What have we learned from this World Cup so far? Firstly, we have been shown that 60 people can die in a train crash in Congo and it barely gets noticed. Bombs continue to go off in Iraq and soldiers continue to die in Afghanistan. Most strangely, the new government picked the day before England’s final group game to have the new budget announcements. The fixtures have been available for several months – so before anyone suggests a coincidence, I suggest not.
The World Cup is NEWS. It is also the suspension of reality for many – as if English adults and children alike can believe that Santa Claus really does exist and then have the carpet pulled from under their Reebok Classics. All of this makes for great stories to be exploited by the media, as the swathes of empathy seep through the veins of the nation with an accent less and orgasmic groan.
The headlines and lead stories on all platforms of the media funnel sports and real life on to the plate of café cooked inertia, so much so that a sausage is no longer that. Instead, problems and solutions are served up with so many options yet the main ingredients can never be disguised from being nauseating. Akin to the Monty Python’s spam sketch, we are left to believe that by shuffling the pack, we might come up with a new formation that will change the perception of our team from within and without. Forget what the public think, the players are too detached to know. Until the booing manages to drown out the vuvuzelas and the accent less groan fills and drowns the pubs, valleys and green, green grass of home. The public all tend to feel that this is not the best 23, but aside from the injured Ferdinand, who else would have been in with a shout? Joe Cole should get a game – but he should be used as a secret weapon rather than a beacon of hope and expectation. So it is too late for him to have a real impact. Theo Walcott? Please! Adam Johnson? Do me a favour. Michael Owen?
This Golden Generation has little to offer the hungry English public. As they trawl the pubs, bars, streets, promenades, off licences, supermarkets, churches?, newspapers, magazines, websites, talk radio stations and tv phone-ins, looking for clues and answers, they often forget to look at the real recipe for this shit. There they stand, be it at home or abroad, in their Nylon ¾ length tracksuit bottoms, sleeveless and perforated ‘sport’ t shirts, ped socks with slip-on trainers, baseball cap and optional ‘sport’ jumper (depending on the weather), mulling over the miles and miles of larger than life picture menus with broken, damp or mouldy corners, advertising the 11 types of plated shit being served to the English all around the world. And it sells remarkably well!
ITV and BBC are doing whatever they can do sanitise this shit based on punditry that can only be described as ‘the half time show’. A wise friend suggested that they should have real half time evaluation on the red button with people who want to suggest why teams are so dull, stifled, how they scored, where mistakes really were made, what the manager is doing wrong etc. The rest of us can watch Hansen and Townsend condoning and puffing, a toy bus touring parts of hell, the England backroom staff rehearsing their plans for half time to be shown at half time, so the public can imagine the scenarios of what might be happening at half time depending on how the first half has progressed. In saying this, one might speculate that the ‘beautiful game’ is an amazing cultural pageant that manages to engage the international community in a way that nothing else can. Or, one could say ‘fuck this ludicrous attempt to make a piece of shit memorable and enjoyable by spraying it gold and offering it to people to bite”.
It all depends on the result and the resulting reaction. Some people say that the English public are prone to over-reacting. Some people suggest that the squad are not up to standard and we have never replaced the ‘World Class’ indispensible players of the past. I say that there are cemeteries, old people’s homes, TV studios and pubs full of ‘indispensible’ footballers who have died in poverty, pimped themselves to the media, aged artificially from management and coaching. Past players have generally found that football gives and takes away in fits of euphoria and decline, glory and atrophy.
The diet needs feeding and the indispensible is soon dispensed with and replaced with a younger, over sponsored hype.
Here’s Gabby or Gabriel with the full story…
No comments:
Post a Comment