By Tony Attwood
- Arsenal could run out of players at the start of next season
- How Arsenal can win the league again next season
How to treat the World Cup, that is the dilemma of the media. I mean they can’t run articles like If PSG and Arsenal played in the same league…. but that’s not their sort of style, so we are stuck with World Cup stories. Except that most people have seen the WC on TV, so it is hard to find too much to say.
After all, those people who like to watch the matches will watch the matches, either by being in the USA or by turning on the TV. Every game is being shown in the UK, and I guess in many other countries.
So what are the media to do on the day after the match, when we have all seen the game on the box, and possibly read about the match online and maybe discussed it with our mates?
The Independent newspaper has (at least at the moment I write this) a way to gather interest by having at the top of its online football coverage a picture of a load of fans with their hands on their heads, which I suppose, with nothing else to show, is quite an interesting diverting tactic. You can see it here at least you can, until they take it down.
And they also have the intriguing headline, “Ex-recruiting director for University of Hawaii football files suit claiming discrimination over narcolepsy diagnosis.” Plus a dictionary piece translating phrases such as ‘squeaky bum time,’ a ‘false 9’ executing a ‘nutmeg,’ or a ‘worldie’ hitting the ‘top bin’. But it doesn’t include narcolepsy.
As for when it comes to domestic games, the media occasionally try to find information that some of us may have missed because we were watching another match, or maybe doing whatever it is that people do when they are not encapsulated by football. But with the World Cup, every scrap of information you could ever imagine is presented on TV all the time, so searching for something else can be hard.
As for those of us who support Arsenal, it was a case of what we feared might happen, did happen. An Arsenal player got an injury and had to hobble off the pitch while playing for England. Worse, we were then told he will be ok for the next game, not because he will be ok, but because he will likely be put through the pain again…
Really, Rice should be undergoing intense medical treatment to get himself ready for Arsenal in August, not having a bit of a massage she he can play for England. After all, I don’t think the Premier League will be giving Arsenal extra points for having a player injured in the summer.
It’s all very well for Declan to say he’s ok, and the manager to say, “I hope it’s nothing more,” but really, where are the medics? And what about us fans? If anyone is going to suffer from Rice’s injury, it is those people who pay to go and watch Arsenal. Will England be giving Arsenal season ticket holders a discount next season to compensate? I rather suspect not.
Of course, the media don’t care. “England the entertainers” says the Telegraph, almost sneering at our discomfort as Arsenal supporters. They might as well have put a picture of Rice hobbling off.
And yes of course, he might be ok for the next game, but it is one more example of one of our best players being injured playing an international, and no one from the international community will care about that once the circus is over. Croatia is treated now as a top-ranking team, as part of the excuse for England playing a half-injured player. But Croatia’s recent results, including beating Montenegro by a single goal and the mighty Gibraltar 3-0 were presumably the excuses for England playing an injured player in the first place. If they can beat Gib, they must be good.
There was actually another bit of news in the build-up to yesterday’s games: “Argentina fans ‘shot at’ in drive-by attack before World Cup match” as the headline says in the Telegraph. Now, can you imagine a headline about fans being shot at before a match in England? There would be no inverted commas around “shot at” then. Indeed, one wonders what that punctuation means – either you are shot at or you are not. But still, it is during a World Cup era, so it doesn’t really count as anything serious.
Although the story that did get a bit of pre-match publicity was “England fans thrown out of pub by Dallas police after £30,000 drinking session“. Good to see the media men are paying attention. As they were with the headline that reminded me that Fifa really does see itself as a state with its own laws: “Security enforces Fifa order to prevent hoardings being covered, scuppering English tradition of filling stadiums with St George’s crosses”
Still, it is good to see that the media is paying some attention to the way football is being manipulated for the sake of the money, as the Telegraph has the headline “World Cup’s ludicrous ‘quarters’ are disfiguring football” with the explainer “Enforced drink breaks to cram in more advertising are ruining the drama in latest example of Fifa greed and Americanisation of the game.” I think we have a few problems a bit bigger than that.
A discount in view of World Cup Fatigue , we wish eh?