THE WORLD CUP

A frequent jibe levelled at the Americans is that, when it comes to naming their domestic sports they bandy around the term "World" with gay abandon. They call their baseball the "World Series", wrestling is the "World Wrestling Federation", that kind of thing.

Can I just point out that the World Cup, that bastion of international mingling through sport, does not technically feature the world? As far as I can tell, they just have the eleven men from each country, maybe a couple of substitutes and a coach. Are there very many nations with only the eleven men in them? How many countries have proportionately no women whatsoever? Is this really a genuine World Cup or is it just an "Eleven-a-side Cup"? There's a miniscule amount of each nation playing, you could put the teams into a fairly tiny space - what we have here is the World Cup-a-Soup.

So, let's all just lay off the belittling of the American naming traditions, lest the abyss stares at us, shall we?

Now, if they painted the football to look like the globe, then you'd be onto something....