By Tony Attwood

There is a headline on the Telegraph website that reads, “Empty seats at World Cup’s second match embarrass Fifa.

Or as the Telegraph chooses to put it, “Attendance for South Korea vs Czech Republic announced as 98.5 per cent of Estadio Akron’s capacity despite swathes of unoccupied seats”.  Which by and large makes no sense at all.

Now this raises an important point, for it shows that on an absolutely basic point, Fifa is actually lying although probably never realises it.   And it is not just lying, it is lying over an issue that can be immediately seen to be not one that supports FIFA’s assertions.

Although of course, as TV watchers we can see – insofar as the TV cameras are allowed to swing around the ground, they show us empty places.   

But we do also have a moderately free press in the UK and they tend to report things like this. And although there seems to be a lot of confusion (at least among the Guardian’s people and other journalists who seem to spend an awful lot of time asleep), it seems the crowd is actually “rather small”.

If not very small.

The Telegraph even has a picture of empty seats, which apparently it is actually showing to people who don’t have a subscription to the Telegraph, so we can all get excited by empty seats.  What a coup!  The commentary is “The announced attendance was 44,985 at the 45,664-capacity ground, despite a vast number of unoccupied seats”.

Now this raises a very interesting point, because if something as basic as the number of people in the ground can be made up, then surely the number of goals scored can also be invented.   So in fact, we might as well make up our own results as we go.  Or better still, in advance

But in fact it seems that these days people need extra help with everything.  So for example, the Guardian gives us

World Cup schedule today: How to watch USA v Paraguay, TV & live stream Friday 12 June

But then it gets very slack, for I followed their instructions and nothing happened.  Absolutely nothing.   There were no bands playing, no chanting, no players, and indeed no pitch.

Now eventually I did phone the Guardian and protested about the utter inaccuracy of their reportage, and it appears that what they have done is cut off the opening section, which includes instructions on getting a TV, attaching an ariel, turning the set on and all that malarky.   Plus the bit about waiting for the game to start.  Apparently they are assuming that I already know all that.  

So it seems that now I have to make up my own football information, AS WELL AS have for a TV licence.  I would say that is damned well dashed unfair.

Anyway there is some real news.   It’s a song

I am from Bosnia
Take me to America
I want to see
Statue of Liberty
I can no longer wait
Take me to United States
Takе me to Golden Gate
I will assimilatе.  

But there is a bit of news…   The Community Shield match, known to the FA as the “Final Community Shield” is to be played on 16 August at 3pm at the Millennium Stadium.    So that is something like 55 days away, which means I have only got about 100 more bits of non-news to make up to make sure that Untold Arsenal is still around by the time we get to the game.

Anyway, this is the bit you want to know…   Canada v Bosnia & Herzegovina will kick off at 8pm UK time and is going to be played in BMO Field, Toronto.   It’s on BBC-1.

There we are.  You are now fully informed.  If not actually asleep.