{"id":103,"date":"2002-07-01T05:59:00","date_gmt":"2002-07-01T04:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/blog\/?p=103"},"modified":"2012-12-05T23:30:31","modified_gmt":"2012-12-05T23:30:31","slug":"samba-time-but-one-of-only-two-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/blog\/2002\/07\/01\/samba-time-but-one-of-only-two-finals\/","title":{"rendered":"Samba time – but one of only two finals…"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, The Boy Noble signs off at the end of a fantastic World Cup, from every perspective. The amazing results, the wonderful Japanese – who can’t be praised highly enough, and the fans from all round the world who were nothing but friendly, and from a personal point of view, it’s been absolutely fantastic – seeing my first England game is a moment I’ll never forget (even if the game might be)….
\n<\/p>\n

As for yesterday, it was brilliant see Ronaldo back to his best, and beautiful beat boring to let the samba time begin. Unfortuanately there isn’t much of a Brazilian community in Alice Springs, but we celebrated on their behalf.<\/p>\n

On a slightly different tack, the Bhutanese also had cause to celebrate yesterday – after the alternative World Cup Final which was played hours before Brazil v Germany kicked off in Japan.<\/p>\n

This was no celebration of footballing prowess, but a final for the two worst teams in the world, and was contested by teams from Bhutan and Monserrat – ranked 202nd and 203rd in the World respectively. For a full report check out this address:<\/p>\n

Montserrat ‘world’s worst’ (BBC Sport)<\/a><\/p>\n

Getting to Japan was the only the start of the journey for me, but the culmination of a long journey for Phil and Chris, who hopefully will go on to bigger and better things after eventually getting the media coverage they deserved.<\/p>\n

Have to say that I had a whale of a time travelling through China, and it was worth everything to have experienced playing football with Buddhist monks in their natural habit(at).<\/p>\n

Only 24 hours from…?<\/p>\n

See you all in Germany 2006.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, The Boy Noble signs off at the end of a fantastic World Cup, from every perspective. The amazing results, the wonderful Japanese – who can’t be praised highly enough, and the fans from all round the world who were nothing but friendly, and from a personal point of view, it’s been absolutely fantastic – seeing my first England game is a moment I’ll never forget (even if the game might be)….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan"],"geo":{"latitude":35.6912880000000001246007741428911685943603515625,"longitude":139.6983794999999872743501327931880950927734375,"description":null},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}