Football.
On the one hand you have fans who’ll drive to the other side of the country week in, week out whilst others attempt to avoid it those people who you know will corner you at a house party and tell you all about how they walked barefoot in India for 9 months and it was “like sooo ethnic and I even had rice for like FOUR days in a row”.
We all know one.
One of the first things I noticed is how crowds behave differently, particularly when their team is losing. On the one hand you’ll have some groups of fans having what seems to be a carnival in the stadium whilst on the flip-side you get over serious don’t look like they are enjoying it at all; they look stressed and angry. Dare I say it, England fans seem to fall into this category. Obviously in either case there are exceptions.
I watched the England V Germany drubbing in a packed bar and the atmosphere was incredible. Until Germany scored.
Then it was nothing but chants and songs about the world wars and – quite simply ironic – screams of “You racist german nazi!”. Granted this was only from a few in the crowd but it did change the atmosphere somewhat.
We’ve stuck into several detrimental states of mind at the same time.
Firstly, there are too many fans who think we are great at everything “Because we are English and they are scum” – whoever the opposition is.
Secondly, footballers (and for that matter other sports personalities, musicians and celebrities) are placed on ridiculous pedestals. We need to remind ourselves once in a while that everybody makes mistakes even if you are paid millions of pounds a year and that yes, referees will make mistakes as well.
This brings me onto my third key observation on mindsets; football needs to be brought into the 21st century and FIFA needs to grow up and realise.
I’ve had enough of diving, unpunished brutal fouls, goals being disallowed which were clearly in and 0-0 draws and time wasting.
I’m aware that most people who aren’t football’s greatest fans turn all Daily Mail on it: “Red cards for pulling shirts, every foul should mean at least a yellow, send of divers and they simply wouldn’t do it.”
Wrong. They still would do it, but perhaps not as much.
If it were up to me, there seems to be a few things which could be brought in overnight which would hopefully make football more appealing.
1) All games have to end in a win. In the knockout stages of any tournament when 90 minutes is up and it goes to extra time then penalties if need be. Why not bring this into all games? No more dismal, underwhelming 0-0 draws to reward half a day’s wages, 5 hour round-trips and sitting in the pissing rain for hours. Every game would have a winner and it would bring some more drama. You couldn’t just hang back and hold possession if all you need is a draw. Fans suffer when games are dull…’simples’.
2) An appeal system like in Tennis. For example if you have been booked and you think it is unjustified or scored – what you think looks like – a goal which has been disallowed or a whole other series of events then you can appeal the ref’s decision and go to a video ref. There would need to be a maximum number of incorrect appeals to end up with even more time wasting but nobody could argue with video evidence and we wouldn’t all be thinking ‘what if Lampard’s goal HAD been allowed?’
So that’s it, there’s plenty of other things out there which aren’t quite so serious like a multi-ball system if a player mentions a certain buzz-word, when at the same time all the ball boys throw their balls onto the pitch; compulsory mullet for Christiano Ronaldo – that would be deliciously absurd.
Not as absurd as a wage cap. You can almost imagine mentioning all the silly ideas to Sepp Blatter and as soon as a wage cap is mentioned he’d remark “you’re just being stupid now, mate”. Then again, he did say women footballers should wear short shorts so its not beyond the realm of possibility that 3 foot afros could be phased in for every player with an even number on their shirt and a lottery to decide which one player has to play in wellington boots for 10 minutes. More to the point, embarrassing ridiculous dives by replaying them again and again and again.
There is quite an argument to warrant this. Remember when Rivaldo clutched his face in agony and crumpled when he was waiting to take that corner years ago? The reason why the video footage keeps getting shown over and over again is not because it was such a shocking feign at all; its because he looked like a prize tit in front of millions of people.
Priceless.
So that’s it. Rant over.
Frankly, I’m all for a compulsory afro.
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