"A healthy dressing room is worth more than 100 hours of tactics," declared Vicente Del Bosque as he and his team prepared to jet off to Brazil to defend their title.

1. You reap what you sow — eventually

In Brazil he is Felipão; the world knows him as Big Phil.

Do a search for ‘World Cup’ and ‘simulation’ on the internet and you’ll find all sorts of predictions, most of them wrong.

This was supposed to have been Cristiano Ronaldo’s tournament. His heroics against Sweden had taken Portugal to the finals.

EVERY World Cups needs its Matches that Made History, though sometimes you struggle to find them. Less than a week in, and we already have two candidates: the Slaughter of Salvador and the Stumble in the Jungle.

The World Cup may be a wonderful tournament and this could be one of the best ever, but let’s face it, the group stage can turn into a drag.

Italy began their preparation yesterday for the match against Ireland in a mood of national euphoria but no great confidence about the tournament to come.

The stories about Louis van Gaal are many, and some of them are even true.

You can say it’s a bad day for football when a cup final report has a diagram of street-fighting rather than the tactics of the two teams.