Sometimes things just go wrong

FairNotPlay, version September 2026. Photo; Guadelupe Correa.

Last year, I was so inspired by FairNotPlay, a women’s football team in the North Champ amateur league in Buenos Aires, that I immediately forecast a return to the Premier League for Leicester City. Way to go kid.

In my essay ‘From Buenos Aires to the King Power’ I described FairNotPlay’s slightly convoluted championship win, and extrapolated that to Leicester City’s forthcoming 2025/26 season, which I was sure would result in equal glory. Admittedly, my optimism was based solely on the fact that Trinidad had played all season in a Leicester City shirt which I had given to her as a reward for putting up with my daughter Tamara. That last part is a joke, I think.

Unfortunately for my team and my forecast, we turned out to be not very good at football at all, and were duly relegated for the second consecutive season, this time to the ingeniously named League One, aka the ‘Third Division’. What’s in the title, ehh?

As failed forecasts go, it’s far from the worst one ever made. Alan Hansen’s famous prediction, on the opening day of the 1995/96 season following Manchester United’s 3-1 defeat by Aston Villa, that you can’t win anything with kids left him with a farmyard full of eggs on his face as Sir Alex Ferguson’s dummy-sucking, nappy-wearing Manchester United side swept all aside on their way to winning the Premier League title and the FA Cup. The so hard to win famous Double. Way to go, weenies…

Ally MacLeod famously forecast, swiftly followed by every Scotsman, that Scotland would win the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, which they would have done if the cup was awarded for drinking and partying. Unfortunately, sober footballing ability came into the equation somewhere down the line and Scotland were eliminated after the initial group stage, much to the disappointment of bar owners across both Scotland and Argentina. I remember meeting Ron Atkinson at Aston Villa in the early 1990s. We were discussing the possibility of Villa visiting Argentina for pre-season friendlies, and his eyes went dreamy as he waxed lyrically about the ‘social World Cup’.

Away from football, there have been a fair few doozy predictions. In 2002, the newly incumbent President of Argentina, Eduardo Duhalde, proudly stated that ‘Argentina is condemned to success’ prior to twenty years of economic mayhem. To be fair to him, Argentina did win the 2022 World Cup and a couple of Copa Américas in 2021 and 2024, so maybe he was just ahead of his time. Martin Peters all over again.

To be fair to Sr. Duhalde, economic and political forecasting is a minefield. In October 1929, Irving Fisher, the distinguished Yale economist, declared that American stock prices were at a permanently high plateau. He was obviously pretty happy at the time as he is purported to have amassed a ten-million-dollar fortune. The Wall Street Crash juggernauted in within a matter of days, and he supposedly lost eleven million. Aw, shucks.

Crowd control for FairNotPlay. Hooligans everywhere.

One of my all-time favourite forecasting predictions was in 1990. I had recently arrived in Buenos Aires, and my Spanish then being non-existent, (no comments please, let it go, it’s too easy), I would follow CNN, and particularly Crossfire, with Pat Buchanan and Michael Kinsley nightly performing their political Punch and Judy show, normally with one unfortunate invitee along for the ride.

The night before Iraq marched into Kuwait, the invitee, an expert on the Middle Eastern region, was asked whether the one hundred thousand Iraqi troops and masses of weapons stationed on the border with Kuwait were there with real intent or was it just Saddam Hussein sabre-rattling. Without hesitation he predicted that the troops were there for show, and that they would withdraw within days. That answer must have really pissed off Saddam as within hours his Band of Brothers were having fun barbecuing Kuwaiti oil fields. I never saw the expert on Crossfire again. What can you do?

Of course, there is a moral to this story – beware predictions at all costs. So, that said, I now am nailed on that Leicester City will return to the Championship (Division Two). After all, we have just beaten Stockport County 4-3 away (just writing that makes me want to cry), so it’s a slam-dunk sure-fire bet the house on it banker. Of course, FairNotPlay will be champions once again. Quite.

OK, we’re winning…but which bar are we going to tonight?

To quote David Coverdale: ‘Here I Go Again’.