Oh, Jesus.

Day -494. WorldCup2018

Jesus saves! Garbriel Jesus scored twice today for his new team, Manchester City, the second a last minute winner, to save them from another embarrassing result. I only put this in because I had to take advantage of maybe the one opportunity to use that opening line in 1000 days. And expect many more bad Jesus jokes in the weeks to come, hopefully not from me.

Lazio tried their best to emulate Napoli's 7-1 away win yesterday. They went to Pescara and won 6-2. Marco Parolo had scored one goal this season. Today he scored 4. What's happened to the Serie of 1-0 wins? Late result: Juventus beat Inter 1-0 to continue their stroll to the league title yet again.

If Juventus are strolling and Chelsea cantering to the Premier League title, than Celtic are walking with beach towels in hand, stopping at every beach they pass for a swim and a drink on their way to the most boringly predictable league win ever. They are twenty-seven points ahead of second placed Aberdeen and Rangers. 27. They have player 24, won 23, drawn 1. Ross Barkley scored a goal for Everton yesterday and celebrated before he had actually scored. Celtic could start a victory parade this weekend and keep it going until May and nobody could accuse them of being presumptive.

And Cameroon are African champions. This is why I never bet on anything or rarely make predictions. My forecast was a boring 0-0 draw, won by Egypt after penalties with their 44 year old goalkeeper, El Hadary, saving the last penalty. In what was a pretty lively final, El Hadary's role was watching a sublime bit of skill from Vincent Aboubakar to score the winning goal in a 2-1 win. A goal deserving to be the winner in a major final, so the cliche goes, but oh so true in this case.

Cameroon had a few distractions before the start of the tournament with a couple of players refusing to join the team and unhappiness with the discipline imposed by the coach, Hugo Broos. One of those players was Liverpool's Joel Matip. Allow me to borrow a line from Jonathan Wilson's report in The Guardian:

"So, Joel, future generations will ask, what was the atmosphere like for that final in Libreville? “I don’t know: I was in Hull, losing 2-0.”

I went for the Spanish commentary in my pick of highlights. There's a bit more emotion, fitting for a final, than the English version.