PART 2 - THE WORLD CUP FINAL

Nothing beats a last minute, ill planned and overly ambitious trip overseas. Especially a trip that involves an extra and rather stupid financial risk over which one has no control...

MILAN AND NORTHERN ITALY 9^th –11^th JULY 2006

THE AIM???

Well, the aim was simple – To crown my month long gamble fest based around the World Cup (see part 1), I decided it best to be in Italy for the Final. I had a hunch and a largish bet that Italy would win and IF they did, I wanted to be there to enjoy/soak up and experience the more than vivid atmosphere that would surely follow...

Perhaps this makes me to be some kind of glory hunter and perhaps I am. But in this situation at least, I had extenuating circumstances. I might not be Italian, but Princess Paola is, and her vague memory of everyone feeling good in 1982 as a result of Italys only non fixed World Cup win was intriguing….

You see for my money, in such a dark and cynical world as this, nothing beats enthusiasm and optimism for life and for some reason Italians appear to have both in abundance. Yes boss, even at the worst of times all the Italians I've met love to smile and compete. They're often loud, excited and vivacious when discussing their journey to work, let alone anything else - yet they don't need to drink or take drugs to get any of this....

So, if 'exuberant and excitable' was the standard and the norm on a cold Wednesday in Autumn - Just how would they be if they won the World Cup in the middle of summer in a year that few picked them to win???? Would the whole country just erupt and topple into the Med with pure excitement?? Furthermore, would I be able to pretend I was Italian and therefore get into it all as if it really meant something to me personally purely because I’d was set to win a sum of cash on the result, or would I be forced to simply stand around like a doped observer robot, peering in at the celebrations with typical English restraint, contempt and jealousy??

It was clearly something I needed to find out...

2

So, our plan was loose - very loose. Indeed, other than a pair of flights from Luton to Bergamo departing at 6.20am on the day of the game, we had no distinct regime or order with which to deal with events...

Ideally we wanted to get to Rome. Rome is my favourite Italian city and probably my favourite world city thus far – at least on aesthethic grounds. But Rome would take up extra time. Milan was much closer and was also somewhere we hadn’t yet visited and therefore perfect for a short taster trip…

So, Milan it was. And we left Fish Island at around 2am..This meant no sleep at all for the first night. Indeed for the next 3 days, sleep would have to bought and sold like a bond: An hour here, would have to be doubled then sold on before it collapsed. An hour there, trebled and flogged sharpish. Great profits would have to be made from very little capital investment and any deficit or deceit would have to replaced by coffee, excitement and booze.

3

BALDNESS IS THE KEY

Now, one of the things I love most about Italian men apart from their enthusiasm for life, is their ability to make baldness look good.. I'm especially grateful for this attribute, because when my hair started falling out 4 years ago, I found myself hanging around with 2 bald Italians who wore it well and this gave me some belief I could do likewsie...

I first met Aldo the same day i first met PP. We were all in a pub called the Black Bull on Whitechapel Road in London - It was New Years Days 2003 and I was looking for SOMETHING.. I found it, or at least I think I did. I also watched 2 games of football and ended up in my local, at around 3am, dancing badly and trying to pull...

It was of course an act of determined desperation, I mean it's obvious only desperate people go out drinking on New Years Day. But, I won’t go into details except to say that Aldo has since returned home to Bergamo and it was him who met us off the plane and who, with characteristic Italian flare, drove us at considerable speed to his village. I still don't know the name of this village. All I know is it had wonderfully musical bells on it's church, a lot of people rode bikes very slowly as if they were a part of the opening titles of Blue Velvet, and when we were there it held a fantastically hot climate.

4

THE BUSINESS

Now this was of course a working holiday. Indeed, those of you who read Pt 1 will know that after making a fantastic gambling start to the 2006 World Cup, including running up a profit of more than 200%, I slipped like a golden fool into a bad patch from which prior to the final I’d only just emerged. Yes boss, when I left you, I was feeling battered and bruised and wondering whether I was stupid or inspired enough to go all in on with my one hundred and thirty odd quid remaining onto Italy to win or simply play lower and safer….

Well, sorry if this disappoints you with it’s conservatism and general lack of rock n roll putsch, but I did the latter. Of course the big profits possible by going all in were very tempting, but the problem was I’d just had two weeks of suffering at the hands of teams I cared little about and I wanted to have 100 pounds left at the very least to waste on something other than 22 idiots kicking a ball around - like 190 other idiots cycling around France.

So, I put the £36 on Iatly to win, kept the hundred in the kitty for the rest of the Tour De Farce and figured I was onto a winner…That was unless France won the game.

5

MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO AROUND

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself here….

Milan was more or less as we expected – A little serious, dull and unremarkable when compared with the likes of Venice and Rome, but it was none the less Italy, and it was fucking hot, and having checked into our hotel, we fitted in a quick hours sleep, before heading into the centre to find the big screen and general razamatazz….

We found the screen next to the Duomo – The Cathedral. There was just one modest sized affair and around it were a few thousand people with flags and best of all – twenty or thirty enterprising immigrants selling beer out of iced buckets.

Now, I love the European approach to living: I love the greater emphasis on family and friends and the different and lesser value on the importance of money. Indeed, the lack of commercialism that surrounds sport and general day to day life in Europe is absolutely fucking fantastic.

This certainly counts for sport. Indeed, most European sports haven’t really got their head around just how much cash you can charge for sport, or how much logonised crap you can sell to sports fans in the name of loyalty, support and merchandising.

For example, Paris Roubaix, a 100 year old classic bicycle race, is probably the most important and spectacular one day race in the world. It's followed by millions the world over because it’s an extreme and rather ridiculous test of masochism.

Yes boss, there are few more demanding ways to spend a Sunday than by riding a Paris Roubaix. After more than 200 kilometers of very hard racing over cobbles and small and very rough country roads, the race ends in a Velodrome in the former industrial heartland of Roubaix. Upon arrival, the riders quite often look as if they’ve been cycling through a swamp for 3 days.

Anyway, you can bet your life that if this event was in the US or UK, tickets for the Velodrome finale would be like gold dust and they would cost a packet. In Northern France they don’t cost shit. Futhermore, you can come and go whilst you wait without being bothered by security guards checking your bag for bombs or beer that isn’t that of the sponsors. Merchandising of any kind is also next to impossible to find. The focus remains on the sport, the sport and the sport and that’s the way it should be…

The only disadvantage to all this lack of commerce is that forward planning is required with alcohol and food.

I mean, I’ve been in France, the day before the biggest bike race of them all, the Tour De France comes along, together with it’s attendant tens of thousands of fans and I've not been able to find an open bar, let alone an off licence…..

It was exactly as we were approaching the Duomo that I remembered this was the case and it was then that I began to panic. Where the hell could I get a few beers? Fuck: I was English and I was abroad surely I needed beer!! Shit! It was a Sunday!! Everyone would be at home with the extended family, eating Pasta and watching the football - nothing would be open. How the hell could we be carrying on watching a game like this without a drink or two??

Well, thank god for the immigrants selling beer!!

6

PLAY

So, as you probably know, the game itself featured two teams who no-one really saw as being finalists at the beginning of the tournament. Indeed, like England, both France and Italy’s early group stage form had looked to be nothing special at all: The French had dithered and argued amongst themselves and Italy had got far too involved with the fine art of elbows and professional fouls to look like a serious challenge for the GC.

However, unlike England, both France and Italy managed to raise the pedal revs and win the games when it mattered. Fancied teams like Argentina, perennial favourites Brazil and even hosts Germany were thought to be far stronger and more complete, yet none of them made it.

So, on paper it looked like a tight and closely fought match and it was – Or at least it looked that way from where we were stood, but the truth was, we couldn't see a hell of a lot. You see, there was no graded seating, or natural slope in central Milan so vantage points were tricky. My near 6ft frame could get by, but PPs 5ft 3 one struggled to see above the crowd.

But did it matter? The excitement?? What about the excitement on the ground??

Well, for the most part the crowd was strangely unremarkable during that first 45 minutes. Sure there was plenty of flag waving, but there wasn’t the boisterous singing you might get in the UK. In fact it was all a little quiet and it became quite literally deathly silent in between the scoring of the French goal and the Italian one. It was so quiet, that I felt an obligation to start the singing myself. Of course I didn’t on account of being chickenshit, but someone had to start something and they did….That someone was Marco Materazzi…

7

HALF TIME - PLAY IT AGAIN

Once the second half kicked off, I felt glad i'd not gone all in..France were having the better of the possession and Italy’s creative accuracy and inspiration was running dry. What’s more the immigrants were running out of beer and I was running out of money.

Extra time added to all these woes. The Italian midfield just wasn’t threading the ball through well enough. Totti was non existent and then he was off, shaking his head, and France looked to be more committed, to want it more, to have the energy and the strength and the desire – Was it to be a repeat of the Euro 2000 final?? Were Italy going to fuck it up?

Jesus. I might not have stacked the full £130 on it, but a £30 loss would still leave me down on the tournament and leave my whole experiment in euphoria and Italian national character in tatters.

8

ON YOUR HEAD SON!

So, just as France were getting it more and more together, Marco Materazzi made the second of his 3 great impacts on the game.

To this day no-one appears to know exactly what he said to induce that ram from Zidane, but it’s clear Italy knew enough about the Algerian to push his buttons. 10 minutes earlier, Buffon had been giving the worlds greatest footballer some of his charms, but that time Zidane settled for spitting in the opposite direction. When Materazzi added in his small change, Zidane lost it and his career was over, France were down to ten and from that point on Italy always looked like the winners

9

THE CROWD GOES WILD

So, as you can imagine, when that last penalty went in, the place erupted. People were running about kicking and screaming at everything they could kick and scream at. They did however do it in a nice continental way - it didn't feel like violence. FIREWORKS BANGED. Traffic was at a standstill and cars were mobbed. Car stereos BOOMING. Mopeds with 2 or 3 or 4 people on screeching here there and everywhere, skidding and flag waving. And big flags and the noise of straight and unbridled joyful euphoria. CONSTANT HORNS. HAPPY JUBILATION AND JOY!!! Replicas of the cup and flares and HORNS!!!! AND COMPLETE HAPPY CHAOS!!

It was all too much for the screen. It gave up minutes after the final whistle and to see the trophy lifted we crowded around a small TV on a hot dog stand.

And me? Well, I thought about screaming and running around as if Southampton had won the Champions League, but in the end, I just sat back and watched it all like a doped robot. Sure I’d won and Italy had won, but I felt flat, I was completely shagged out and couldn’t celebrate as if it were my own win, because it wasn’t.

10

THE END FOR NOW...

So, there endeth the World Cup for another 4 years and who’d have thought Italy would win or that some makeweight replacement for Nesta, who couldn’t get in at Everton would be the hero of the hour?

It was strange, but accurate. The 2006 World Cup was one marked by the no shows of the big names. Ronaldo was too fat, Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney were injured, Ronaldinho and Beckham were off colour. There were no big star turns, instead it was once again proved that football is a team game - That goals by journeymen defenders can win big games.

We so often here of the big boys, the Zidanes and the Totti’s, but it’ s nearly always the Materazzis who call the shots in the crunch moments. Sure it’s the Zidanes who have the ideas, the flair and the skilled inspiration, but without Materazzi and his like we’d all be a bunch of bulls in a ring….

PART 1 - THE WORLD CUP

1

In an effort to make life exciting, I'm spending 4 and a half hours a day betting on the World Cup. I started with £20, have added more and now have around £83 from £67 invested from 30 games.

Though good, this situation would be a damn site better if Spain had kept it to 2-1 rather than fluking a penalty and winning 3-1 against Tunisia. That injury time goal cost me £67, but, that's gambling - it’s a fool hardy and rather stupid waste of time, but I enjoy it and in this weeks Sporting Diary I’ll be sharing details of how I’ve been getting on...

2

Good news..

I made £30 of yesterdays £67 back on Germany trouncing Ecuador...
5 bets - 5 wins.

Next up: ENGLAND vs SWEDEN..

England hadn't beaten Sweden for 40 odd years and weren't playing well. Meanwhile Sweden needed something from the game to be sure of qualification and were also under performing…

Half way through the second half with Sweden level and my two goal scorer bets gone to shit, it was clear a draw was on the cards, so I stacked bets against my previous England win prediction and onto the draw.

When England stuck the 2nd away with a few minutes remaining I felt like shit, I was about to take a £10 hit on a result I’d initially favoured and on a team I wanted to win!!!!

Business is however business

COME ON SWEDEN!!

3

So, how can you bet against your own team?

Well, unless you’re in a position to fix games, the key to successful gambling is to treat the whole affair like a business deal.

As in business, it’s essential you don't bet with any sentimentality or preference based on what you’d LIKE or would WANT to happen in a game. You have to focus exclusively on what IS happening and what is most likely to happen.

Frequently you have to bet on the lucky overpaid wankers, not the plucky outsiders...You have to take the stupidly low odds and avoid the exciting bets. Get romantic about it and you'll loose far more than you win..

£108.23 (40% profit).

4

IVORY COAST VS SERBIA

I had £5 on The Elephants to start with and would have got odds of 10 or 11-1 at the very least when Serbia were 2 goals to the good. Instead, I lost the faith and went to cover when the score was at 2-1 with an exact score bet of 2-2. The bet wasn't taken due to it being placed on the nail of the equaliser - I took this as a sign not to bother and settled for my original Ivory Coast win - It paid off..

PORTUGAL VS MEXICO

I missed most of this one and therefore decided not to bet at all. When I came in and saw 2-1, and Mexico being denied a blatant penalty with less than 10 minutes to go, I was sure there’d be no more goals. It was a strong instinct, so I put £100 (all but £8 of my stake money) on -4.5 goals at 1.2 and took home a £19 profit...

This is the first time I've gone all in and it's paid off, which is a bad precedent...

HOLLAND VS ARGENTINA

This was either going to be a high scoring classic or a 0-0, so I bet on both to start with and then moved more heavily onto the 0-0 as the game went on. I would have been fleeced if Holland had taken it 1-0, but that never looked likely..

So, I'm now on £132 off £62 and I feel it possible I've broken the £100 barrier for good...

5

Should have been well in the region of £150/60 today, but I lost concentration in the Italy game and took a £32 hit for no good reason.

Again it was a case of making the prediction right the first time then changing my mind, betting against myself and loosing out....

This can of course happen if you're concentrating fully, but the mistake was not totaling my potential losses correctly and therefore over compensating for my potential loss rather than leveling it.The difference was around £30.

I pulled most of it back in the second set of games involving Brazil, Australia etc and now stand on £130.80. It's pleasing when a bad day is a loss of less than a tenner...

6

This is becoming hard work….

Because they've been playing 2 games concurrently for the last 4 days, I have to concentrate on two games at once and therefore many, many permutations at any one time...

Furthermore, it’s all very well gambling with small amounts of money for fun. If its £2 or £3 a hit, it doesn't feel that important and if you loose, it’s the equivalent of a night down the pub at the very worst

But, thus far I’ve turned £62 into £165.98 By playing the full 90 minutes - most often predicting the goal markets -/+ 1.5 or 2.5 and by playing more conservative than Maggie, and as a result I’m turning over a daily profit more days than not

The problem is I don’t want to loose even a portion of it. You see I have this idea I can get up to £4-500 by the end of the World Cup. It’ll be a challenge unless I make some huge and very risky selections, but I reckon it can be done.

To have any real chance, I need to concentrate 300% each time there is a game and this is making me as anxious as fuck.

I sweat through the last ten or twenty minutes of most games and each time the ball goes near the goal I have A BIG BABY!! If it goes in and I didn’t want it to, or the opposite, I have to reappraise my bets and fast or take a big hit...

So, rather than enjoying the beauty of a multinational festival of football, I’m behaving like your Uncle Tony - Soon I’ll be eating pure meat 4 times a day and yelling at my family down the fucking phone because they've called during a FUCKING SET PIECE ON THE FUCKING EDGE OF THE BOX!!!

Well shit, I bet the starving African children are crying for me
"We think we’ve got it bad?! But look at poor James, he has to watch 3 to 5 hours of football a day to earn 10 or 20 quid Lets send him our rations!!!"
"Yeah save James!!!"

7

So why am I doing this??

Why aren't I working a proper job, painting the house, fixing the wardrobe, or walking in the park looking at the flowers, the hot women and the discarded crisp packets??

I think I'm trying to prove that if you treat gambling on football like Investment banking i.e. If you’re careful and realistic, knowledgeable and connected, unsentimental and blunt, you can make money or at the very least break even. After all, all you're doing is evaluating what a commodity (in this case a football team) is likely to do in the market place (the World Cup).

Sure, you won’t always win, but if you do your homework you will do OK more days than you won't and that will make a steady and safe profit over time.

Time will tell...

Anyway, another £20 in the black today says I’m right…


8

If there’s one life lesson from this, it’s that you should always trust your instincts – even if they are wrong …

Today, I hit the £200 mark after getting 5 out of 6 on the Germany Sweden game. I therefore felt I could take a risk on Mexico. They were under performing as have most of the fancied teams, but I had an instinct they had a good chance of beating Argentina. So when Mexico put the ball in, I was confused as to where to go.

The odds on Argentina were good, but I felt Mexico had it in them to win on penalties and the odds on them were fucking excellent

I went on Mexico and more goals....

The Mexicans were brave and pulled it as far as extra time, but the passion was clearly with the Argentineans. Football means more to them, and passion is everything…..

I had to spend £100 to level my bets and came out, down £25 for the match.

VIVA DIEGO!!!!

£190.90 from £62

9

England Ecuador was fine - I had a punt on Ecuador, but they didn't perform. My mistakes were covered by Beckhams goal...

Next up was the farce that was Portugal vs Holland. Never before have I seen such a combination of puerile playing antics and an incompetent referee. Holland, in particular, seemed to forget they were supposed to be kicking the ball and scoring bloody goals!!!!

Anyway, from the get go, I bet heavily on more than 2 goals and once again the second wasn't forthcoming. I've been caught this way 2 times on the bounce now, and though I pulled some of it back with some late exact score bets, I was too disgusted and distracted, not to mention unsure as to what was happening to pull it all back...

Taken all round, the first four 2nd round matches have been very disappointing - Things can only get better...

Tomorrow, I predict a rollicking high scoring win for Australia against a static Italy, and Switzerland to creep through 1-0

£174.44 from £62

10


5:16 AM - TOTAL
Current mood: good
Category: Sports
£211.90
:+)
:+)

11

Well. You all knew it was coming...

THE BAD DAY!!

Brazil Ghana was OK...I had it as a higher scoring game and therefore stacked on at +2.5. This is of course what happened, but once again I got the fear with about 8 minutes to go and bet on the exact score as 2-0 to cover what looked like a loss. Seconds later the third goal came. I quickly added another covering bet and this together with my other earlier correct selections ensured nothing more than a £7 loss overall...

FRANCE VS SPAIN – THE PAIN

France were struggling and Spain looked to finally be on course for something special in a World Cup Finals, so I went heavily with the Spain win and a low scoring match. I lost every single bet I made - about 12 in all, and my last covering attempt was one of the biggest losses...

I don't like to look, but I think I'm in for the night at around £66.63 (+£4.63)

Of course this had to happen at some point. It's unfeasible to go on a run for 10 or so days steadily stacking up the profits without any serious setbacks. A little less severe would have been nice, but at least I have something left to play with...

I now have a much needed 2 days rest, in which I intend to forget the whole thing and come back refreshed for the quarters. I'm confident I can pull back up to some reasonable level of profit by the end of the tournament. Anything above 15% would be a good.

12

A day to reflect leaves me thinking I should have seen that French win coming, or not so much that, as stuck to a +1.5 or +2.5 goal bet, especially given all the previous 2nd round games except Brazil had been low scoring...

But that's perhaps the flaw with my thinking on this. Yes, if you have the knowledge, you can get more bets right that wrong. However if the ones you get wrong are the ones you stack a lot on, you can take a beating REGARDLESS.

You’ll always make mistakes. If you're lucky they don't cost you every penny you have....

Well, it wasn't quite that bad, but I did realise I'd put £72 in not £62 so I’m
down by about a fiver overall....

This so, like a fool, I’ll return to my vomit with my head held high and today my mind has wandered both onto the 1/4 finals, and onto the Tour De France...

13

Now betting on football might be stupid, but predicting the result of cycle racing is severely fucking foolish. Each stage of a major tour can be won by anyone from 180 or more riders, and once you factor in corruption, unofficial alliances between teams, hidden agendas, drugs, crashes and illness, picking a winner becomes very tough indeed.

For example: On stage 1 of the Tour De France, I bet on 5 people to be in the top 3 including 3 favourites and only got one - Today I didn't bother, yet had I have bet on what I was thinking I’d have got 3....

See what I mean?

Anyway, I badly need a win at the moment and preferably a big one!!! Funds are getting low and it's less than 2 weeks til rent...If I don’t have it, Princess Paola will chop my balls off.

14

Well, who’d have thought the final 4 would be short of a South American team?? Why is it that Germany always do well regardless of the quality of their team? And will England ever win a penalty shoot out??

Basically, I've had a torrid time of it these last few games. I'm now down around £40 on the tournament...Nearly all my initial predictions on the quarters and semis have been wrong and I've been scrambling for cover for more than a week.

One part of me says ‘QUIT YOU FUCKING FOOL!!!! Why didn't you quit when you had 200% profit??’

The other (louder) says ‘It's a phase, Chill out and play the game!! It's not about the winning - It's about the taking part ...’

Well shit, I've only got one request and I'd happily loose all my money in exchange for it - Please don't let Germany win again!! France, Italy, Portugal - Anyone but the fucking hosts ...

15

GERMANY 0 - ITALY 2 (aet)

First of all congratulations to both teams for one of the tournaments finest games. It was full of quality and edge without the bookings, fake falling, penalties and fighting that has tarnished other encounters.

Secondly, FORZA ITALIA!! - 2 beautiful goals taken, with class, when it mattered...

My good news is that after a quite appalling run that started with the pain when France beat Spain, I finally turned in a !!!!PROFIT!!!!!

My only disappointment is that I only made rather conservative pre-kick off bets.
The thing was, I was watching the game in the pub with a large crowd of Italians and was unable to gamble as the game progressed. To torture myself, I made them in my head, and therefore know that had the computer screen been with me, I’d have made a lot more than the £6 I did...

Knowing this might be the case, I was very reluctant to go out at all - but Princess Paola kept bothering me about it until I gave in. I don’t regret it, sharing a winning moment with a bunch of Italians (You know how excited they get), whilst puffing an enormous Cuban cigar in a rather unbelievably German friendly pub?!? was as good a rush as I've had in recent times and far more what the World Cup is about than a steady accumulation of money...

Or is it???...

16

Once again, Portugal played their diving game and this time it didn't pay off...
Neither did my selections. Despite correctly predicting the winner, I lost my one and only bet which was +1.5 goals. Again I was down the pub and not on the job to counter my early prediction.

I can't say I'm bothered, I'll play the tour until Saturday and stake whatever’s left on Italy to win...That's that!!!

17

So, Bleus vs Azzuri in Berlin. But before that, the 3rd place play off, and at last it’s some sustained success.

After winning heavily on Oscar Friere to win the stage of the Tour (17/1) I scored a very pleasing 5 out of 5 bets on the Germany Portugal game which put me at £137.34 (+£7.29)...This left a dilemma: Should I go all in on Italy to win, out of a sense of style as much as anything, or be cautious...

Well fuck it, instead of wasting time thinking about it, I booked a pair of flights to Bergamo, from where, we'll train it to Milan for the final. On the one hand making this last minute adventure is a huge risk in itself - essentially an EXTRA bet of £100 or more each.On the other, if Italy win, we’ll be in place for the mother of all parties..

Anyway, it’s bed time now, so I’ll leave you with the problem
ALL IN OR NOT??