Football! Watch the football! Watch it! It’s fucking football! Yes! Yes! Yes! EN-GER-LAND indeed! It is easy to “have a go” at football, that the players are morons, and the fans are idiots, but to be honest, I quite like the World Cup, which is strange, because I don’t really like football.
Growing up in England, football is forced upon you at a young age, it’s a bit like guns in America, so it’s hard to escape it. School can be very hard if you’re not good at football, I wasn’t, and therefore I was apparently “gay”, if only my fellow “peers” regarded Star Wars so highly, and I would have been a fucking stud I tell you. This is probably the reason I resent football so much, the fact that you are judged by your football skill, knowledge, and worst of all, which bloody team you support. Then you have fans arguing who the best is at supporting a team. It all gets a bit too much for me.
It works the other way too though, the “anti-fans” are just as aggressive, laughing at anyone who could possibly be entertained by 22 men kicking a ball, “silly little men!”. I don’t want to be in either of these two groups, so I find myself following a sport just so I don’t hate myself…it hasn’t worked.
The World Cup comes as a mild relief for me, it’s football at it’s most exciting. Football has become so repetitive and clichéd, the games are mostly dull, the shock scandals have become so frequent they’re no longer shocking, and almost every club is in debt. The World Cup offers us something new, this year we have the enigmatic North Korea, the return of Maradona, and the vuvuzela. Ah the vuvuzela, the most annoying sound in the world is no longer the vuvuzela, it’s the sound of people complaining about the vuvuzela.
At the time of writing, we are a week into the competition, and while I am still paying attention, there have been very few reasons to keep watching. There haven’t been many exciting moments, and they are using the usual cliché of the ball being shit as an excuse, this time it’s too round! It’s a fucking ball! In four years time they’ll criticise it for being too square, or too introspective.
Not surprisingly, in England, all the news has been about England, no matter how frivolous. We have been given hourly updates like “England players are training” and “Wayne Rooney has a shit“. A truly great philosopher once said “too much of anything can make you sick”, and I am sick of England. There is an unaccountable expectation that “we” will win it, and every time “we” don’t, there is an unaccountable disappointment and mourning. There is a difference between optimism and expectation, and this is something we haven’t been able to grasp. It doesn’t help that 1966, 1986, and 1990 are mentioned every 15 seconds.
If “we” were to win it, what would happen? “We” would probably get drunk and then get on with life. If “we” didn’t win it, “we” would probably get drunk and then get on with life. “We” like it when we lose anyway, “we” love to complain, look at me, I’m complaining right now. The nation will have more joy if “we” crash out than if “we” win it. Think about it, no one talks about football if England win, because it’s boring when things go well. If “we” had any perspective, “we’d” all be hoping that “we” lose every match so “we” can celebrate our misery.
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