Search: ' World Cup 2006'

Brazil travelled to Germany as favourites, but Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and friends rarely looked worth the hype. As Robert Shaw explains, they paid the price for putting commercial concerns ahead of football

Carlos Alberto Parreira is an articulate coach, accustomed to giving presentations. But when it really mattered at the World Cup he was strangely speechless. After Thierry Henry slipped past a sleeping defence, Parreira seemed dumbstruck and delayed shuffling his pack, with Robinho left on the bench until it was too late. Brazil’s formation based on an attacking quartet was set in stone, although the notoriously cautious coach had only really seen it work well against Argentina in the Confederations Cup final last June and in the drubbing of Chile in September.

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You couldn't avoid seeing the endless plugs for sponsors but, wonders Barney Ronay, did they make you buy anything?

This was surely the most energetically sponsored World Cup yet. Certainly, there was something different about the corporate presence. FIFA and your local TV channel may have long since run out of easy ways to up the logo content. But somehow it was all just a bit more insistent. The pitch perimeter advertising was standardised at this World Cup, with – you’d imagine – each step closer to the holy grail of the halfway line eagerly auctioned off. Close your eyes and you can still picture them all. Hyundai, Toshiba, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola (in Brazil colours). Something called Avaya. At most grounds the advertising boards themselves had either been extended to cover the first couple of rows of seats or framed by a lemon tarpaulin to give them that extra grab factor. These ads were super-sized – bigger and, unless there’s something drastically wrong with the contrast on my television, brighter, too. 

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All the complaints about the ticketing didn't stop the grounds being full. But, as Steve Menary explains, that doesn't mean people were wrong to be angry at a system in need of reform

 Saudi Arabia’s opening group match against Tunisia on June 14 summed up the World Cup ticket paradox. There were a few empty seats before kick-off, but not enough to argue with an announcement that the most obscure first-round game had filled one of the biggest grounds, Munich’s impressive new 66,000-seat Allianz Arena.

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England always struggle with penalty shootouts but, as Ben Lyttleton explains, the more professional approach of others is leaving them ever further behind

Paul Robinson began the World Cup accused of trying to make one of his clearances hit the giant box of video screens that hung over the centre-circle of the stadium in Frankfurt. He ended the competition staring far too often at the same screens, this time at the stadium in Gelsenkirchen, as each Portugal player walked 40 yards to take a penalty in the shootout that ultimately knocked out England.

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You've got to laugh. Well, probably not. Cameron Carter reviews the World Cup shows that did for comedy

After the initial frenzy of World Cup-related programming in May, terrestrial television apologetically dropped everything except coverage and highlights once the tournament began. The one exception was Rio Ferdinand’s World Cup Wind-ups, notable only for the host’s immoderate laughter at “stunts” such as David Beckham being made slightly late by a bogus chauffeur, and the fact that Ferdinand resembled the female saxophonist from The Muppet Show in his heightened state of elation.

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