Ten reasons why this is ALREADY the best World Cup ever

I have a confession to make: I've never really loved a World Cup.

I don't have a favourite one that I can turn to on YouTube in my hour of need, because, essentially, the ones in my lifetime have been a bit rubbish. I'm only just noticing it now, but they have been rubbish.

That's not to say that I don't love the World Cup. There's a difference between loving 'a World Cup' and loving 'the World Cup', and I've found myself unfailingly in the latter category, whereas most football fans would probably put themselves with some form of overlap, usually with a nod to Italia '90.

No, I love the World Cup with all my heart. I love the politics, the history, the iconic commentary and the grainy clips, which are undoubtedly special. I love it so much that I sat through a BBC Three clip show presented by Ollie Murs and Rio Ferdinand not so long ago.

Now, however, five days into the 2014 World Cup, to paraphrase Robbie Williams, I'm loving a World Cup instead.

There's no doubt in my mind that we'll look back on this one as an utterly brilliant World Cup, probably the best ever. There have been twenty including this one, so that's quite a pedestal that I'm erecting for a competition that is still in its infancy.

But, just by way of a brief comparison, if we run through the recent ones...

2010 was plagued by negative football, there was barely one memorable match, the final was rubbish, and England were horrible.

I'd always tried to convince myself that I loved 2006, but if you look beyond the amazing Germany-Italy semi final, there weren't too many great games, and a lot were decided on penalties. Oh, and England were horrible.

2002 sounded like a great idea at the time, but the early mornings soon got tiresome, and we came perilously close to a Turkey v South Korea final.

This is getting beyond my realm of remembrance, but nobody seems to really speak of 1998 as a great World Cup. The iconic moments seem to be few and far between, and were it not for England v Argentina, and Bergkamp's semi final goal, I'm not sure I'd recall anything special about it from the clip shows I've watched.

England didn't qualify in 1994.


Everyone in England talks about Italia 90 with mythical status, but the rest of the world seems to see it as characterised by negative, dour, football, and with its fair share of cheating.

It seems you could make a case for 1986. Maradona was special, and a World Cup needs special. Put it on the maybe pile.

I won't go back any further, but England didn't qualify in 1978 or 1974, and then once you're into the 1960s the competition descends into farce, with teams like England winning it.

This World Cup, meanwhile, has all the ingredients. It has had plenty of goals, and enough great matches to satisfy that particular quota. The thing which all sports writers now seem to love, the 'narrative', will come later, always through some way in hindsight.

We didn't realise it at the time, but the narrative of the 2010 World Cup seemed to be one of teams prospering because of the dark arts: Suarez destroying the hopes of a young, emerging football continent; a final in which Holland forgot their principles; and too many teams hoping to get through by keeping it tight. Most, like England, got found out, but there'd always be a few that slipped through the net, and so it left a bitter taste for me.

The narrative of the 2006 World Cup was that of Italy triumphing against the backdrop of calciopoli, and European nations proving themselves vastly superior, and 1998, perhaps most poetically of all, saw France discover itself as a multicultural nation, with their winning side a fantastic assortment of all that makes a tolerant nation great.

I don't know what the 'narrative' of this World Cup will be, but I'd hazard a guess that we'll look back and see a 'victory' for teams who want to score goals, who load their team with attacking midfielders with just one 'water-carrier' type. I think it'll be characterised by a different sort of attacking to that of Spain- they'll go home at the group stage in all likelihood, tiki-taka will be dead, and we'll see a return to a more direct style of attacking football, sweeping cross-field passes, shooting on sight and the like. Of course, if Brazil win, the narrative will probably become the unifying force of football, as imposed by FIFA, which might be nice in some ways, but rather nauseating in others.

Anyway, that introduction has turned out more lengthy than I'd hoped, but here's ten reasons why this World Cup is already the best ever:

1) Goals. We've seen one bad match, Iran v Nigeria, with a vague nod to Mexico v Cameroon, which wasn't great, and those two games had one goal between them. Goals are fun.

2) Coverage. The coverage from ITV or BBC really hasn't been bad at all. People love to hate ITV's coverage, but we are ever so lucky, really. Try living abroad. When the coverage has been bad, it's been bad in a way we can all laugh at, like Jonathan Pearce's goal-line technology meltdown, or Fabio Cannavaro's hair.

3) Goal-line technology. It won't help Frank Lampard or Hans Tilkowski, the 1966 West Germany keeper, but FIFA are a stubborn bunch, and we should be grateful it's finally come in at last. I thoroughly enjoyed the first few games when the ball hammered into the back of the net and we got a look at it anyway.

4) Timezones. Football is better when it's in a crazy timezone. That's science. South Africa was the same as us and Germany was an hour in front, so it didn't feel that special, Japan and Korea had a decent novelty value, but this is the perfect timezone.

5) Thierry Henry's knitwear collection

6) England. We've finally got a team we can love. I've never failed to support England, but I found it difficult to persuade others of the merits of supporting the sides of 2006 and 2010, the brats that they were. Now, however, many of them come across as humble and decent and aware that they're lucky in life. Take Danny Sturridge's visit to that Liverpool primary school- find it on YouTube, you'll probably cry. We may go out after the Costa Rica game- in fact I think we probably will- but I'd much rather play three good games like the Italy game than grind our way to the knockout stages. We were never going to win it, so let's have some fun and absolutely murder everyone in Euro 2016.

7) Social media. You may have noticed there's been a few tweets running through this piece. I have to watch a lot of games on my own- most, in fact- and this little online community has lessened the blow of a first World Cup without my dad.

8) Honduras. They were ace, weren't they? No? Didn't like them? That's the World Cup, you've got to have a bit of rough and smooth. I found them thoroughly entertaining.

9) The knockout rounds start now. With only one draw at time of writing, a lot of teams are on an absolute knife-edge. I fancy we might see a few teams already having gone home by the weekend. Please god, just don't let it be England.

10) We've still got 50 games to go!