From the original article to which you linked: "Players in yellow or orange shirts had the worst record but performances away from home did not show any differences."

My late father was a lifelong Norwich City supporter (being a Norfolk lad). He always characterised their performances as 'draw at home and lose away'. Could the boffins have found the justification for their decades of less than sparkling form?

Maybe that's why Holland have never won the World Cup.

I was thinking exactly the same thing (although I had to go check the results for every world cup trophy ever given before syaing as much to eradicate potential sarcasm on your part, and cause myself embarassment) and it occured to me that every time I have seen the Dutch team in that orange strip I have felt immensely sorry for them.

They look a little bit like they're about to form up in the centre of the pitch in a human triangle, have names on their shirt-backs like `Boffo` and `Zonko` and `Ronald McDonald` and that partway through the game the reserves will drive into the 18-yard box (I had to look that up, too) in an amusingly smoky VW Beetle, from which the doors will blast away simultaneously as a humourous attempt to deflect an incoming attack on goal.

Still. It was quite instructive actually, negotiating your potential sarcasm and my complete ignorance, as besides the whole line/box thing I learned that the Cup started off in 1930, so I learned snother date of reference for my soon expected social life, and also the shockingly low number of winning nations.

Brazil five times? Bloody Uruguay twice?

Bloody Jesus on a pair of crossed Bloody Sticks, no wonder we were all so shocked a couple years back when France got in there - and no wonder everyone in England - football afficianados or not - gets an instinctive brown fear at the prospect of our team facing the Brazilians at any point.

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Have you seen my latest blog by the way? Incredibly (or incredulously) there's some football in it.

There'll even be one with some more football in today, correcting all of my fatuous statements about where-the-FA-cup-has-actually-got-to from the other one, but still, I thought it might somehow offer you a warming glow of hope that even unsportly types of my calibre can muster two posts concerning the game

Don't worry about having to look up the World Cup, I had to look up Kochi.

It turns out you're on the island of Shikoku, south west of Kobe. Are there still Japanese Elvises, or is that a bit passé now?

Two things:
1) It has long been established that the plural of Elvis is Elvii (I'm not sure about the collective noun - a jumpsuit?)

2) Stoke.

Well, for a start, Elvii is just plain wrong, except as the plural to the non-existent word Elvius. The correct Latinised plural for Elvis would be Elves, pronounced Elvays but spelt like the magical woodland folk. In the context, I would have appeared to be asking evilhippy if Legolas was still living in Japan.

Also, Stoke is a verb, usually combined with the word up. I know of no other meaning of the word Stoke.