Sunday, July 02, 2006

The World Cup

One more week and the World Cup will be over and a good thing too as far as I’m concerned. Everywhere you go football hype surrounds you, pundits and commentators spinning patriotic bullshit and extolling the virtues of the current heroes who are about to make sporting history.

Before the competition, the England team were touted as having a great chance of winning the cup, its’ star players spoken of with reverence. The largely inane crap was enough to make a sane person puke, use of the word “quality” seemed mandatory in all sentences.

As usual, the real world had a different plan.

England scraped their way through the early stages largely due to the luck of the draw, their performance was poor. When they eventually had to face stronger opposition their deficiencies were highlighted and they lost their match against Portugal. Rooney, one of their star players, disgraced himself and was sent off for kicking an opponent in the nuts in a very sportsman-like manner.  

Astute readers will have correctly guessed I’m not a football fan although I played the game as a schoolboy. At that time of course, sport was still sport, I lost my interest in it when it became what is today, simply business, just another way of making money. A very effective way also, it uses the primitive in-built tribal characteristics of human beings to automatically make them fans, and causes many of them to part with significant percentages of their income in loyal support of their heroes. Heroes, I might add, whose talents could perhaps be better employed in Hollywood or the theatres of London’s West End. I don’t just mean their feigning on the playing field, the post-match scenes of grown men sitting on the ground with tears running down their faces was terrific theatre. They looked like a bunch of babies who’d had their lollipops stolen; pictures guaranteed to endear them to the hearts of existing fans and perhaps even create some new ones.

When I was at school, sports were a mandatory activity but participation was based upon ongoing academic achievement, it was instilled into us that sport was good but meant nothing when compared to a good education. I may be wrong, but it certainly doesn’t look like that philosophy applies today.

Sport is beloved of all governments; they generally support it whole-heartedly because politicians are well aware of its power over the masses. Giving the public something of no importance to occupy their minds is a great tool in the ongoing government propaganda battle to control us and divert our attention from real issues they don’t want us to think about. Sadly, the majority of us fall for it hook, line and sinker.

I watched the World Cup mainly out of academic interest, to see if things had changed or if improvements had been made. I saw only that blatant cheating was still rife and true sportsmanship was almost gone; sorry, I think the term “beautiful game” is a complete misnomer.

I remain convinced that being a football fan is akin to being religious, to get anything out of it you have to throw your brain out the window.

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