In the first of a new daily World Cup slot, we fret over Ronaldo's fitness, sympathise with a man named Marcello and look back at a far from ideal start to the tournament as far as JOE-pan are concerned.
Fears grow for Ronaldo
With a host of bona-fide stars already ruled out of the World Cup through injury, it would be a tremendous shame if probably the biggest of them all wasn’t able to strut his stuff on the biggest stage.
Cristiano Ronaldo has been struggling with tendinitis in his left knee for some time and yesterday, he sparked mass panic in Portugal after withdrawing prematurely from a training session with the affected knee strapped up with an ice-pack.
Portugal maintain that Ronaldo will be just fine, but one must wonder whether he’ll be at the peak of his powers ahead of their opening game against Germany on Monday. If he isn’t, we'd worry for them...
Twitter users score an own goal after mercilessly abusing the wrong Marcelo
If you’re familiar with Twitter you probably know by now that the Twitterati are an unforgiving bunch and sympathy for Brazilian defender Marcelo was in short supply when he turned the ball into his own net for the opening goal of World Cup 2014 last night.
We have no truck at all with abusing players on social media for innocent mistakes, but if you’re going to dish it out, at least make sure you hit the right target.
Much like Marcelo himself, a significant number of Twitter users failed to do so last night when taking their anger out on a European model named Marcello, a ridiculously good-looking man whose Twitter avatar contains a pose not unlike the Blue Steel look patented by Derek Zoolander years ago.
Fair play to Marcello though, he took all the abuse in a good natured fashion...
Well, most of it...
And the latest from the JOE-panese camp…
There’s much excitement in JOE Towers ahead of our boys making their World Cup bow against the Ivory Coast at the weekend (at 2am on Sunday morning… perfect post-pub viewing, if you ask us) and we can only hope they get off to a better start than their fellow countryman, Yuichi Nishimura, did last night.
Nishimura was, of course, the man in the middle for Brazil’s 3-1 victory over Croatia and he copped what we have to admit was deserved flak for his decision to award a penalty after a theatrical fall by Fred during the second half, a penalty that was converted by Neymar at what was a crucial stage of the action in Sao Paolo.
From the moment he awarded it, it was as if Nishimura knew he was guilty. In fairness, why would you immediately start running as far away from the penalty spot as possible if you knew you had made the right call…
Nishimura might not exactly be the toast of Croatia this morning then, but he shouldn’t get too down on himself because Brazilian fans all over the country will be rushing to buy him a glass of sake at the earliest opportunity after he ensured that the start to the tournament went off without a hitch.
Besides, we fully expect our very own boys in blue to ensure that World Cup fans are talking about JOE-pan for all the right reasons come Sunday morning.
