More About Maradona

When I found out that Diego Maradona has passed away, one of the things I said to my friend - who broke the news to me - was that I was keen to see what headline the tabloids would have on Thursday's front page.

I was sure that they would go down the 'Hand of God' route. The British (English!) press has spent the past thirty-four years going on about Maradona's handball against England at the '86 World Cup completely ignoring the wonder goal the Argentine also scored against the Three Lions in the 2-1 win.

It would be foolish of me to boast, because it would have been a complete surprise if The Sun hadn't ventured into the 'Hand of God' direction, but here is what the tabloid ran for Thursday's edition.

'In The Hands of God' is what the newspaper went with. Very predictable. The back page also had a tribute to the player with words from another legend - Pele. It read 'One day, hopefully we'll kick a football together in the sky'.

Number 10

When I first opened up the blogger panel, to write today's post, I thought back to just a few months ago when I wrote about the World Cup of 1986 in the post titled Number 3. In the days before - and after - writing, I kept thinking back to that football tournament which was my introduction to international football.

It wasn't the first time this week I found myself looking back to 1986. I did so on Wednesday evening immediately after being informed that Diego Maradona had passed away.

Maradona led Argentina to World Cup glory in that tournament, so - whenever I've ever thought back to the months leading into and during Mexico '86 - a lot of my memories have been of his goals and raising the FIFA World Cup Trophy (in my opinion, the most beautiful looking prize in all of sport) after Argentina beat West Germany 3-2.

Doing A Kriss Kross 13

Seeing as it's currently Thanksgiving Thursday in America and there is no Thursday Night Football game due to the Baltimore/Pittsburgh game being postponed until Sunday (as of the time of writing), I've decided to do a US-themed criss cross puzzle today.

Here's what the puzzle looked before I hit start on the timer.

And here is what the completed puzzle looks like. It took twenty-three minutes and forty-one seconds to finish.

War Of The Christmas Burgers 2020

As is usually the case - at this time of year - fast food restaurants, and other establishments, have added new items to their menus in the build up to Christmas. I have already tried Pizza Hut's Christmas Pizza (you can read about it in THIS POST) and have now tried the burgers that are available from Burger King, KFC and McDonald's. 

After trying all three items within the past fortnight, I thought I'd compare them in one post. So, starting with the first burger I tried right through the third, we have..

Burger King

Burger King's offering for Christmas 2020 is the 'Festive BBQ King with 5 Golden Rings'. 

The burger consists of two beef patties with two slices of cheese. Along with the main ingredients are bacon, mayonnaise, barbecue sauce (obviously!) and... five onion rings as a play on the 'Five Gold Rings' from The Twelve Days of Christmas.

The above picture is a feeble attempt at showing what it looked like inside. You can see some of the beef patties, a bit of bacon and the five onion rings squashed together.

I enjoyed most of the burger. However, I found myself struggling to finish it off near the end. I don't know whether that's a good or bad thing...

KFC

KFC went in an interesting direction with its Christmas special for 2020.

The Gravy Burger box meal came in a festive-themed box. Packed inside it was the aforementioned gravy burger (more or that in a moment), a mini fillet, a side of my choice (I picked fries), a dip pot of Gravynnaise and a pot of KFC gravy.

Before I get to the gimmick of the 'gravy burger', I'll explain what it consists of. It has an original KFC chicken fillet with cheese, gravynnaise and a hash brown. 

As you can see, in the picture directly below, the hash brown has a dip in the middle. This is to allow the diner to pour their gravy onto the burger.

This is a picture of my burger after I added the gravy to it.

I thought the gravy idea was really cool. As you can see, I placed all the contents onto a plate. I used the Gravynnaise to dip my fries and chicken fillet. Gravynnaise is exactly what you would expect from its name - a mayonnaise that is flavoured like gravy.

McDonald's

For Christmas 2020, McDonald's went to old reliable. And doubled it.

The most popular burger from the most popular fast food restaurant is the Big Mac. It's a burger that contains two beef patties, a slice of cheese, lettuce, onion and pickles. As well as that, it has the infamous 'Big Mac Sauce'.

McDonald's Double Big Mac adds an extra two patties to the burger. 

The burger arrived in a Christmassy box. However, it was all downhill from there.

I have often joked that everything looks better in a restaurant window. This certainly was the case with the burger that arrived at my door. 

As soon as I began to eat it, the burger started to fall apart.

The Big Mac is not my go to burger, whenever I buy food from McDonald's. I always find myself struggling to finish burgers with more than one patty in (see the Burger King item above), so it was not surprising to me to tap out before I could finish the Double Big Mac.

It was a complete mess at the end.

And The Winner Is....

KFC easily won the three-way battle. 

I struggled with Burger King's offering and couldn't finish the mess from McDonald's. 

KFC also scores highly on novelty. Burger King came close using the 'Five Gold Rings' theme. There is nothing festive about McDonald's Double Big Mac other than the box it came in.

Week 11 Battle

There's a battle going on tonight.

My fantasy football team scored 103.84 points so far this week and I have one more player yet to get me points in the Los Angeles Rams' running back, Malcolm Brown.

Over on the other side  of this week's match-up, my opponent has exactly thirteen points more than me and has the Rams' wide receiver - Robert Woods - remaining on his roster for this week.

For what it's worth, the league projects that my player will score 7.42 tonight.

It also believes Woods could get 14.16, so it looks like I'm in for another losing week.

We'll know soon enough. The Rams will take on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a couple of minutes from when this post has gone live.

Undertaker Month Part IV: Farewell Taker

The month-long celebration of The Undertaker's career fittingly ended last night during the 34th Annual WWE Survivor Series.

The event closed with, what was billed as, Taker's 'Final Farewell'. It consisted of a plethora of Taker's on and off-screen friends being introduced to the ring. Following that was a video package filled with highlights of the wrestler's career. Once that was over, the cameras returned to the squared circle. In the ring - on his own - was WWF/E owner, and the creator of The Undertaker character, Vince McMahon.

McMahon gave a short speech before The Undertaker made what could very well have been his final ring entrance.

Taker then cut a promo as you would expect from the Deadman and there was a brief moment when he genuflected with his hand out - just like what he would do to draw power out of the urn that his manager, the late Paul Bearer, would be carrying - and a hologram of his friend was beamed into the ring.

I thought it was a nice touch.

However, apart from seeing the old wrestlers congregate before the video package and the Paul Bearer hologram, I thought it was quite a poor send-off.

Sure, it didn't help that it was being done in an arena filled with fans on video screens rather than being live in-person.

It was a case of it being the right and wrong time to do this kind of celebration. 

It was right because it was exactly thirty years to the very day that The Undertaker debuted at the Survivor Series of 1990. It was the wrong time because the lack of a real audience made it feel - if you pardon the pun - dead.

My Week 11 Fantasy Team (2020)

I came close, but not close enough, in last week's daily fantasy contest for Sunday's NFL games.

The team I constructed scored a total of 97 points placing me in 253,781st place out of 469,219 entries. The payout zone started at 113 points. So, like I said, I was close yet still far off.

Here are the players I have for this week's round of games.