u/elephvant

I've not minded having the extra teams at all. They've acquitted themselves well and, even if they hadn't, they'd still have added to the experience, in my opinion.

I always love the group stages and the first two rounds of fixtures this year were no exception - you get your first look at how the big boys are shaping up, can properly assess who might be dark horses, and there's always a shock or two, with this year again being no exception.

But with this last round of fixtures, there's been so much less drama and interest than there should have been. After their draw with Cape Verde, Spain should have been in massive trouble - their game with Uruguay could have seen them out under the old format. Instead it was of little interest. France - Norway should have been a huge game - and in a normal year it still would have been since the difference between topping the group and finishing second would be clear cut, and would have been the difference in facing Germany or Ivory Coast. Instead, it was between Ivory Coast and Sweden, which is kind of 50/50 and Norway ended up making 10 changes with the game not really mattering very much.

Even the Iran game - that late goal being ruled out should have meant Iran looking like going through at Egypt's expense then things being switched back round again as it was ruled out. Instead it probably isn't going to matter that much as Iran will very likely make it through as a best third place, and Egypt were never at risk anyway.

The occasional inconsequential match can't be helped, but there have been far too many this year - especially compared to Qatar where there was drama and real excitement in almost every group.

Of course things will ramp up again in the knockouts, but I really hope this is something FIFA attend to for 2030. I know a lot of people think 64 teams is too many but they're not going back to 32 so I'd rather 64 and proper meaningful groups than 48 teams and this format.

Before he's even realised his mistake, a dozen big English hooligans take their seats, 6 on either side of him.

"Oh-ho-ho", says the biggest of them. "What have we here? A scrawny wee Jock in the England section?"

"Fuck off," says the Scot.

"Well, that's not very nice," says the hooligan. "But I tell you what, as a peace offering, why don't you go get us all a beer each?"

"Got no money," says the Scot, provoking a round of cheap Scotsman jokes before the big England fan gets his own wallet out and tells the Scotsman to use that.

"But before you go," he says, "we're worried you might run away, so give us your shoes."

The Scotland fan looks either side, realises there's no way out and hands over his shoes then goes to buy the hooligans their beers.

When he comes back, the biggest one says: "You were gone a long time, Jock. We started to think you really had run away."

"Naw," the Scotsman says as he hands out the beers. "Naw, just a really big queue. Besides, I wouldn't miss this for the world."

"Well, here you go," says the England fan and hands the shoes back. But as the Scot takes them, he notices a foul smell and looks inside to see the hooligans have taken a shit inside each shoe. He looks up at the big England fan who stares right back at him, takes a long sip of his beer then says: "Put them on."

Again, the Scotland fan looks about, realises there's no escaping, and <squelch>, <squelch>, he puts them on.

The rest of the match passes without incident and at the final whistle the England fans let him go. As he's leaving the stadium, though, a local American TV crew sees him exiting from the England section and run over to him, hopeful for a nice human interest story.

"Sir, sir!" the presenter says, rushing up to him with her mic. "You're a Scotland fan but you've just come out the England section. Would you say this might be a sign that after centuries of animosity, fans of your two countries can finally get along and be friends?"

The Scotsman looks right into the camera and says: "Naw. Naw I don't. We'll never be friends. Not as long as they keep shitting in our shoes - and we keep pissing in their beer."

Starting with the Direct itself, I think a week later it's a lot easier to focus on what was announced rather than how - and that ought to make it seem a better Direct. Nintendo themselves announced three new first-party games: Ocarina of Time is the heavy hitter for the holidays, Switch Sports Resort is the casual fare, and Xenoblade Genesis is the one for the future, and honestly, if anyone was expecting more than three brand-new announcements, they were being a bit unrealistic.

Yeah, they could have laid those games out better - if Genesis had been shown first instead of Rhythm Heaven and then followed by Switch 2 upgrades for all other XC games, it might have hit harder than doing it the other way round; less time could have been spent on Sports Resort (but then we'd have missed out on a gif that's going to be doing the rounds for decades); they could have shown more of OoT (although I'm not sure even that would have curtailed the effect of it being leaked). A week later, however, and you can kind of forget about the presentation aspect and just look at the games and, yeah, coupled with Fire Emblem and Star Fox, it's a decent looking remainder of the year without being mind-blowing. (Plus, worth remembering, there are two third-party exclusives in Duskbloods and Orbitals that have potential to be very cool.)

It was really third-parties, though, that made this week different to recent years for Nintendo. There were big new games in the Direct in Kingdom Hearts 4, Final Fantasy and Onimusha, and while I know not everyone is happy with AAA ports, there's no denying the Direct itself was absolutely stuffed with them: Stellar Blade, Devil May Cry, Metaphor ReFantazio, Lies of P, Dragon's Dogma 2, Space Marine 2... Regardless of whether any of these appeal to you personally, these are games of a different ilk to the ones we'd see being announced for Switch 1, and we certainly wouldn't see them being announced in this volume in a single presentation.

But of course, there wasn't just a single presentation - and this is where things were really different to any year for the Switch 1. Usually, the other presentations might see the Switch get a couple of indies, maybe a platfomer like Rayman, but this year, on top of everything that was in Nintendo's own presentation, there was indeed Rayman, but there was also Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Wo Long, Crazy Taxi, Call of Duty and many more. There was even a release date for Elden Ring and an announcement that Monster Hunter Wilds is on the way just dropped randomly outside of any themed presentation.

Most announcement / E3 seasons for the past decade for Nintendo consoles have been pretty much exclusively about Nintendo's own presentation, but imagine throwing all the above into what was already in the Direct and suddenly it goes from being pretty good to outstanding.

I know people wanted more from Nintendo - me too - but we also all know they will drop your Luigi's Mansions, Kirbys, Animal Crossings and, yes, new 3D Marios and Zeldas at some point - they always do. What last week really told us was something a lot of us had been hoping would be true but couldn't really be sure of until now: This gen, you don't have to choose between either Nintendo games and indies or big AAA games. On Switch 2 you can get a bit of everything and, for me at least, that's absolutely amazing.

There's no better way to make something appealing to kids and teens than by telling them they're not allowed to have it - especially if the reason is 'you're too young'.

Sites like Facebook probably seem a bit dorky to lots of modern young people because it's no longer the cool thing only young people use like it was 20 years ago. Instead, it's the site their parents and other adults all use already and has completely lost any cool factor.

Banning it for under-16s in places like the UK and Australia makes it seem more appealing again, and scoring a Facebook account when you're only 14 will be the modern equivalent of having a motorbike or smoking / drinking when underage in the past.

That's it. We got our win. It's not impossible that alone could even see us through. But honestly, if it isn't, fair enough - I don't think anyone really thinks a scrappy 1-0 against Haiti and then 2 defeats ought to take teams through.

However, the pressure is well and truly off now, and what we do know is a point from either of our other games almost certainly will take us through. Not that any of us expect to take points off top 10 sides, but whatever, if we do, we do, if we don't, we don't. The job we were expected to take care of has been taken care of. And that's usually the one we struggle most with.

Plus, the most obvious routes to glorious failure are now closed. We can't beat Brazil but go out cause we lost to Haiti. We can't draw all three games and still go out. We could still concede very late in one or both games to go out, but equally, in 5 days time, if we beat Morocco (decent side, but not impossible) and Haiti somehow scrape a scrappy draw with Brazil, we'd be through as group winners. Not likely, I know, but that's the sort of scenario this win's opened up for us.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who couldn't see beyond this game the last few weeks - and I'm sure the same applied to the squad. But now it's job done, it feels like we've got a free hit to just go out there, enjoy things and see what happens.

(Also, a wee word on Haiti: Thought they looked decent. Had nothing to go on before the match but their world ranking and them beating NZ 4-0, two things which tell two completely different stories. Watching them though, yeah, we could have played better, but they deserve credit too, cause they weren't pushovers.)

I get some people didn't like the Direct - that's always the case. But what's with this idea it was nothing but jrpgs?

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Stellar Blade, DMC V, Onimusha, Space Marine 2, Lies of P, Dragons Dogma 2, Lords of the Fallen II, Tomb Raider - these are all big AAA games I was personally interested in, then you had all the smaller titles too.

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Even from Nintendo's side, the new announcements were Ocarina of Time, Switch Sports Resort and Xenoblade, which yeah, one jrpg and two non-jrpgs.

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Like, sure, there were a few jrpgs, but regardless of whether any one individual liked of them or not, I don't see how anyone could think there weren't absolutely loads and loads of other announcements too.

No point in us all rushing to set one up and causing confusion. Let's coordinate our efforts to make sure we have one, clear, main campaign and then let's get out there and get the donations rolling in.

Also, kind of goes without saying, but let's all boycott anything French.

Love the World Cup and really starting to get that excitement building with it just round the corner. However, there have definitely been better and worse tournaments over the years. Hope this will be a good one, of course, but it made me look back and have a think why I hold certain WCs in higher esteem than others.

Going to date myself a little with these answers but here are my personal (and heavily influenced by being Scottish) top 3 World Cups:

#3 Italia '90

First one I remember (and even then it's a wee bit hazy) so a lot of nostalgia in this choice. Cried when Scotland lost to Brazil, but loved the whole atmosphere around the thing, learning about countries I'd never heard of, getting stickers etc. Plus, it was a genuinely good tournament with some cracking players on show - not least of whom was Diego Maradonna, with this probably being one of the very few times I watched him not in the form of archive clips.

#2 Quatar '22

Honestly, I almost didn't want this to be a success since Qatar were a scandalous choice as hosts, but there's no getting round the fact it was a simply superb tournament on the pitch. Almost every group was tense right to the end, it had a classic shock run from Morocco, best final of all time with Messi-Mbappe subplot going on as well. Fantastic tournament with the highest rate of great matches I can remember.

#1 France '98

Scotland-Brazil in the opening game and I'll never forget that excitement in the build-up. It was also the first to have the classic (and what I consider to be the perfect) tournament format. Was old enough to know a lot of the players. Also had a bolter in the form of Croatia (easy to forget how out of left field that was at the time) and a bunch of drama with things like Ronaldo's illness, Zidane's suspension then him coming good in the final and of course a home team (and first timer) win. Plus, I happened to be on holiday in France for the last week or so of it and coming out our little hotel into the streets where people were partying was something special.

Oh really? Monkeys open bananas from the other end, do they?

So fucking what? Monkeys are stupid.

Have you ever even seen a monkey? Their backsides are all covered in dried shit.

Monkeys don't care if they get banana mush under their fingernails. I do. So I'm gonna keep opening my banana from the top like I always have done without issue, thank you very much.

(NB. Please don't think I dislike monkeys. Actually I really love them. I think they're funny and cute and very smart in comparison to most other animals except us. But they're not my first port of call for advice regarding eating techniques.)

Edit: Even though I've used Reddit for a while, I'm still kind of amazed by the number of people taking this seriously and genuinely trying to justify why their way of opening a fucking banana is superior.