Football manga should start before the world cup. I guess that they are trying to recapture the charm of Captain Tsubasa.
Eh, not a fan of sport manga.
Well if you read Sport series like Major (Baseball), One Outs (Baseball), Hajime No Ippo (Boxing), Ashita No Joe (Boxing), Initial D (Underground Street Car Racing) Kaiji (Gambling), Slam Dunk (Basketball) or Giant Killing (A good Football Manga much better then Captain Tsubasa).
These series are much better then the averge magical fantasy manga, or Slice of Live series. So yeah give sport manga a chance. For me Sport manga is always the weird one in the anime/manga industry. Witch is strange because a lot of sports manga are really good.
Take for example Slam Dunk, if you like it or don't like it, Personally I like it a lot. It still is the number 4 series of Japan. And did much better then manga such as Naruto, Bleach, Death note, Hunter X Hunter, GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka)
But man I Do miss the old anime openings like this one:
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Oh yeah, the existance of Sasuke (Naruto) comes from Rukawa (Slam Dunk) And Miyata from Hajime No Ippo. You really have choose right to have a lot of fan girls for your character Kishimoto.