Here comes the Uefa Variant (and it’s not a player)

by Jabin Thearm

As entry to and from various countries around the world becomes more and more problematic, and the numbers of infections in the UK rise once more (daily case up 5592 from last week) it is good to know that Uefa are doing their bit by demanding that all their free-loaders and hangers on must be allowed into England with any of this fancy testing, tracking and tracing malarkey.

These are, after all, senior executives of the second biggest football organisation in the known universe, and they don’t do queuing.  Or waiting.  Or paying.  For anything.

In response people have started to call the latest covid variant in the UK the Uefa Variant, and I rather hope this catches on.   Associating international football with the worst disease we’ve seen since the flu pandemic of 1919, seems somehow very appropriate given the way the organisation has been run since it was founded in 1954.   

And this rather interestingly comes at a time when the Athletic pointed out that the award for the best-performing individual on the pitch is not called the award for the best performing individual on the pitch, nor yet the previously quite well know, “M*n *f the *atch”.

Nor even “human of the match”.    No he is now the Star of the Match.

And why is that, and why am I so concerned not to write the old name but am instead reduced to finding where the asterisk is on my keyboard to write M*n *f the *atch?

Well, the Athletic tell us that “Back in 2012, the intellectual property rights to those words went up for auction for a “high six-figure sum”, having been initially trademarked back in 2002.”

So “M*n *f the *atch is actually trademarked, which I believe means that if I found a legitimate reason to write the old phrase I would have to put the ® symbol after it.   But since I don’t know who know owns  M*n *f the *atch I think I will avoid writing in out in full, just in case.

But as the Athletic point out this could be the Thin Wedge of the End (which even with the nouns reversed hasn’t been trademarked yet, but I am not taking any risks.  Trade Marks are pesky things).

So I then wondered about Match of the Day which is not registered as a trademark as far as I know – or at least as far as the article on  Wikipedia® revealed – Wikipedia being the registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

But given that Uefa and the TV companies are now using Star of the Match we can I suppose find that registered as a trademark too, soon.  Indeed I just checked on Trademarkeagle.co.uk for Star of the Match and they told me that “There are potential conflicts which may affect your trademark”.  So maybe that has gone as well, presumably to Uefa (which is a company name and so can’t be trademarked as I understand it).

I know that you can’t trademark words and phrases already in daily use, such as “football” but that doesn’t really help too much.  And anyway I don’t want to stop people using the phrase “Uefa Variant” – quite the reverse.

I find it appalling that Uefa is able to persuade the UK government to allow Uefa dignitaries (I use the word lightly) into England without Covid 19 tests just because Uefa said that if the government did not do so, they’d go and play the final in Hungary.

This is not the way things are done everywhere.  One of my daughters lives in New South Wales in Australia, and has gone with her husband and their children on holiday to the neighbouring state of Queensland.  Having arrived, they’ve found there has been an outbreak of coronavirus in NSW and they are now going to have difficulty in getting back – and that is for travel back to her home within her own country.  You can imagine what the Australians would say to Fifa if they tried to come in with a load of freeloaders!   (Actually what is the collective noun for freeloaders – a load doesn’t sound right.  A bucket?  A swamp?   Or maybe a Fifa of Freeloaders – that sounds better; I’ll stick to that in future.)

Anyway, I’m annoyed, and I really don’t want a Fifa of Freeloaders turning up without being tested, and bringing forth the Uefa Variant, trade marked or not.   Given that I’ve not been able to use my season ticket at Arsenal for around 16 months, I really don’t see why anyone else should be having fun.

Especially freeloading football administrators and their broadcasting coat-tail hangers on with their trademark registrations.   Pesky buggers, the lot of them.

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