大象传媒

After nearly four years of mounting fervor and drooling anticipation this reader, for one, will be hanging on your every word. Good luck guys and gals!

Who are the biggest contenders for this world cup...

As far as I think ENGLAND will meet BRAzIL in semi finals & GERMANY will meet FRANCE

Wat say

The build up to this World Cup has been going on for so long now I can't remember what life was like before. Injuries and controversial call ups aside I think it's time we got behind the squad and our disturbingly unflappable manager. He may show less emotion than a koala bear in a coma, but he's the one who'll be conducting our orchestra of sublime skills and unrivalled passion. Let's unite in anticipation and blind optimism. Come on England!

Maybe this rooney business is a blessing in disguise.

Hopefully sven will play Gerrard in a more attacking role. Yes Lampard is an important player, but gerrard is the key this summer.

We are well capable of the semis this time..and if we can just get past Brazil then the trophy is ours

Stevie G and the boys can do it. However, if the boys from Brazil show up it will be tough. What a final it would be for an on song England (Stevie, Terry and hopefully Rooney) up against Ronhaldino and his beach dream team. Has anyone else noticed the origins of the likely starting 11? East London and Liverpool make up the bulk. Like another time. Positively, for England I would like to see Beckham dropped. He was good but is now slow and is there to enhance his market image and revenue. If he was a big man and true captain he would stand down in favour of Stevie or Terry. Big hearted young men who inspire and believe in the game and in England.

So - tell me guys. When did the World Cup coverage start for you & the 大象传媒. I presume it has been a slow boil for months, increasing in fervour, excitement and workload!

I'm interested in hearing behind the scenes - is it really a camper van, or are you champagning your way round venue to venue, 5 star hotel to 5 star hotel all on our licence fees? I'm only saying because I'm envious of your jobs:
1)Presumably you like writing
2)Equally presumptious of me that you like football
3) Therefore deducing the World Cup coverage is like winning the latest reality show of Dream Job 2006.

All the best, will be keeping my eyes crossed, ears peeled and fingers to the ground....or something like that.

everyones worrying about rooney being fit, fair enough he is a world class player, but not from a biast point of view i believe that stevie gerrard is the key to our success. i would say he is the best player in the world in his position. and my suprise team for the world cup has to be ivory coast i'll be down the bookies placing a bet on them for sure!!!!!

As a Scot,am I fed up with the '66 references ?

Yes I probably am,a wee bit.

As a Bluenose, am I fed up with the '67 references ?

Oh yes, I definately am, but what is the difference ?

Well apparantley I am a bigot, but with our 1st minister's attitutude is acceptable.

So who will I be supporting in the World Cup ?

As a bluenose it will be Croatia (Dado), Trinidad & Tobago (Marvin), Tunisia (Hamid) and as we have just signed Karl Svensson, Sweden .

But apart from those mentioned C'mon England !!!

Now that will really wind up the jacobites :)

I shall be watching England through the Australian network, starved of Mottie and other great commentators, so blogging will at least give me a taste of the English coverage.
Come on lads...give the expat world something to shout about....

Claire S, blog editor, here replying to Brocks,
Well the four of our reporters lucky enough to go to Germany would certainly answer 'yes' to all three of your questions (sadly for the rest of us stuck in London it's only 1 & 2!).
Two of them, Fletch and Ricco, are indeed spending the entire tournament in a motorhome - while the other two do get to stay in a hotel (the one where Posh is staying apparently) - so I guess between them they will experience both ends of the hospitality spectrum.
As for workload - yes this is the busiest time of the last four years for us though the Olympics came close - we blocked all leave during the tournament until we could figure out the staffing rotas though we have since been able to grant limited time off especially for those with tickets to matches!
As for the timescale - well we began planning about a year ago when we sat down and gathered ideas for some of the more ambitious things we are hoping to do -that includes instant graphical replays of the action, user-generated player ratings, a map that will log all the content we receive from around the globe and a World Cup stock exchange (World Cup Daq) /worldcupdaq/
All are in the final stages of testing so it's fingers crossed!
The next phase began in late autumn, getting ready for the draw in December when we launched phase one of our World Cup index - a scaled-down version of what you see now though we did manage to get our predictor ready (though we're in the process of rewriting the code as Fifa decided to change the group qualification rules!)

html/football/world_cup_06/default.stm
We also had to start thinking about the practicalities of how many people to send, where they'd stay and what equipment they'd need and whether we could afford it in the face of budget cuts taking place across the 大象传媒.
In March and April we began planning the editorial side of things - what angles, features and interviews we were going to chase - and generally building up our news coverage.
This month our hard-pressed football editor Howard Nurse and many of his team have been hard at it trying to tie up all the loose ends - of which there are many! - and the fruits of their labour are now appearing every day on the website.
Increasingly as the kick-off approaches, we also need to liaise with all the other bits of the 大象传媒 who are planning World Cup coverage in some form and want to make sure people can find out about it from our website.
Anyway, I hope that gives you a bit of an insight so far!

How about adding the blog to your links? We're reviewing all this year's offerings from the cringeworthy to Alan Hansen's Eyebrows! Whether we bring the cup home or not, we're certainly winning on terrace anthems!

I can't wait for the World Cup to begin. It's always a great month - especially as I will be in Germany for the last 2 weeks and if England win the group I will be going to see England in the 2nd Round.

We've got a real chance of winning it - I'm going to be blogging my experiences on my website.

Hired a van to make sure we always got somewhere to sleep and then I'm going to follow England hopefully all the way to Berlin on July 9th!!!

Come on England!

What asian country might pass the elimination round?

Looking forward to the blog starting in earnest. Almost as much as the World Cup itself.

I hope you'll be backing the guys. The 大象传媒 is renowned for its bipartisan spirit when it comes to sport (except for Ian Wright's appreciation of his son).

So many of the papers seem to be a bit down on our hopes - perhaps a sprinkling of realism? - and for now, I'd like to get all excited.

gives everything a positvie spin. Let's get behind the boys and ignore the boo boys.

Just saw this site.. it looks great.

Its good to have all the hype and expectations. I love England for their sheer determination and the way the fans never give up. The truth of the matter is that England once again will fail to impress and sweet memories of 1966 will be re-lived. Lets be realistic. England will NOT win the WC. One of Brazil, Germany, Italy, France, Argentina OR even Czech Republic and The Dutch will win it.

Blogs. Hmm, is this where all the resources have gone so posters can only use 606 for a limited number of hours per day, thus denying fans a legitimate voice (if the numpties can be held at bay)?

Enjoy your license-fee funded trip round Germany :ninja:

I am eagerly awaiting the start of the World Cup and will be watching as many games as possible on the 大象传媒.

The reason being that I dont feel the commentary is quite so embarassing as on the other side.

How long until '66 is mentioned in the first game??

In reply to blue baby,
The problems with the 606 messageboards are entirely unrelated.
You may want to read about the latest update on the situation on our editor's blog.
/blogs/sporteditors/2006/05/
changes_to_606_message_boards.html

Claire, blog editor

It is not surprising at all that most of your bloggers think England have a chance of lifting the World Cup,or that your site features the 1966 photographs of that victory.That's the nearest a pathetic England team will get in 2006.My forecast?England will not even make the last eight.

Another sad day for England. But surely Rooney is now such a liability - if he had been able to control himself England would have stayed at 11 and therefore would have had a better than evens chance of winning without having to resort to penalties. Grow up England

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They say 20/20 hindsight is easy. If this is the case, the individual performance of midfielder Owen Hargreaves in an England shirt should give us all optimism for the future. He was England most consistant performer for the last 3 games, but received very little credit from the press or the fans, until after the loss to Portugal.
Personally, I think SGE picked the players FIRST, and then placed them into a formation. This thought process was confirmed when Hargreaves was moved from midfield to full-back for the Ecuador game.
It does not take a genius to acknowledge that Lampard and Gerrard are great club players, but they do not compliment each other in the England team.
Midfield was supposed to be Englands strength, it ended up being there weakness!

Shortly before Zidane got the red cart he was treated by the French phisician for the pain in his shoulder.

His arm was covered by the clouds of spray that probably gave him some releaf to the pain.

Now, could it be that this medicine had a side effect to influence his actions to do what he did to Materazzi?

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