Thursday, June 24, 2010

Corner flag (vol 2.7) - World Cups and the Year of the Tiger

                                     
1. A funny forward that I received this morning:

From an English guy: "This World Cup is like WWII. The French surrendered early, the USA arrive at the last minute and we're left to fight the Germans, ahahaha"


2.  My "welcome" moment to the city that I live in, happened a few hours before the Italy - France final four years ago. Where I realised the rather scientifc Chinese love for astrology. I call it analysing patterns, which is the eternal truth of life: its all about cycles.

Hypothesis: Extrapolating the theory, a quick run through of World Cup winners in the Year of the Tiger and the following emerges:
1998: France
1986: Argentina
1974: West Germany
1962: Brazil
1950: Uruguay
1938: Italy

Conclusion: there has never been a repeat winner during the Year of the Tiger World Cups.

Inference: Looking at the elite 9, this means 4 possible winners: England, Portugal, Spain and Holland.

Action point: To the lucky few who manage to read this, one should use this path breaking finding at the time of the semi-finals when deciding on whom to bet. 

My view: its got 2 of the names I dont want anywhere near the semi-finals, 1 where I didn't think there is any reserve fuel in the radiator and finally the one that I would like to win. So far so good. Lets see how it all develops.


3. Moving 2 dimensions forward into the world of club football and Arsenal Football Club, there is a pretty interesting article on BBC on how Arsenal is well poised at the moment to move ahead of its peers - with the focus on finances. Which is crucial at this time when the Western European economies have got to get used to tighter bank balance sheets.

The article refers to recent Deloitte and Forbes reports on Football clubs, which highlight the uptrend in the financial fortunes of Arsenal - backed by of core footballing business strategy and prudent spending by the manager through the last 6 years or so. Any reader who would like a copy of the Deloitte report can drop his/her email id in the comments section.

Which only leads me to strengthen my belief that the next decade is going to be Arsenal's.Though much work needs to be done this summer: keeping Fabregas, replenishing the defence + goalkeeper smartly and some fresh thinking on the coaching bench.

_________________________________________________________

Another chap thats done for World Cups and European club football as well. Good night and good luck.

                                                     

No comments: