WORLD CUP FASHION

Ingerland and Luis Suarez notwithstanding, the World Cup has started well, not least in providing a lot of goals. However, there are two things that irritate me, neither of which has anything to do with the football.

The first is the increasing habit of top players to wear different coloured boots. In my day (admittedly some time ago) football boots were always black. Then they became coloured, which was also OK, provided that they were not lime green. But I draw the line at having one red and one green boot, that's just naff.

The second is this year's standard haircut, which is a sort of a cropped Mohican on the top and bald on the sides (think Mario Balotelli). While this can look pretty cool on black people such as Mr. Balotelli, it tends to look naff on small white people like the Swiss guy I saw this evening.

Just to make things crystal clear, I can confirm that all of my pairs of sports shoes are of the same colour, and that I do have hair on the side of my head.

Walter Blotscher