World Cup Sound of Football Podcast - Germany 0 Spain 1

And so the players in the World Cup Final have been decided. Join us for another one of our legendary "book-end" podcasts as we watch and ruminate over Spain's 1-0 victory over Germany. There's even a new game we can all play called 'Spot the Cliché'... what more could you ask for?

You can listen to the podcast here or if you right-click on that link, you can download the MP3. Alternatively, you can subscribe via the your reader of choice or via our iTunes feed.

Obscure World Cup Kits From History #4

By way of adding a final entry to this feature which we started right back in the early days of SPAOTP, we give you one of the oddest kits ever to be worn in a World Cup. Be it home kit or away, there have never been any quite as personalised as those worn by Zaire in 1974.

On the face of it, they were nothing special (the kits, that is – not the players). The home strip of yellow shirts, green shorts and yellow socks, plus the reverse colour-scheme for the away strip, were vivid enough. Both kits also had that look of a market stall Adidas-knock off, but then again so did many others at the time.  There's even the possibility those kits actually *were* made by Adidas, but that's to miss the point.

No. The one stand out feature about Zaire's kits were the big circular logos (if that's what you can call them) emblazoned all over the shirts. The word 'Leopards' could be seen inside the circle (pertaining to the team's nickname) and 'Zaire' was shown beneath it. But just what was that image in the middle?

We can only presume it was some stylised picture of a leopard, but to be honest, we're not entirely sure. It could have been a cock-up at the shirt-printing factory or a badly executed cartoon picture of Idi Amin's head for all we know. Yet for all that doubt, Zaire wore their shirts with pride, whatever the hell that image was supposed to be.

And you've got to admire their balls (if you can squint hard enough) for this was a bold, unique design that no-one before or since has adopted for their own good (that we're aware of). Imagine the fun you could have applying the same idea to other teams… Scotland could have a big circle with a thistle inside it, Ivory Coast could have a big circle with an elephant inside it and France could have a big circle with a huge coq inside it. The possibilities are endless…

Sadly, 1974 was to be Zaire's only appearance at the World Cup to date, meaning no chance to see those wondrous shirts again. We can only hope that under their new name, Democratic Republic of Congo, they qualify again and wear shirts based on that classic from 36 years ago. Failing that, we'll be happy if they just do this again…

World Cup TV Preview : 6-7 July

(All times - UK)

Tuesday 6th July

19:30 Netherlands v Uruguay, World Cup Semi - Final, ITV1/HD

Say what you like about the ethics of the last remaining South American team's presence in the semi-final - there is a wonderful sense of romance about the first ever world champions making it to the latter stages of the first ever tournament to be held in Africa. However, you can't help but feel that the road may be coming to end. Key players are lost to injury and suspension (including the evil/heroic Luis Suarez).

The Netherlands are reaching their peak and barring any last minute collywobbles, should progress to their first World Cup final since 1978. For the neutral lies the prospect of Arjen Robben and Diego Forlan, both at the peak of their careers, pitted against each other in one of the biggest stages on Earth. Let's hope they give us a fantastic show.

Wednesday 7th July

19:30 Spain v Germany, World Cup Semi - Final, BBC1/HD

This is a match that is, not unreasonably, billed as the game that will decide the winner. I'm not sure I hold with that. Nevertheless for the Europeans, this is a game that features the widest spread of familiar players, as opposed to the modest mystique on the Uruguayans. Picking a winner, of course, is another matter. Will Germany's lack of defensive cover finally be the end of them? Or will Spain's insistent persistence with Fernando Torres lead to the European champions getting their come-uppance?

denotes match to be covered by The Sound of Football Podcast.

Word Cloud #1: Clive Tyldesley

Don't you just love Word Clouds?  They're those fabulous pictograms that show the frequency with which certain words are used within a passage of speech. The bigger the word appears, the more it was spoken.

We thought it was about time we started producing some of these word clouds as a tribute to some of the most admired people in the world of football. To that end, here's our first - it's a word cloud for Clive Tyldesley's 2006 World Cup Final commentary for ITV. Very enlightening...