Football is shit - long live football

It’s over.

I find myself sighing in relief, the tournament had some joy to it for sure, but it was too long and the final, a four hour process of [insert the name of the official hydration partner here] water torture, football rendered as a light entertainment nightmare, a peyote vision of corporate America, all weird twisting bodies in lurid colours has tested my patience beyond breaking point.

Someone belts out the national anthem covering four octaves in one phrase because this is the land of possibility and if it’s possibly to modulate your voice and have two key changes in quick succession, then fuck! Yeah! Freedom! To sing like you’ve never heard the phrase ‘less is more’ is your motherfuckin' birthright- it’s why they have guns, to protect that sort of thing. 

The crowd is barely noticeable, reduced to mere blurry pixels, squeezed between boards and screens shilling FIFA sanctioned brands. Even ‘those incredible Argentine fans’ (© all the broadcasters all the time) are but a distant hum, the passion dulled by variously, the inflated ticket prices changing the make-up of the fans and the thumping, insistent sound of the BIG EVENT.

It’s merely not a game, it’s a celebrity endorsed moment. A once in a lifetime billion pound choreography. A greying popstar in an alarming jumpsuit warbles an inane song that I can’t believe anyone could have written with a straight face. Something about kicking the ball to be who we are for love and unity. It’s worse than AI. Chat GPT would probably shut itself down if it had come up with that. 

Gianni beams. Today, I feel… like the centre of attention. The Donald tucked safely behind bulletproof glass glowers as he casts an Emperor's gaze across it all. Tom Cruise from off of Tom Cruise films lectures us all in the manner of a patronisingly positive primary school head giving a motivational speech about sports day being more than just the egg and spoon race. His face is locked in a kind of smirk that drips with self satisfaction.

That’s not even a bit of it. It goes on and on and on. It leaks into half time and infects it, like a spilt sugary drink that has dried in the sun, everything sticky, tacky, horrible. Stars, like ants, crowded round, milling, drawn by the scent, drunk on sucrose. Manicure, plastic surgery, far too much effort to ever be even remotely cool. This is shit.

The game. Football. So brilliantly un-mouldable. A glorious revenge on the glittering spectacle. It is fucking awful. Spain aren’t bad, knocking it about like any middle ranking club side can do these days but Argentina are evil, spoilers, barbarians. Nothing happens. The ref daren’t act because there’s too much at stake. Argentina can’t get the ball anywhere near Messi but Spain daren’t really let rip in case they do. It’s a cautious team versus a side so brutally conservative as to make Tony Pulis look positively carefree and Cruyfiann.

As it goes on, despite everything, I find myself fascinated by the sheer bloody-mindedness of the Argentines. Rooney tells everyone that the half time show is “crap” and a nation rejoices in Wazza’s frankness. Still nothing seems to happen. The pundits try to tell us the Argentine keeper is having an astonishing game but mainly he’s saved things straight at him. Spain keep patiently going sideways and backwards trying to create the perfect goal and not managing it.

Then finally, Argentinian brutality gets a well overdue punishment. Ironically, the foul that draws the red is clumsy, yes, mistimed, definitely but for once, not premeditatedly cynical. Spain score a goal which gets ruled out for no explicable reason and briefly, the world of Whatsapp chats and social media fizzes with conspiracy but then, very shortly afterwards, the inevitable Spain pressure tells. By then I’m almost (but not quite) hoping that Argentina win having had no shots on or off target, just because there’s something perversely interesting about that. The Spain goal kills that anti-hero narrative and that’s probably for the best.

As multiple times before in this tournament, going behind stings Argentina into action. They’re actually quite good when they play football and it’s a mystery as to why they didn’t try this earlier. Messi has a couple of sublime touches - (you might have heard of him, he’s quite good,) a cross is almost turned in. Thankfully it isn’t and we’re spared the dubious drama of penalties and the team that clearly deserves to win the match wins the match.

Trump wanders about in shot whilst the World Cup is lifted because of course he does. The TV cuts to various people who I have to suppose other people know who they are, many of whom are inexplicably celebrating despite not being Spanish as if just being near this moment of incredible magic is enough to send them into raptures. Raised as I was on the fag end of a decade of empty terraces and carcoated men bitterly finishing a rollie and declaring ‘Bloody awful, I’ve had enough, I’m not coming next week’ before marching out (to come again next week), the idea of neutrals clapping and dancing with a strangely pagan bliss after a game that bad is a bit of a culture clash.

It wasn’t a game where conventional wisdom would suggest football was the winner - and yet, in a strange way, football trounced pomp and circumstance. The universal and inescapable truth of football is, it’s often shite. The World Cup final was a game that ended up resembling not so much a crowning moment of a festival of elite sport but a bad tempered match that could really, aside from a few flicks and twists here and there, have been taking place in the Scottish third division or the English non-leagues.

Whilst it is a shame for the relatively few genuine fans who’d spent their life savings to be there, I can’t help smile to myself that all the corporate grifters, the politicians and a-list, influencing types, all of the moneyed sorts who bagged a 10,000 dollar ticket with their latest bonus payment in their bright and new replica soccer jerseys learned pretty much what it feels like to watch us play Crawley Town on Tuesday night. No money, no exclusive ticket, no amount of mega build up can guarantee a good game. You can imagine a tournament with infinite sponsors, a stadium made of solid gold, a prize fund so big you run out zeros when you try to type it out and yet the game on the local field between two pub teams might actually be a better watch.

That’s football.

It might have been a bit warmer and the PA a bit better - but frankly, I prefer my halftimes to have the sound of Tony Parr interviewing someone you can't hear and the unbeatable visual spectacle of our subs half heatedly knocking the ball between themselves whilst two blokes with forks prod the pitch in a knowing manner.

I think FIFA missed out by not having any adverts for Terry's Carpets. 

Onward

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Writing about football is possibly a bit pointless in an era when there's the telly and youtube and videos all over the shop. It's not my living this and it's just something I do because I do so there's no problem with reading it and then getting on with your life - but if you do want to chuck some money at the cause of some random fella writing shit no one ever asked him too, then Patreon. is a thing.