The Ball 2006

All Germans we have come across have been very welcoming and friendly if a little disinterested in the spectacle of the World Cup. We left England with a blaze of flags lighting our trail and are surprised to find little of that fervour over here. While the people beam with good cheer, football comes a [...]

Warning: this post is not intended for the technically-challenged! Okay, I just can’t resist posting this — even though I haven’t been able to see the stream itself — but it really does promise to be what it says on the tin homepage: “The best, most ridiculous, most redundant graphical implementation of ASCII!”: A screenshot [...]

Actually, that’s not entirely true — Phil’s on his way back home in a couple of days and whilst I’d love to carry on posting videos, it’s not going to be easy filming with a crew of, er, one. In fact, filming with just the two of us on the case was tricky enough. In [...]

Some people seem to be referring to the following as “the Hand of God, Part 2″ Well, cheating or not, surely Peter Crouch has to be pleased with the association to the legendary pint-sized one. Okay, that’s enough Crouch-related stories for now.

Izzy plays the flute for England

It’s not so easy being on the road sometimes. I miss my partner Anna and her daughter Izzy — I can’t wait to see them again. In the meantime, this little video keeps me smiling. I haven’t forgotten about your flag either, Iz… The shrub at the bottom [...]

Andrew Aris

We’ve settled in Erfurt in Thüringia to recover from the stresses of travel and video-blogging, and to meet up with Andrew, whom I met when I came over to Germany just before Christmas. He’s been organising a project here that’s also called Spirit of Football and contacted us when he found that [...]

St Pauli — not PLC

In which we encounter the friendliest supporters we’ve met — as Trinidad and Tobago play a warm-up match against the unique St Pauli. Watch the video to find out why. St Pauli’s in Hamburg, by the way Some pictures for those of you who might be having trouble seeing [...]

Blinded by the light

Beto keeps it up Outside the Opening Ceremony is the usual media circus — more camera crews and presenters than you can shake a football at. In the midst of this electronic feeding frenzy was one Adalberto Sanchez, world record holder for bouncing a football on his head. His record is two hours, if you’re [...]

We arrive at the Opening Ceremony

The gathering has started. The end of The Ball’s journey For us, the journey has finished — at a particularly attractive wasteland outside the stadium in Munich — but for all the teams that take part, the journey has only just begun. Let’s play football! UPDATE: We’ve got [...]