- The courts are starting to get involved in issues of abuse of youngsters in sport
- Arsenal’s opening fixtures look tough, but maybe that’s not the case…
By Tony Attwood
Association Football, or indeed “football” as we like to call it, is not a game that is native to the United States. It is there, and of course they are fully entitled to play it, but the involvement of the United States does come with a spot of luggage, not least because administrators in that country are used to running the show and doing things their way with the rest of the world tagging along.
Now normally football overseas is either ignored by the UK media or accompanied by a commentary suggesting that being foreign, foreigners don’t really understand the game. England. when competing should have won, and would have won had it not been for the foreigners.
But this time we can see that the forthcoming WC is going to be doubleplus ungood as Orwell would have said, because the matches currently being played in the stadia to be used for next summer’s world cup finals, are played at the time of day we expect those matches to be played. And as the Telegraph points out, before 11am it is “32C in the shade.” And if you ain’t tried temperatures like that, my advice is, don’t.
But just in case you haven’t logged it yet, the stadia in NY are the ones ready for the World Cup Finals in 2026. Fifa of course knew exactly what the temperatures will be and how fans will suffer and can guess how many will be taken ill. But hey – there is money to be had, so, who cares about fans?
Quite why fans and clubs have not yet risen up against Fifa and said that anything Fifa is involved in, we want no part of, is beyond me. But when the most polluting companies in the world such as Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Gazprom, and Royal Dutch Shell each make it clear they want to be sponsors, Fifa is not known to back away. So I guess that led by the media we are all just resigned to the fact that corruption is total; the environment is nothing.
And yes I admit it, I do own a car and I use to drive to the shops and to go the recreational activities I enjoy in my dotage not least as there us no nighttime public transport from the village I live in – although at least for the last 15 years of my working life I didn’t drive to and from work so I did make an effort.
But now in New York, according to the reports, we see air conditioning units “pumping chill air out into the open” – and from what I can understand this is how they are trying to run the tournaments: open-air air-conditioning.
Slowly little bits of the media are awakening to the fact that the World Cup final is going to be played on July 19, the absolute height of the American summer, at the New Jersey MetLife Stadium. Temperatures at that time are typically around 30 degrees centigrade. That’s the average. It can get hotter.
And this isn’t me just finding some other way to attack Fifa. In the current CWC series of nonsense in America, the recent game between Palmeiras and Al Ahly was stopped because of the severe heat warning, and the risk of a tornado. Anthony Taylor, the referee, of whom it has been said, should have abandoned the match. He didn’t, even though this part of the country is subject to tornados. This time they were lucky; it was a small tornado and after the restart it restarted he added on six minutes of added time at the end. It should have been around 40 minutes, but the players had stopped trying and were just passing the ball to each other.
Of course it only half mattered because the stadium was under half full, partly it seems because of how much New York taxi drivers charge. Although, you should not bank on being able to get a taxi back into the city – or indeed get your own car out of the car park until maybe three hours after the final whistle.
Actually in the recent Palmeiras v Al-Ahly club world cup game, lots of fans left at the first warning of a passing tornado (or was it a volcano, I’m not quite sure now) and didn’t return – probably realising that although the game was announced to be restarting in ten minutes it didn’t, as the TV companies are the ones who say what happens when and they had advertisers to consider.
So throw in some drinks breaks, the weather and pretty much anything else you fancy, and you get the picture. They are playing football in the height of summer in a stadium without shade while a bottle of beer is £10 plus whatever local tax they make up. The transport is poor, prices horrific, the heat overwhelming, and the football mediocre. Well done fifa.
