' to Villa every time he's free. It probably affects the players when marking at set-pieces, when the ball drops in an iffy position where two players are going for it and when a player isn't facing a teammate who's far away (such as a CM facing one winger and the other winger is free and shouting for the ball). The reason people have focused so much on it is because the football's been quite boring. I honestly was tuned out during the Germany - Australia match because the football was actually exciting.

The shit about it being a part of their culture is bs but people are free to do what they like and we're all free to be fucking annoyed about it, which I certainly am. The WC, for me, won't be ruined by this. I'd prefer a singing, celebratory atmosphere but let's be honest, it's the football we're all watching, isn't it? Unless a host nation is playing, you'd rarely expect a passionate and loud crowd in any WC, so the fact that this has been substituted for the vuvuzelas in this WC is only a minor annoyance, to me.

16.8 seconds

That Shakira song is decent. It ain't bad.

They play the flag waving song as the introduction to every match on the channel I'm watching and at first I thought it was too 1960s but now I could smoke a joint and listen to it all day

Yes, someone needs to sacrifice themself for the greater good of mankind.

Come on, does that song make the hairs on your neck stand up or what? JUST LIKE A WAVING FLAG!

Mike, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhM-cpSwrmM

That picture I could easily post a picture of a drunken British hooligan pissing himself and say 'that's what football means to him, coming to the match to get pissed then fight with whoever dares to look at and think about what a pathetic fuck he is' but that wouldn't be fair on the rest of the people who are thoroughly good and fun-to-be-around football supporters, would it?

Jesus, that's some patronising shit, TT. South Africa is not a developed country so you may be right in saying that the millions spent on stadiums should have been spent on actually helping the people, but I don't see how that makes the country less deserving of hosting the WC. In fact, since the WC will bring in significantly more revenue than it'll cost to host (ask Japan and Korea), they're probably quite deserving of hosting it as it'll bring a vast amount of people out of poverty with the money and jobs that has and will be created due to the WC. Secondly, how can you say that they don't know how to support? They've got one of the best rugby teams in the world, they have hosted the Rugby WC and their stadiums are filled with fans singing every time the Spring Boks play, so they certainly know how to host and support sporting events. To say that they don't purely because they use the vuvuzelas is really some condescending shit. It's also noticeable that many, many foreign fans are using the vuvuzelas as well, so what does that say about them? That all these foreign fans who've travelled from all over the world also lack any culture and also don't know how to support football teams? Lastly, it's fucking laughable that because of the vuvuzelas you've concluded that Africa wasn't ready for the WC and never will be. That's fucking retarded, if I'm being honest. Yeah, let's not mention the world class stadiums that have been built, how nice and flat the pitches are (maybe England should never get to host the WC too since the Wembley pitch is one of the worst pitches football can be played on), how there haven't and likely won't be any security problems. There's a shit load more to hosting a WC than just making sure you make the right noise in the matches. I agree the vuvuzelas are annoying but let's not extrapolate this minor problem into saying that Africa wasn't ready for the WC and will never be because that's absolute bollocks and you know it.

The theme song is fucking awesome, I tell you. I was listening to the radio in the car on the way home today, they started playing the song (the flag waving one) and all of a sudden I was excited about NZ vs Slovakia powerful shit, man

Look at the white kid with the cheeky smile!

Quite a boring half. The vuvuzelas are still fucking annoying.

Livening up. The Dutch have no width.

Feels like you're playing FIFA with this camera angle.

112 pages after 3 days. Jesus. We'll end up with 1000.

Anyone enjoying the theme song (the flag waving one) more and more with every listen?

There is nothing wrong with the rule as it is, unless you're a fascist wanker who insists that a nationality is only represented by one, true stereotypical physical appearance.

The Germans defend well. They don't defend too high up but when the aussies get in their half, they collectively pressure and then break - all as a team. I'm really impressed, even considering how shit the Aussies are.

Man, the Germans are playing well.