The Day After Yesterday

Someone at work told me the other day that Nostrodamus predicted that Spain would win the World Cup this year. Well, Nostrodamus I’m not and I don’t want to gloat but take a look at the prediction in the last paragraph here. Ok, so I got it wrong about the penalty (because they let Villa take it instead of Raul), and I underestimated French striking power – but still not such a bad prediction. Spain had a great start against Ukraine, struggled a little but still looked good against Tunisia, made virtually no impression against the Saudis, and then went under against a better French team. Grandfather Aragones didn’t help much in the end by constantly changing players around – his decision to effectively put out the B team against Saudi Arabia ended up breaking the momentum they had built up in the first two games. In the end the only real strategy Spain had was a translation of their awful World Cup anthem A Por Ellos (Lets Get Them!) – it didn’t work.

Following up on the appointment of Jose Maria Aznar to the board of News Corporation, it has been reported today that he has been getting 10000 Euros a month from them for the last couple of years, apparently for consultancy services advising on “global corporate strategy”. I’m really keen to know what advice he has been giving to earn his money; “Sell more newspapers”, “Get into internet”, “Show more football on Sky”? A nice little part-time job, I can do that.