I see the WC is about to start. I must say, it doesn’t really appeal….

 

 

• Were Arsenal favoured by officials, of is it just the usual anti-Arsenal agenda we’ve become used to?
• Arsenal make radical changes to their medical team as problems at the WC continue.

By Tony Attwood

I really don’t get much out of international football, and seem to spend any matches I do catch worrying if an Arsenal player is not only going to get injured but might also be told to carry on playing as the international manager knows that he has no concern for the well-being of the player once his matches are over and the player goes back home.

And although that worry remains as valid as ever, I am not sure I have seen a headline before an international series that reads “One day to kick-off and Azteca Stadium is not ready for World Cup opener.  Political unrest and protests provide an unwanted backdrop to the opening match between tournament co-hosts Mexico and South Africa.”

I might say, “Never mind I am sure they know what they are doing,” but I don’t think they do.  In fact, I don’t think I have ever witnessed (although it is just on TV) chaos and dysfunctionality as ludicrous as this.

But there was a bit of a heart-warming story in the Telegraph with another headline that read “Kieran McKenna resigns as Ipswich Town manager”   It continued “Northern Irishman stands down after five successful years at the club, including three promotions, to spend more time with his family.”

Football of course, is important to those of us who follow its machinations daily, but even so, there are limits.  At least that is how it seems to me.   I can write my various ramblings each day because I am old enough to have grandchildren, and they are the responsibility of my own children, thus leaving me time to think about, watch and write about football.  It’s a good way to spend the latter part of one’s life but I would congratulate McKenna on knowing where real responsibility lies.   

Ipswich Town won promotion at the end of last season by coming second in the Championship, just one point above Millwall, so this would have been the manager’s big moment.  To put family before that is something else, and I can only hope his family really appreciate all that he has done at this moment.

Of course, we should also note another headline in the same paper that reads, “This World Cup is about greed and rancid politics – but I will still love it”.  And that is the problem.   The writer acknowledges the “Stench of hypocrisy from game’s custodians” but suggests it “will be forgotten once the bloated tournament finally reaches knockout rounds”.

That of course, is what Fifa survives on.   TV invests a fortune in covering the games and so limits the level of realism in its coverage in order to try to hold its audience.    But the World Cup is bloated and reeking of hypocrisy (if that is possible), and really, I don’t want anything to do with it.   Except… yes I know I might end up watching a few of the games.

Although the Telegraph also had one other headline that I couldn’t help but take a look at.  This one read, “Lone-wolf gunmen pose biggest risk to World Cup, says former FBI chief”.   It goes on to say, “Solo long-range shooters ‘hardest to stop’ for the 400-plus agencies undertaking the biggest security operation in sporting history.”   I am rather glad I am sitting in the tranquillity of my own home on the other side of the ocean.

But it is the Guardian that hits the nail right on the head and then hammers it home, and I would for once like to go beyond quoting just a few words…   The full article is here if you wish to read it all…

“Even the Nazis tried to tone things down a bit. Before the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, acutely conscious of how it might be perceived by foreign visitors, the Third Reich tried to soften some of its harder, more intolerant edges. Antisemitic signs and images were removed from shops and other public places. Der Stürmer was removed from newspaper kiosks. Paragraph 175, the country’s strict anti‑homosexuality law, was temporarily suspended.”

In America, they do things differently.   One referee was turned away at the border for being a terrorist.  The vice-captain of Iraq was detained for seven hours when he tried to come in.

As the Guardian pointed out, the United States is ” a country that actively wants you to see the darkness in its heart, the inhumanity at its core.”

As for Fifa, well I’ve been saying what I think of Fifa for years.   But here’s one more bit just as we get going.  Fifa said “everyone will be welcome”   In contrast to that, it threatened (as the Guardian reminds us) “to strip the Brazilian city of Curitiba of hosting rights after construction of its stadium fell behind schedule.”

And then again in 2018 it “successfully persuaded Russia to relax its stringent immigration laws to allow fans visa-free entry, and even intervened to overturn a ban on the German investigative journalist Hajo Seppelt.”

Ah, well, one rule for Russia, one rule for the USA.   “Freedom of the press is very important to Fifa,” Fifa has said.  But not this time.

But yes I will watch some of it.   But really, not that much.