D triumph in World Cup opener

The World Cup is in full swing, a wonderful time when I am suddenly captivated by Slovenia vs Algeria - actually I fell asleep after twenty minutes, and other discussionary topics are thrown off the agenda. With blogeration and a miniature football pin-balling around my mind, I came up with the fascinating concept of the Alphabet World Cup. My car-share actually thought that it was either utterly boring or weirdly compulsive rather than fascinating, but I shall share it with you anyway. The idea is that players are no longer defined by nationality, but by their surname, so all the players with surnames beginning with the letter A play for the same team. There are 26 letters and 32 teams in the World Cup, so as to make the fixture list work, I allowed Own Goals, Disallowed Goals (a frustrating team to support), Alliteration, Palindromes, Players whose surnames are in the dictionary and Players whose names start and end with the same letter each enter a team also. Then I put each of the teams into groups and worked out what their first game results would be. I will continue this throughout the World Cup to see which letter goes on to lift the Alphabetical Jules Rimet. Here's how The Letter D got on in the first game against the highly-fancied letter C:

The Letter C 1 (Cacau 70) The Letter D 2 (Dempsey 40, De Rossi 63)

The D Team: Demichelis, Demerit, Da Silva, Diaby, Dempsey, De Jong, De Rossi, Deco, Donovan, Dindane, Derdiyok.

The Letter D made the unusual decision to play without a goalkeeper, but still managed to clinch victory in their opening encounter against The Letter C. They opted for a 3-5-3 formation hoping that a packed midfield would outwit their opponent's more conventional 1-4-4-2 line-up. C boasted a strong defence with star player from the previous World Cup Fabio Cannvaro marshaling the back-line. Angelos Charisteas of Greece and Germany's Jeronimo Baretto Cacau led the line in what looked like a powerful attack.

  It was D though who broke the deadlock in bizarre fashion as the first half was drawing to a close. Clint Dempsey found space 25 yards from goal, but his tame effort looked like it wouldn't trouble experienced goalkeeper Iker Casillas, but his fumbling grapple with the ball resulted in it bobbling over the line beyond his reach.

  As C looked to be getting back into the game in the second half, disaster struck when Tim Cahill slid in late on Jay Demerit. The tackle looked innocuous enough, but the referee saw fit to flourish a red card and it was end of Cahill's night and perhaps his World Cup.

  Shortly after, Casillas came flapping off his line from a corner kick, leaving the goal exposed for Daniele De Rossi to stab home from close range to put D two up. There was time for Cacau to finish from close range to give C hope, but it was D who finished stronger with Eren Derdiyok hitting the post late on after evading the close attention of the defenders inside the box.

  Elsewhere in the group, the Letter B triumphed 2-1 over the Letter A with an own goal from Daniel Agger and a bundled finish from Jean Beausejour. Antolin Alcaraz replied for the Letter A. The Letter B face The Letter D in their next group game with both teams looking to cement their place in the knock-out stages.

Group ABCD

The Letter B: 3 points, +1 goal difference

The Letter D: 3 points, +1 goal difference

The Letter A: 0 points, -1 goal difference

The Letter C: 0 points, -1 goal difference