Without resorting to stereotyping, explain why the Brazilians lip-read “sister” and “prostitute” while the Brits went for “terrorist” and racism.

It’s difficult to believe that this Telegraph headline wasn’t selected with Google in mind.

To the extent that I ever was English, I hereby relinquish all claim. I was talking to an Ecuadorian the other day who, having observed the relative position of his country and Spain in the atlas, said he was a native of the Low Countries, los Países Bajos. Ecuador, Holland, anything but England.

Ephiphany may, of course, be a play on FIFA; alternatively, it may be telling us something about the state of Sean Ingle’s expenses in Stuttgart, where, according to the Guardian’s man on the spot, the streets are strained yellow.

This kind of thing is ridiculous. If someone doesn’t want to play for the national team, fine. Individual liberties shouldn’t just be available to people with whom we happen to agree.

Over at Charlie Connelly, with thanks to the DG.

I was sitting peacefully on a bench yesterday when an Italian architect came and sat beside me. (I knew he was a architect, because all the Italians here are architects. I don’t know why.) He asked me where the nearest supermarket was, but I knew this was just what chessplayers refer to as the Berlin [...]

Doosra, the other one, will without doubt join the many other South Asian terms gracing English dictionaries if the sublime Murali hangs in there for a while. The only sub-continental word I can think of in standard Spanish and Catalan dictionaries is the Tamil-derived curry. Tandoori and henna are prime candidates for addition. Hindú comes [...]

Check out footie rag Marca.

I’d like to see Guus Hiddink take over England asap, but then I was supporting Mark Oaten (go on, get me one for my birthday!) to run the Lib Dems until he started chasing the England job, leaving Boris Johnson as the LDs’ only potentially electable leader.
(Apparently the Koreans gave Guus a villa on [...]

Is a 5-a-side team in Cambridge. Real Madras is still around, but whatever happened to Orange Flavoured Bicycle Sheds?

I just read Beth Marie Kosir’s interesting paper on the British codpiece and thought I’d have a quick look through some Spanish stuff. The Hispanic bragueta (I guess it comes from the French braguette, which is actually not a combination of baguette and bragas, “knickers”) seems to have been used first (in the late 15th [...]

Death row / Fila de la muerte by Pedro Patricio Escobal sounds like a good read. I’d also know more about football trainer, Mr Petland, who apparently engineered some kind of “English revolution” in Madrid and in the Basque country.

Every night Africans try to climb over the razor-wire fences into Spain’s North African colonies; some don’t make it, and are robbed, raped, murdered by Moroccan “security” forces.

Real Madrid employs some phenomenally well-paid Brazilians.
El País’ homepage this afternoon.

I bumped into El Gran Picasso in a bar down south and thought stories of his epic exploits in Vegas must have been exaggerated, but no. Star juggler Dick Franco recalls the guys–principally Europe-based–who showed him the way:
One of the first was El Gran Picasso, who I met in November 1974 as he was winding [...]

It was only after dumping her that he remembered that the tickets for Trent Bridge were on her credit card. (It’s becoming increasingly difficult to buy beer off Pakistani street vendors without getting into Flintoff vs Wasim discussions. Last night a single can cost me €1 and a 10 minute lecture on reverse swing in [...]

When I went back to live in Ingerland a few years ago, it took a month before I felt I knew what was going on in meetings where people used new expressions like “the dog’s bollocks” and “a load of arse”. This time I’m preparing my trip and today I discovered that England spin bowler [...]

Boris Johnson this morning has in his slightly misty sights
the new species of pissed ladette, profane, belly-flaunting, swigging shots of cocktail from brightly coloured and cunningly marketed bottles, and sweeping the streets in terrifying gangs.
For all the problems created by 24-hour drinking in Barcelona (the old town is full of well-established illegal bars [...]

It’s a funny old world in which the celebration of states’ primary ethnic identity passes without comment while people are falling over themselves to ban poor old Chief Illiniwek.

… explains Ronaldo’s pre-marital crisis.