 |
| Any ideas Lucas? |
Some sneaky greaseball took a dive in the penalty box in the last minute of the last 16 to give Italy a penalty, the lead and subsequently the game. There was no time for a comeback and Australia were out.
I always tell the Aussies "tough shit" and "that's football". I've always been a big believer of 'the ball is round, the game is 90 minutes' (Der Ball ist rund und ein Spiel daurt 90 minuten) and the 'After the game is before the game' (which for some reason makes way more sense in it's original German- Nach dem Spiel ist vor dem Spiel- I think the sense of it is that the past doesn't matter, it's what you do next that counts) philosophy in football and in life so you can't really go bitching and moaning when things don't go your way.
I would go so far as to say that the beauty of football is that it can be terribly cruel and unfair making it all the more reason to take your chances when they arise. Playing well or being good simply isn't enough.
I admire FIFA for at the very least not overly interfering with the rules of the game even if they do their best to destroy it in every other way. They have made efforts to make the game more sporting to point where it's almost unsettling to watch so many kids walking around holding hands with strange men but obviously someone somewhere is buying it. Probably the Arabs who are backing the whole business of football these days. It's still commonplace today in Arabic cultures for grown to hold hands in public. I'm not sure the policy will fly at the Catholics Priests World Cup.
Ironically (and I'm pretty sure this is irony and not merely a coincidence because FIFA's efforts to clean up the game have actually made it more dishonest) I think that it is FIFA's desire to clean up the game which has made it more susceptible to cheating.
Way back in the day, when men were men all the good teams had hard men like Souness, Mattheus, Stiles, all the Argentinians and the list goes on. These guys didn't always get the credit but their ability to "quieten" the more gifted ball players on the other side was often the difference between winning and losing.
This led to calls that the game needed to be cleaned up and that the good players need to be protected by the officials and allowed to play because that's what the people want to see. I'm not sure if by "people" what was really meant was audiences or that advertisers wanted their product associated more with some dinky winger rather than the likes of Norman "Break Your Legs" Hunter.
You can't argue with that of course and so it was that FIFA changed the way the game was played.
If I was to pin-point that change I would put it down to the period between the end of the 1990 World Cup (generally considered the worst of all time, though to my 7 years old eyes, it was and remains a glorious time) and the beginning of the English Premier League in 1992.
The Premier League made football a marketable commodity and despite attendances holding steady or in many cases even falling with the introduction of all seater stadiums, the focus on the game became greater than ever before. There was so much money in the game (by way of the TV deals and all the incidental revenue streams which flowed from that) that suddenly there were more photographers, cameras, reporters, tv shows about the games than ever before. The game was omnipresent, you couldn't get away from it.
It was around this time (as I remember it, not that too much about what happened before that. I was 10 after all), players seemed to start getting injured much more easily. They would stay down and a physio would come on with the 'magic sponge' and the player would slowly get to his feet and suddenly he was miraculously cured. Players started falling like they had been shot and rightly the argument was put that if a player went down so dramatically in other sports there is no way they would be able to continue yet in soccer, they nearly always played on.
You didn't need to be a cynical bastard such my ten year old self to conclude that the players were simply cheating. That they were feigning injury and often fouls in order to waste time, win a free kick or penalty or to get their opponent booked or sent off.
In the old days, there was no such play acting. It's always interesting today watching Glenn Hoddle (the pranciest of all the great players) at the 1982 World Cup with his socks around his angles, no shin pads and dodging tackles like they were landmines.
There was a very deliberate effort by FIFA to cut this perceived type of dirty play but it simply had the effect of swinging the pendulum too far in favour of the attacking player. A simple solution would be a straight red card for diving. Yes, it would lead to the odd injustice but it would also encourage players to stay on their feet.
Why this hasn't been introduced I don't know but until such rule changes are introduced, players will continue to dive with impunity (a yellow card is a waste of time) but hey, them's the rules so take your chances and don't have your fate determined by a gamey continental and a dodgy referee.
As for that dark sunny day for Australia in Kaiserslautern. That's football.
3 comments:
Football is gone soft so that it will appeal more to a female audience, they being the priority target for advertisers. It’s pretty obvious from watching T.V. that the ads are 75% aimed at women, tampons this, thrush that and what the fuck is vagacil?
In fairness, the fact that everyone still subscribes to sky and goes to the games indicates that it was the right move for the money people. They’ve increased the fan base and their profit margins, do you really think they’re worried about “cheating” in the game?
The modern era has brought huge amounts of cheating, the end of club loyalty, the end of the cult hero and international football has become such a joke that 22 year old kids can’t be bothered to show up for games. And yet the fans keep handing over the cash, it tells me everything I need to know about modern society and why the world is falling apart.
All the game has lost is it’s soul, integrity, honour and a handful of crusty bitter clingers like me, who happen to think that a grown man having any respect for a hairless backed, cheating dago lady boy cunt, like Cristiano Ronaldo, is quite pathetic.
But as Rio Ferdinand might, like a fucking fag, “tweet”, people like me are dinosaurs with no place in the modern game. Unlike the very modern activities of running out on drug tests and “roasting” young women, right Rio?
To answer your question about cheating, nothing can, or will be done. Cheating is the price to be paid for the modern superstar, and as long as the advertising cash keeps pouring in that will not change. Want to end cheating in the game? Stop watching.
If the host has a problem with a commenter then he ought to openly say so here.
I see comment moderation has been enabled so the thought police can stifle any hate speech,thats good because I hear some little girls were really upset by those mean words.
Our host probably thinks those Spurs fans, arrested and named in national newspapers for singing very bold hate words at poor little millionaire Sol Campbell, got what they deserved.
The host will also be pleased if he saw the independent on thursday, the FA is finally tackling the biggest problem in football today, diving you say? Don't be a silly, why, it's the lack of openly gay footballers and the evil homophobia from those mean brutes in the stands of course.
Double plus good for all the readers here I'm sure. Well you need not worry yourselves about my hate words, I've learned that my pre-sky dinosaur brain is double plus un-good.
I love the modern game, I've always lov...
Lads, can we go easy on the bad language? Obviously I can go all Idi Amin on your ass as the blog administrator but being a benign dictator I don't want to do that but I would also like if purely for reasons of etiquette and out of respect for our other readers we could keep the bad language to a minimum.
To paraphrase Walter from the Big Lebowski: "Smokey, this is not 'Nam. This is blogging. There are rules."
Post a Comment