Category: Journal

England had the semifinal in hand, ahead by a goal with fifteen minutes to run, and then let it slip. Tuchel spent those minutes undoing his own work; the substitutions invited pressure rather than relieving it, and Argentina needed no second invitation. Their remontada was the kind you feel coming and are powerless to stop.…

Spain put France out today, goals from Oyarzabal and Porro, and for all the talk of the French as favorites they never once looked dangerous. Spain go through to the final, though I can’t pretend to be glad of it; they are a hard side to admire, all possession and no pulse, and the neutral…

Fifteen miles on the bike, an easy day for it, the World Cup quiet before the semifinals open tomorrow with France against Spain. In the evening I finished Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. The last chapter buried its ending under one cutscene after another, and for all the years and craft poured into the remake, I…

A quiet day, and none the worse for it. Liza and I gave the afternoon over to a film and asked nothing more of it. The evening ran to games, the unhurried kind. Not every day needs to be spent to be worth keeping; some are simply meant to be enjoyed alongside good company.

The semifinals are set, and both were settled the hard way. England needed extra time against Norway before Bellingham found his second and closed it out, 2-1. The other went further and stranger. Argentina and Switzerland turned on a single moment in the 72nd, when Embolo dove into a challenge, drew a second yellow through…

Spain are through to the World Cup semifinals, having put out Belgium two to one. The tournament is thinning to its serious contenders now, and it is a strange pleasure to watch it unfold with no stake of my own in this particular match. Closer to home, I finally had the car’s air conditioning seen…

France dispatched Morocco two to nil this afternoon, the first side through to the semifinals and never in real doubt of it. The result was the expected one, though I had hoped Morocco might make a contest of it; they were simply outmatched, and there is little drama in watching a gap that wide. Closer…

No World Cup fixture today, and I confess I was at something of a loss without one. I turned instead to the Nürburgring, the twenty-four hour endurance race in the Gr.3 cars, and found myself thoroughly outpaced; the field laps around eight minutes ten while I labor in at eight thirty. The honest answer is…

The day belonged to Argentina, though not by any honest measure. Egypt had built a two-goal lead, had a third disallowed by VAR for a foul, and then watched the referee hand the match away call by call. Three Argentine goals in ten minutes, and with them the ugly familiar chorus of racism and corruption.…

Two matches today, and both ended as they should have. Portugal and Spain played a close, joyless thing that either side might have taken, until Mikel Merino settled it in the first minute of stoppage time and left Ronaldo four minutes to find an equalizer he was never going to find. It was his last…