The last of our 32 teams take the field of pop: Spain open their campaign against Switzerland. Spain’s Alberto is new to pop management at this level: his opposite number in the Swiss dugout is Greg Fanoe. Good luck to them both!
Voting for thi[…]

Shiny Shiny is an Pitchfork column by me about a fictional “CD Revival”, consisting of interviews with four of the movers and shakers in said revival and some editorial around that. Fictional because the column supposedly dates from 2022.[…]

Group H begins with an intriguing clash between the relatively unfancied Chile and the relatively even more unfancied Honduras. Points on the board important here – both sides have experienced pop managers: Chile has turned to Jel, whereas Hond[…]

Our Group E round-up sees Roger Bozack off to cover the Pop Winter olympics so it falls to analyst Pete Baran to helm the coverage in South Africa. The first all Europe tie, Denmark vs Netherlands, followed by the very intriguing Camaroon vs Japan. P[…]

Group G’s second game sees Brazil take on North Korea. Brazil are the most successful side ever in the football World Cup – in pop competition they are more of a sleeping giant, and it’s down to Chris Ambrose to revive their fortune[…]

1. We know that even before the BBC’s strategy document recommended 6Music’s closure, the BBC Trust had asked for changes to the station. The Trust felt it should be playing less new music (down from 50% to 30%) and should be attracting a[…]

With the defending Pop World Cup champions Czech Republic failing to qualify for this year’s tournament, Portugal are the most successful 2006 team represented here. Managed by Job de Wit, they open Group G with a game against the Ivory Coast, […]

Here is a link to the story, which you might want to read instead of the first 900 words of this and here is a link to a word about our Hauntography project.
Firstly, mostly to get them out of the way, two boring anecdotes.
Semi-irrelevant anecdote #[…]

Group D sees our first taste of scandal as Peter Baran questions the ancestral authenticity of the German entry, Heinz, whose fuzzy guitar rock paces Australia’s Sneaky Sound System step for step. And drugs – they aren’t unknown on […]

The second group F game sees New Zealand and Slovakia go head to head – two Pop World Cup unknowns making their debut on the biggest stage. Both have gone for experienced managers, Steve Mannion in the Kiwis’ dugout while Julio de Souza s[…]