Do you remember the World Cup, the big football thingy in Brazil just a couple of months ago?

So it’s business as usual, as in business unusual, across the Irish Sea, the fledgling new Premier League season having already sent the back pages into overdrive with LVG’s nightmare start at Old Trafford, Liverpool prepared to swap frying pan for fire as Balotelli replaces Suarez and, simply stinking the whole place out, the Malky Mackay scandal.

I’m not trying to claim an assist, you understand, but I’d just like to state for the record that I’d raised the subject of overhead kicks at Turner’s Cross last week some time before Colin Healy lit up the night with his sensational exhibition of that fine art.

A small, brown-skinned, wise-cracking guy in his mid-20s from Michigan, his name was Alex, and he kept the passengers on the funicular going up to Rio’s Christ The Redeemer statue royally entertained with stories of his adventures as one of the thousands of USA supporters who’d made the trip to Brazil for the World Cup.

Brazil has been numbed by the 7-1 humiliation to Germany in Belo Horizonte on Tuesday night.

There were just a handful of us in the lift coming down from the press box in the Corinthians Arena in Sao Paulo last week when the doors opened and in walked... ‘O Fenomeno,’ I heard myself involuntarily mutter under my breath.

Top o’ the world, ma! And top of the World Cup too. Yes, I finally did it.

This country’s Bureau Of Tropical Diseases has issued an urgent warning about an expected massive outbreak of yellow fever next Friday.

Soccer writer, Liam Mackey, gives his thoughtful, considered reaction to the latest Luis Suarez outrage?

With Lee Dixon left to carry the fight for ITV — and even he wouldn’t command much of a purse — it’s already turned into a straight battle off the field between RTÉ and BBC.