Wilson's World (of football)

It seems likely that at some point soon, the 35-year-old Danny Welbeck and the 36-year-old Jordan Henderson will join Chelsea, which represents a remarkable shift in transfer strategy. It was widely anticipated that Chelsea would look to add more experience this summer, but to go from signing every exciting teenager in the world to recreating the Sunderland squad of 2010-11 is not something many saw coming.

With Paris Saint-Germain withdrawing from the race, it seems almost certain that Real Madrid will soon complete the signing of Yan Diomande from RB Leipzig for a fee of over £100million. Which, frankly, seems like a lot for a largely untested 19 year old, even if he was named Bundesliga player of the year last season after racking up 12 goals and eight assists. The Ivory Coast international is, clearly, hugely talented. He is quick and direct, technically gifted.

There would be a soccer boom in the USA in the mid-1920s but in truth the problems that would ultimately overwhelm it were always present. Perhaps with patience and gradual growth something sustainable could have developed but the very nature of the league, of US sport, was predicated on profit. And, although nobody in those early years of the American Soccer League knew it, the clock was ticking.

There is perhaps nothing more damaging in football than the persistence of a national myth. When England won in Mexico – at altitude, with 10 men – by bringing on Dan Burn, going to a back five, sitting deep and resisting, it fed a dangerous flame that led to muddled thinking and panic in the defeat to Argentina in the semi-final. But just as surely the way Argentina prevailed in that game set them off down a self-defeating route in the final.

We’re nearly there, the semi-finals done, one meaningful game remaining. At this stage of the tournament, it feels almost impossible to step back and think, to offer any kind of perspective other than from the position of being deep, exhausted, caught in the middle of it. So here, in no kind of order, with no pretence at lucidity, are some thoughts on the 23rd World Cup. Format It was fine, less bad than feared, although having best third-placed sides go through ruins group-phase jeopardy.

One of the curious features of this World Cup as somebody used to English stadiums has been the press boxes in the USA. In Dallas, Houston and Boston (of the stadiums I’ve been to), the main press box is inside, separated from the main arena by Perspex windows. Which, given the extremes of heat and cold in the US, makes sense. But it insulates the media from the crowd. Even in Houston, where the windows open, everything feels a little distant.

The great Argentinian left-back Silvio Marzolini once told me that Bobby Charlton had told him that Antonio Rattín was such a bogeyman in England that parents would tell their children that if they didn’t behave, Rattin would come for them. I assume this isn’t true (although if anybody’s parents did say that to them, by all means get in touch) and I haven’t been able to work out whether the story came about because Marzolini misunderstood something or because Charlton exaggerated.

đŸ‡«đŸ‡·MC Solaar – Nouveau Western I was an early adopter of MC Solaar in the 1990s. Nouveau Western – which uses a Serge Gainsbourg riff – is impossibly cool. Stylish football deserves a stylish soundtrack; it’s hard to beat this. đŸ‡«đŸ‡·Françoise Hardy – VoilĂ I’ve had a soft spot for Françoise Hardy since I was a boy. I used to play her effortless, elegant and dreamy music when I was a student and trying to be effortless, elegant and dreamy.

There is something in the nature of the best World Cup games that gives them an intensity that doesn’t exist elsewhere There is a sense of foreignness, of exoticism, of mattering that is simply impossible in the club game. These are events that unite whole countries, that are watched by the world.

The product is the football. Which you might think would be obvious, but it really seems not to be. Football has been functioning as a professional concern for 140 years. It is the most popular sport in the world. It is loved for what it is, for the football. And yet football’s administrators, like the administrators of so many sports, seem obsessed with the idea that everybody is suddenly about to go off football.