From The Sidelines: Simply no break from this madness

Definitely, I promise not to talk about football today !

Of course that I will not mention that we know already who are the best eight teams of the World Cup, but this is not the reason we will not talk about football.

Because today, there will no football at this column, even if the UAE treated us to the most dramatic match so far here, beating Australia in a very fancy way, at the very last minute. Clearly, this is not to be mentioned here, because this column is out of football today.

So, if I will not speak about football today, I do not have to remind anyone of the great services Sharjah organizers supplied to players, referees, authorities and journalists at the stadium.They closed their participation at this World Cup, handing chocolate at the entrances and pouring perfume at our hands to usher in farewell from this great place where Australia said goodbye from the competition and Brazil managed to take out Slovakia. But as you see, this is not football, right ?

You can try to twist my arm and pull my hair( you will not succeed anyway...I am Ronaldo-style!) and you will not talk about that 'strange' World Cup where all the matches are seeing full stadiums, sensational goals, Germany, England and Mexico leaving after the first phase or checking out all those fantastically 'crazy' fans disguising themselves better with every game.

I already told you all: no football here! Even not telling you all the details of the presence of one of the most important 1994 world champions, Branco, his hard work with the players or the nice goals he scores when he practises with the Brazilian players.

Not a word about football means not a word about Hugo Tocalli and his 'iron fist' system of practising with the Argentine boys, the anger of the expelled Mexican coach Eduardo Rergis against everyone, the thoughts and opinions of the sensational Paraguay coach, Rolando Chilavert, brother of the famous goalkepeer Jose Luis Chilavert or the how the US coach Thomas Rongen brought a non-favourite squad so far into the competition.

Because when you decide to talk about anyhting else but football, in the middle of a World Cup, you are either crazy or hating the game. But there is a very special mathematics to be used here.

So from this flight of 14 hours that took me from Sao Paulo to Zurich, you include the hour and a half on the way to the airport, plus the two hours of arrival and waiting before boarding the flight.

Add to all that another five hours of waiting time at the Zurich airport, around six and-a-half hours for flying between Switzerland and Dubai, and how much do we have here? 26 and a half hours. Once we reached that, we have, of course to sum up to that the six-hours difference time from here to Brazil. That makes 32 and-a-half hours, correct ?

So as I am not crazy, neither do I hate the game, even if I have to face a 32-hour journey to see the ball rolling at the prefect grass at the Emirates stadiums. Why on earth will I not want to talk about football?

Ricardo Setyon is the PR and media spokesperson for Brazil national team