• Like, isn’t it time the world said that there is no football after Brazil. That the show should rightly wind up with the exit of the Selecao?

• Like, wasn’t Brazil’s semi-final exit a body-blow to West Bengal and its footballing culture, with its wall paintings of Ronaldo and its prayers to Ma Kali to further the magic of Brazilian legs?

• Like, isn’t it ironic that while Zinedine Zidane gets to inaugurate a wax statue of himself at Madrid’s wax museum, Ronaldinho gets his seven-metre high, resin-and-iron statue burnt down by irate fans?

• Like, never mind that Ronaldinho proved a damp squib this time, but I still think it was terribly unfair of the residents of Chapeco to have incinerated his player. Arrey, they could have shipped it to Siliguri if they didn’t want it and it may even have figured in a Durga Puja pandal this year. An extreme case of Les Bleus, if you ask me.

• Like, the world may soon be unable to host these extravaganzas without seriously damaging its carrying capacity. According to dieticians, the average football fan imbibes 385 gm of fat on a typical football night. Multiply that by one billion into 16 nights, and you get an idea of the critical mass attached to the World Cup football.

• Like, I don’t know about you, but my favourite headline in the series so far was this beauty from an American newspaper after the US was thrown out of the contending field by Ghana, 2-1. It read: ‘‘Here today, Ghana tomorrow.” It is also, incidentally, a pithy comment on the state of US soccer in the land of the baseball, basketball and American football.

... contd.