Toulouse: two lose in the semi-finals

August 6, 2026Leave a comment

The Longest World Cup Ever is over, at last, and I am done with football for a while. FIFA and its All-Powerful Leader, He-Who-Must-Be-Shown-Onscreen-In-The-13th-Minute-Of-Every-Game, have been very quiet since it ended, nothing controversial happening, very low profile. Maybe this will be the last ever World Cup. It’s just the shirts I like anyway these days. The game itself, well good games are few and far between. Certainly the World Cup Final was one of the most boring games I have ever pretended to enjoy. I am glad Spain won that final, Argentina were about as anti-football a team in that game since the Argentina of the 1990 final, unsporting thugs. I didn’t sketch the Final, as it came at the end of a very very busy Urban Sketching Symposium in Toulouse, and anyway who would sketch that game, better to just paint my page and watch it dry. The Third Place Game between England and France was unmissable but I missed most of it, because those games are usually missable, and besides I was busy. I did however watch and sketch what I could of the Semi-Finals. I will post the Symposium story and my Toulouse and London sketches soon (and then get back to catching up from 2025, by which time it will be 2028 and time for the Euros). For now tough it seems a good moment to close out my World Cup documentation. I arrived in Toulouse on July 14, which we call Bastille Day but the French call the Fête Nationale. They held the fireworks the night before on the July 13, and this night was all about the football. I watched it in a bar right across the street from my hotel, O’Brien’s, with fellow sketche Kalina. It was full of locals dressed in the colours of Les Bleus (ie, blue), some draped in French flags, lots of bières blondes (it was happy hour, buy one get one free), and a lot of nervous anticipation. I was probably expecting more noise and atmosphere, as France had been the most exciting team in the tournament and I fully expected them to win the whole thing with goals and panache, but people were not getting carried away. Not like in 2002, when they were on top of the world and the atmosphere in France was triumphal to say the least (I was living in Aix that year), until they completely flopped in the group stage. It was a bit more like 1998, I was there for the semi-final then as well, watching it at my friend Roland’s apartment, and people did not want to get too carried away, until the final whistle blew and wow, they were actually in the Final, and would play Brazil, in Paris, and boy did they celebrate that night. Well this night felt a bit more like that, but with the opposite outcome. Even at the start, when the national anthem La Marseillaise played on the TV, it was fairly subdued, save a few people singing the rousing part “aux armes, nos citoyens!”. I had been expecting that scene in Casablanca, or even Escape to Victory, but it was more like the opening to All You Need Is Love. It was a quiet game too, France could not lay a glove on Spain, who were a defensive masterclass without being boring. I had to add in a few yells at the screen on my page, but even they didn’t really happen (nobody says “Zut Alors!” in France, except maybe in the Tricolore textbooks). It became clear that France were not getting back into this game, so there was very little edge-of-your-seat tension, and people seemed a bit relieved it was over by the end. At least France have won two World Cups in our lifetimes (or one, based on the ages of many in the bar), so it’s not like with England and their famous ‘Years-Of-Hurt-Ometer’ which has now been reset to ‘At Least 64’). After the game, many left but the bar did not empty and we stayed and sketched and had fun conversations with some locals, and it was nice.

I did watch the second semi-final, of course, as it was England vs Argentina, and yeah, I am disappointed with the result. I missed half of the first half because I was at the Symposium Opening Reception, but ducked out early to a pub called The George and Dragon, which is about as sure a place to watch an England game as you can get in Toulouse. About half the people in there, maybe less, were in England shirts, the rest were either not really watching, or were French but cheering for Argentina, mostly because Messi, or maybe because they wanted to play England in the 3rd Place game, if they cared about that game. Mostly they wee not that bothered. England were winning for quite a while, and then they weren’t, and then it was extra time, and shortly before the end they weren’t winning even more, and I went back to my hotel to get some pre-Symposium sleep. Football is rubbish anyway, it’s only the shirts that I like. The Premier League will be starting again soon, how excited am I, ooh I can’t contain myself.

BYT I drew these on the reverse side of the accordion sketchbook that I drew the USA-Belgium game on, in the previous post. I got that sketchbook in Poznan in the Sympsoium goody-bag, and I don;t really like the bumpy watercolour paper much.

Anyway, I was in France and London recently and I have so many sketches to post. And then after that, catch up with 2025 and the first half of 2026. I can’t stop sketching.

with the crowd on G St, watching the footy

July 11, 20263 Comments

And so, in the end, it was not to be for the US Men’s National Team, commonly called the USMNT (they really need a nickname). Three weeks of hope and glory, days in the sunshine, and definitely maybe. Admittedly a lot of the good feeling had been unnecessarily dampened by the whole red card-suspension-phone call-suspension not-so-mysteriously suspended thing. Belgium were well up for it, in their Magritte-inspired kits, “ceci n’est pas un carton rouge”. In the end, the US players were just not as good as the Belgians, Champions League players against MLS. Maybe the whole unnecessary charade got in their heads, but they were not up for this game, even with the Seattle crowd behind them, who only two weeks ago had seen them swat Australia aside, MLS players against A-League. All three hosts went out in the same round, but not in the same way. Canada punched above their weight but were ultimately undone by the best team in Africa, Morocco; Mexico had a barn-storming game against England at the Azteca in one of the wildest matches in the tournament, loved by both sides, and unlucky not to get a result; the US lost 4-1 with a whimper, even with their new star Balogun on the field. None of the nonsense was his fault, really. A lot of people were not unhappy that the US went out, but it is a shame for all those fans of soccer here, but hey, now you all know what it’s like, “it’s the HOPE that kills ya”, they say, ain’t that the truth. If England are like the Spurs of international football, the US men’s team is like the Crystal Palace (or until Palace started winning things last year), or maybe the Newcastle, but with fewer shirtless fans. I don’t know. I really liked the 2002 team, with big man Friedel in goal, Brian McBride as the American Teddy Sheringham, and the youthful energy ball Landon Donovan (I’m not gonna make any comments about his barnet), plus Alexei Lalas already had retired along with his beard but hadn’t yet discovered the podcast, which hadn’t been invented yet. That was the team I watched with my then-girlfriend-later-wife from California, and they beat the mighty Portugal 3-2 in a super wild game. The USMNT now have some more well-known players, household names over here like Pulisic, and the other ones. That wavy red and white kit was popular, not as popular as that Mexico kit, but a lot of people were wearing it. Maybe they still will, now they have been knocked out, or maybe fans will go back to one of the less see-you-coming-a-mile-off kits.

We watched the game downtown on the big screen at G Street. They have been setting it up for the US games, along with a special Davis Soccer Fest full of activities and music, making use of that public space we have down there now. It’s a good community, Davis, and there are people out there that really make stuff happen like this, and people that are out to support it. I wanted to make sure I was there this time, so we went down and saw that the crowd was about three times bigger than the one for the Australia game a couple of weeks or so before. Was that only two and a half weeks before, it felt like a year, this World Cup has gone on for so long. I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t World Cup. It Has Always Been World Cup. Even when it ends, it will never end, and you might go four years without a bloated money-grabbing morally bankrupt World Cup and you might think that the days of the bloated money-grabbing morally bankrupt World Cup have finally gone and we can all move on to some other sport, when suddenly the bloated money-grabbing morally bankrupt World Cup is back but this time even more bloated and morally bankrupt, but still we eat it up, we love it, because we remember Maradona and Pele and Nobby Stiles dancing. I am sick of World Cup, but I love World Cup. If you want a vision of the future, imagine a football boot stamping on a man’s ankle, forever, frozen in a VAR check that can never be decided. Hydration Breaks, me arse. They are advert breaks, nothing more. If they are going to have them, at least have them at moments like they used to do on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, you know, when Chris Tarrant (or whoever hosted it here) would have them answer a question, final answer, and then say “we’ll find out after the break!” Well the ref should do that when issuing a card, put his hand in his pocket, slow as you like, and then look at the camera and say “see you after the break!”. There was a moment in the France Morocco game when I genuinely thought the ref was going to do that, just as Mbappe was trying to take his penalty, he kept stopping it, and making him wait. Maybe he should have phoned a friend.

But I love the Davis community, coming together to watch the game like this. In my first summer here in 2006 it felt like nobody cared about the World Cup, except for my mate in the football shirt shop, and some of the faculty in our department. The only channels I could watch it on were all in Spanish, and as I didn’t speak Spanish it made it much more interesting, and I picked up some interesting vocabulary (I already knew ‘gooooooooooooooooooooooooool’, of course, but I loved that every time David Beckham would get the ball they would call him “Beckham, El Spice-Boy!” and laugh. It was one of my favourite World Cups, 2006, ending in that amazing Zidane headbutt to end his international career. One of our faculty did not get live TV but had a VCR, so I used to tape the games every day and bring them into him to take home and watch them later, and he’d bring me a tape back each day to do the same. I still have that video tape, in a drawer in my office, and now none of us have VCRs it is a little historical artefact, and one day centuries later someone will find that tape, invent a new VCR to watch it, and wonder why the Mexican commentators kept calling that English player “El Spice Boy”, maybe they will assume he was some sort of galactic spice trader before taking up sports, I don’t know. This is the sort of thing the World Cup brings up, it truly is the beautiful game.

I drew all this while watching the game, but I added in the colours when I got home, because it was quite crowded and I was stood next to a tree and next to my wife. I draw fast and wrote down what I could. We did however go home for the second half, having seen enough, we watched the rest sat on the sofa, and I wrote down some more of the commentary. It was good to be around the fans though, all rooting for the USMNT (they need a better nickname than that). I like sketching big people events like this, especially if they are all dressed in bright colours, and especially if they all stay where they are for a while. Oh well, USMNT, we’ll watch the Women’s team next, at the Women’s World Cup in Brazil in 2027, a nice normal size World Cup of 32 teams, as it should be. This World Cup though will keep on going on, and on, and on, until in the end all that is left are the ants and the dust, and then, England will finally win it. It’s coming home.

You give me FIFA, in the morning, FIFA all through the night

July 9, 2026August 6, 2026Leave a comment

This World Cup has gone on for ages, and we are still not close to being done. As I write the Quarter Final stage is about to begin and this long mind-boggling controversial bloated tournament is finally in the Endgame; France, Morocco, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Argentina, Norway and of course England. A lot of big names have fallen, your Brazils, Germanys, Colombias, Portugals. The three hosts all went out in the same round, Mexico, Canada and the US, and some countries just won over everybody, we are all Cape Verde fans now. Poor old Scotland didn’t get far. They lost to Morocco and Brazil and then had to wait to be told what they already knew, they were Coming Home Too Soon, again. Oh well. I sketched and wrote down words that were coming from the TV for a number of games, too many if I’m honest, but I like to write stuff down and draw in my little brown sketchbook. It’s a fun record, I suppose. A lot of them are just in front of the TV at home. I have watched almost all of the games, somehow, and there have been some exciting classics and some utter slogs In previous tournaments I’ve also sketched players during games all over the page. Anyway without further ado, here are some of the in-game sketches I’ve done.

Uruguay were a bit useless weren’t they. Cape Verde (Cabo Verde) however gained so many fans with their incredible displays, especially their goalkeeper Vozinha. They drew all their group games and took Argentina into extra time in one of the games of the tournament. They also played in a positive and proactive way, not trying to foul the whole pitch up like some teams, and definitely deserved their place here, having topped a difficult group in Africa qualifying. Also, the first U6 soccer team my son played on all those years ago were called the Blue Sharks, and that is also Cape Verde’s nickname. You can see in the foreground the little Messi Lego set I got, an odd build. Messi, well the Ancient One Himself (not as ancient as Ronaldo or Vozinha or Modric or the truly venerable Scottish keeper Craig Gordon) has kept going, kept scoring, kept walking into important areas and broke records, starting with the all-time World Cup goalscorer record which he gained in the 2-0 win vs Austria. I mostly watched that on the iPad at the office, though we have been showing the games on our big screen in our student lounge.

England had a good start, but the game v Ghana was a difficult one. I’ve been overall impressed with England, and they are still in it so, you know, it’s coming home yeah? I sketched this with my England and my Ghana shirt up on the wall. This was held in Boston, and this was not the first time the English were frustrated by a T. Partey in Boston. Haha, I was proud of that one, and can’t believe the commentators didn’t pick up on it. (That isn’t why the England fans were booing T. Partey though, nope.) Still, England topped the group, as expected.

Canada did well this tournament, but not enough to top their group and stay playing games in Canada. They are good hosts. They lost to the Swiss though. I like Switzerland’s manager Murat Yakin, I liked him as a player and he still comes across as cool as a coach. Not a man-crush, but he’s pretty handsome. Out of the world Cup coaches I’d say he is near the top of the handsome league, (with Tuchel probably about mid-table). Montella is a handsome bloke too. Uruguay’s coach with his long hair and distinctively set eyes reminded me of the Beast from the 80s TV show Beauty and the Beast. I’m not doing a league table of football coaches’ looks here, but it has been noted by a lot of people that Poch (my beloved former spurs manager) really looks like Russell Crowe these days. Anyway I sketched this game in our student lounge watching it on the big screen, though unlike World Cup 2022 which was held in November/December, there aren’t really many people around in summer to watch the games.

The Round of 32 started, the first time we’ve had a knockout with 32 teams. World Cups usually start with 32 teams, which makes for easier-to-complete sticker albums. England beat DR Congo, but it was another great game by the Congolese, and I’m a big fan of them as well. Portugal narrowly beat Croatia in the Ronaldo-Modric face off of old Real Madrid team-mates, and Germany managed to get knocked out by Paraguay after some of the worst penalties I have ever seen. Why can’t players take penalties properly any more? Brazil beat Japan, which was a bit of a disappointment because Japan had been a lot of peoples’ ‘dark horses’, plus they had the best away kit, which I bought. It’s so nice. The Japan fans have that reputation for tidying up the stadium afterwards, and the players clean the dressing rooms, and I was wondering if after they lost this time they might have though, sod it let’s just leave it messy, someone else can do it. Mexico beat Ecuador at the Azteca (which wasn’t allowed to be called the Azteca during the World Cup, but tell that to anyone talking about that historic hallowed ground. Mexico, backed up by their loud and loyal fans, easily swept Ecuador aside to set up the Round of 15 game with England. Mexico have been an exciting host in this tournament and you see a lot of those lovely green shirts around here. In the last sketch, Egypt v Australia, with Wolves fan Jacqui Oatley commentating and Warren Barton on co-comms, going on about “moments” and “banging on the door asking questions”. Again we had some bizarre choices in the penalty shootout, this time by Australia, but Egypt got through a knockout game at the World Cup for the first time ever. They ended up going out in the Round of 16 to Messi and Argentina after leading 2-0 until near the end of the game, having been robbed of another goal, I felt very bad for them.

And finally, that incredible and exciting Round of 16 game Mexico vs England, the final game at the Azteca. A huge event, so noisy watching on the telly, knowing loads of people back home would be up all night, and they were not disappointed. Mexico fought so hard and would have been justified getting something from the game, but after all the talk of altitude and fireworks outside the hotel and the massive electrical storm changing the kick-off times, England did really well in the face of a really up-for-it and skillful Mexico, especially the keeper Pickford, and ended up winning 3-2 overall, a proper World Cup classic. Bellingham had a great game. The last time England played a World Cup game at the Azteca was forty years ago, the Hand of God match, I remember it well, as you do when you watch the world Cup as a 10 year old.So England will go on to face Norway and Erling Haaland in the quarter-finals, and well, we will see what happens. But to me it looks a little bit like it’s coming home…

Addendum: This was the last World Cup game I sketched in the little brown book before the semi-finals, France vs Morocco, which my wife and I watched on July 9th over lunch at Pizzas and Pints on the corner of 3rd and B. We had pizza, not pints, except water. And salad. There was a guy in a Mexico shirt, and another guy in a US shirt next to us. Morocco didn’t come close to France, who totally dominated. I was heading to France a few days later, and would watch them in the semi-final on Bastille Day.

“No Pulisic? No Problem!” USA on G Street

June 28, 20263 Comments

“USA! USA! USA!” they were all singing. It was just after lunchtime, the Juneteenth holiday so we had the day off work, and the pedestrianized block of G Street in downtown Davis was full of soccer fans, most of them dressed in USA gear to cheer on USMNT in their group match against Australia. Win this, and they go through to the knockouts. There was a big screen set up, and loads of people on their lawn chairs, which every soccer-mom and soccer-dad has in the back of their car. It was hot, and very sunny, so I sketched under the cover of my hat and some hastily applied sunscreen on the back of my legs, drawing on the last page of my sketchbook which I had pre-splashed with some ‘Inktense’ paints. I had to change positions a couple of times, and then just headed into the shade completely. There were some Australians, but the US were playing in front of a soccer-crazy Seattle crowd and were pretty dominant, even though their Main Man Christian Pulisic was not playing; “No Pulisic, No Problem!” announced the excited commentator. When they scored, a massive cheer erupted, and chants of “USA! USA! USA!” echoed across downtown. I wondered to myself if anyone would start replying “USB! USB!” and thought that might be a good thing to sing at a Chargers game, and then the US got a second goal, scored by someone called A. Freeman, the #16. I thought to myself, they have missed a trick there, A. Freeman should have been Number 6. (As in “I am NOT a NUMBER, I am A. FREEMAN!”). Someone I know (Adie) was wearing an Alexei Lalas USA ’94 shirt, #22, so he had to go into the sketchbook. He had not grown the beard (funny story, right, I actually did grow the beard back in 1999 mostly as a laugh but also partly to annoy someone). I always wanted that kit back in 1994. I did consider wearing the one USA national shirt that I own, the very smart one from 2006, but the thing about shirts from the 2000s is they don’t really work on 2020s Pete. It is curious that my football shirts from the big and baggy ’90s still fit me but nothing from about 2002-2010. Oh well. We didn’t actually stick around for the second half, instead going to McDonalds for some massively overpriced chicken nuggets that came with commemorative World Cup cups with players on them (We got Pulisic and Lamine Yamal). We watched the rest at home, but it was a done deal and the USMNT topped their group with a game to spare in this unusually designed World Cup format. They would go on to play against Turkey and lose late on, but it was a meaningless match, if any game is really meaningless. They will play again in the Round of 32 on Wednesday against Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the big screen will be out on G Street again.

I had gone down to G Street a little early, to check out the Davis Soccer Fest. This has been set up to happen before the US games, and also before the World Cup Final, where there are lots of soccer related activities, including a big dartboard where you can kick a ball at it to score points (I didn’t give it a go but I sketched it). It is organized by Davis community Soccer, who are a new group in town run by many of the same people who have run soccer in Davis for a while now, from the AYSO and AYSO United organizations, of which I was a member; I coached for years and was one of the original coaching team for United but retired in 2022, though I am still on the Davis World Cup committee, and design the World Cup logos and medals. Davis Community Soccer started this year, though it was a surprise to me (since it is effectively replacing Fall AYSO this year, though Davis AYSO has said it’s not going away) and I’ve not had a chance to talk to anyone involved about it all yet, but good luck to them, I hope it’s a success. I like their logo, it reminds me of the one I designed for the 2022 Davis World Cup a bit, I like that retro font. It’s nice to see them create fun stuff like this as well, and so as I sketched I did get a chance to chat with Sam and Adam who I’ve not caught up with in a while. They had a tent pitched up where kids could get soccer tattoos. It was a really fun event for kids, with others playing soccer tennis further up the street.

Here are some more of the crowd. I drew the USA fans there while I was stood in the shade on the sidelines. That reminds me, the USA will celebrate its 250th anniversary this July 4, I don’t know if you heard. I may actually try to sketch the fireworks this year, to mark the occasion, I will need some more gel pens to sketch on dark paper. While 250 doesn’t seem that old to a Brit, it’s worth getting a nice cake for, and I never liked it when I would turn 30, 40, most recently 50 and there is always someone older going, hah you’re so young, wait until you’re my age. For July 4 I might even try to squeeze into that 2006 USA shirt if I can. Below, some of the other shirts on display, a Scottish fan in a kilt waiting, Scotland were playing later that day (spoiler alert, they lost the game, but they won over the city of Boston, and that’s what really matters). There was a young lad in the 2002 Brazil shirt, I think he was a USA fan but that’s a great top. The guy next to him was in a red USA away kit from about 2011, that was a nice one. There were a lot of other kits on display, but overwhelmingly the current USA home kit was most common, the one with the red wavy horizontal stripes like a flag. Will they win it this year, the actual World Cup? I mean, nobody really thinks so, because they just don’t do they, but well, they could. Their group was not hard, and their route to the quarter finals is not exactly filled with heavyweight teams, and with the big West Coast crowds chanting “USA! USA!” (except for those few confused LA Charger fans singing “USB-C!”) they just might pull it off. The Women’s team have done it enough times. If they do, well it’ll be ‘Hydration Breaks’ everywhere. Maybe when they have won ‘FIFA’ as they call it, they can get rid of penalty shootouts and replace them with that thing they used to do in the early years of MLS, when they would have someone run from the halfway line to go one on one with the keeper, the best Americanization sport has ever seen. But that won’t happen because as we all know deep down, this year, 60 years on, Its Coming Home.

Watching Haaland in Soccer and Lifestyle

June 28, 20261 Comment

The World Cup continues. Still during that first round of group games, I went to the local football shirt shop, Soccer and Lifestyle, to watch the second half of Norway vs Iraq. I sketched the store; the last time I had sketched inside was in the previous location was also during a World Cup, but back in 2014, twelve years ago. That is a long time ago. I drew this all while the game was going on, but coloured it in at home. There was a woman in there wearing a yellow and green Mali shirt, with ‘F Kanoute’ on the back, which I though was incredible. I really liked Freddie Kanouté, who played for Spurs for a brief period in the mid 2000s, and I told them I actually saw him play and even score, at White Hart Lane in 2004. There are a lot of good shirts in that shop. I bought my shirt for the tournament there, the Japan away kit, a couple of weeks ago. That one is white with a black collar but has really nice colourful pinstripes. They were out of the USA shirts already, they had sold out before the first USA game. There is a ‘Soccer Fest’ on G St before every US game, and a big screen is set up to watch them. We saw the second game there (I’ll post the sketches later). The USA home shirt this year is a zany affair, red and white made to look a bit like the flag waving, and be reminiscent of the amazing 1994 kit. I don’t like the 2026 one much, but if they do well, it’ll probably end up iconic. The game that I saw in the shop was a bit one-sided, with Norway being the one side, not surprising since Haaland is on the team.

So, flashback to twelve years ago, watching France vs Switzerland…

Hop you are enjoying the World Cup. It’s big and bloated and there are too many games, and I hate the ‘hydration breaks’ which are just blatantly obviously advert breaks (well done America, you broke soccer), but there have been some good moments already. Messi closed out the group stage with goal #6 for him, and DR Congo won their first World Cup game (against Uzbekistan admittedly) to qualify for the knockouts. The ‘Round of 32’ started today, and Canada beat South Africa with a late winner. There are a lot of games still to come, a lot of ‘hydration breaks’, a lot of Beckham and Messi adverts…

World Cup on the box

June 26, 2026Leave a comment

Summer is here already. As I write, we are already two weeks into the biggest World Cup ever. That is, the biggest FIFA World Cup ever, because the Davis World Cup as we know has more teams and games and a much better logo. In case you haven’t heard, it’s being held in North America, co-hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico, who’ve all been getting on great the past couple of years. There is a lot of noise around this World Cup, even more than the last ones, and as a blatant massive cash-milking machine it’s made me feel very uneasy and I definitely didn’t want to spend thousands going to any of the games, just to watch a dead-rubber 0-0 (I’m looking at you, Paraguay v Australia in Santa Clara). Despite all that, I’ve been a sucker for the World Cup since I was ten, watching Maradona and Lineker and Platini and JOSIMAAAAAR at the 86 World Cup. I’ve watched almost all of the games so far (I had to give some of them a miss, looking at you Australia v Paraguay), and I have a lot of complaints, none more than these bloody ‘hydration breaks’, but also the head-to-head rule, the far-too-many-teams thing, and the amount of adverts with Beckham in them. I’ve enjoyed a lot of the games, I have all the flags up, I got a new shirt as per tradition (Japan Away), and even got the Panini sticker album, why not. I made a massive wallchart, one for home and one for work, and made little plastic flag ornaments to hang up and take down once teams get eliminated. Time to start doing that, because teams are dropping out now like British Prime Ministers. I have done a fair bit of sketching this time, but not drawing the players , it’s the old ‘draw the TV and some of the room’ with lots of random bits of commentary written all over the place. I wasn’t going to do that so much this year, but I can’t help myself. On the first Saturday while watching Morocco vs Brazil, a big game this early, I thought I’d get playful and use that big box of Prismacolor pencils I have had for a few years but never use. And why not draw on the back of a cereal box, like I saw so many sketchers doing in Poznan last year (those who took Peter Rush’s workshop), so I got a book of Raisin Bran Crunch and sketched the World Cup, definitely not sponsored by Kellogg’s. Yeah, bit of a slog, and having to keep changing pencil, what a time waste. Still it was a fun outcome, maybe. The game was good too, and ended in a 1-1 draw.

Before the World Cup started, we all made our predictions, our tips for the golden boot, and our dark horses. I predicted France to win it (with Spain and yes England as my 2nd and 3rd tips), and Harry Kane for the top scorer award. Morocco were my dark horses, with Norway and Japan as my other “who knows”. So far that’s been playing out, except that guy Messi is scoring for fun still despite turning 39 this week. It’s been interesting watching some of the ‘smaller’ teams, and the countries you don’t usually get to watch. Curaçao were fun, Uzbekistan a little less fun, though everybody fell in love with Cape Verde (Cabo Verde) and their keeper Vozinha when they drew with Spain, and then again with Uruguay. My African team this time though is DR Congo (and yes I do keep saying Doctor Congo), big fan of them and their superfan, Lumumba Vea. Above though I sketched New Zealand vs Iran, which was another entertaining draw. I drew that on the same cereal box, but this time in a blue Marabu Aqua Pen Grafix marker I must have gotten at one of the Symposiums. I used my usual and more trusty Staedtler aquarelle pencils for the action on TV, and the flags. which are hung around my living room.

And here is the first game by England, an adventurous effort for them, beating Croatia 4-2. Croatia are finally tired after 2018. We were all at home that afternoon, I sketched on the iPad this time, just in the second half. My old 2010 England away shirt, the only one I ever owned (and it is a bit tight on me now), is hanging up on the wall. I have a funny relationship with the England team because I both support them and don’t support them, it’s one of those things where both can be true; when I was a teenager, Ireland were my team, but I suppose England after that, and they usually ended up letting me down. I also never liked ‘that’ element of the supporters, but I know they ain’t all like that. I find that I don’t get excited for England, until the game is actually on, and then I just get my lack of excitement from the way the team plays. Maybe this time it’s different? I always want the British and Irish sides to do well, and so I’ve been well into Scotland this time around. I even bought a Wales shirt, because they went half price after they failed to qualify. I know what will happen with England, I’ll get sucked in as they go along, and Kane starts doing well, and then they get to a point where you think, maybe, maybe this time? You remember those times when you didn’t just roll your eyes about them and you start thinking, is it coming home? It is isn’t it, it’s coming home, it definitely is this time. England are the Spurs of international football, maybe for once they can just give us something. And then they lose a semi, or a quarter, and you feel grumpy and dejected for ever believing, and the years-of-hurt-o-meter keeps on ticking. At least the Women’s team win stuff. This time though, they look…good? They did in this game, a good start, let’s see how it goes, we might just be too exhausted to care by the end. It is a long, long, long World Cup…

petescully

postcards of the hanging

Tag: World Cup 2026