FRANCE vs ENGLAND - Waterloo all over again? Watch out NAPOLEON, the Duke of WELLINGTON has been shining his Wellingtons all night long with pure Paco Rabane Perfumed Polish! The Day of Reckoning is at Hand ! again, this Saturday at 4 p.m.(French Time) OR....

The ZEN-KOAN as Poem - The Same Question - XII - Part One

Then the Master said: "How do you entrap Time?"

Said Monk-Disciple 1: "Simple, turn IT into a ball and shoot IT into a goal."

Said M-D 2: "You can't do that, just like that ! You can't just go about swatting IT like you do with flies nor swiping butterflies with basket-nets. You have to have rules and regulations, and competing participants, such as, 'no hands on the ball', for, otherwise, that would be far too easy even for the one-man-team 'Hand of God Maradona' !"

Said M-D 3: "Right you are ! Better still 'head' IT into the goal with the tips of strands of horrendous hair of the 3-time Ballon d'OR Ronaldo of Portugal to rob his compadre for the credit of shooting the goal. What a display of mean toothy glee an instant after for the World to see !"

Said M-D 4: "Guess what did Levandowski - twice over - whisper into an ear of Mbappé over the frenzied yells of 3000 French fans with his mother proudly looking on: NOT what the papers reported, 'You have made it again; you'll carry the World Cup, alright !', but , 'You Lucky Devil, you, bless your unsullied stars the 2022 Ballon d'OR Kareem Benzema is convalescing from a tibia rip-up watching you gloat - while in bed !'"

Said M-D 5: "If only the African Lions had the cussedness to maintain their early raids on the English goal-mouth , the 'inventors of the game' will not have to face the fury of the 'Allez-les-Bleus-Blacks' in the quarter finals next Saturday."

Said M-D 6: "Then, why would the Cameroonian dare-devil water-buffalo -near the very end of the match - rip through the defence of the macarena-dancing Brazilians, only to flip-off his jersey for a Yellow Card and earn himself a Red-Exit Card from the all-smiles and conniving US referee ?"

Said M-D 7; "Rules or no rules, now what happens if some participating national team in the first round of the FIFA World Cup at Qatar emerges from out of no-where to beat the reigning Champions, what do you do then ? How do you cage " TIME '?"


Said M-D 8: "You mean like in the encounter with Tunisia, the French sharp-shooter of curved balls Griezmann nets one in, during the very last seconds to equalize the score, and the referee blows his whistle 3-times to signal the end of the match..."

Said M-D 9: "No fear ! The TV-monitoring Umpire intervenes with the referee's decision to award the equalizing goal at 1 - 1 and calls in the referee to adjudge the replay on screen."

Said M-D 10: "So, the result in favour of the underdogs: 1 - 0 - the lowly topple the Top-Dogs and put Tunisia in ecstatic inebriation - the former colony gets its own back on the Colonial Master !"

Said M-D 11: "Uproar among Napoleon's descendants ! Call it what you like the Champs wouldn't let a slur like that go unanswered ; so they appeal to the FIFA to set the record straight, even if the result made no difference to their advance up the ladder into the final quarter. The appeal to the FIFA disciplinary body fell through - the dent to their dignity must now serve as an incentive to lift the coveted FIFA trophy once again. Rendez-vous this coming Saturday at 4 p.m. with England who last won the World Cup in 1966."

(c) T. Wignesan - Paris - 2022