By Tony Attwood
I must say that although I don’t find the World Cup the slightest bit interesting, as I get my footballing pleasures from yer actual league football, I do quite enjoy the in-out-in-out-shakeitallabout approach of moving gaves thither and yon without really having thought about such matters before the tourney actually began. It it just the deaths that upset me.
But I suppose that is part of the fun of the event for the media journos. They see a bunch of old men putting on a multi-billion dollar event without first thinking about the weather. Or the inevitable deaths Who could have imagined that?
As the headline quote above from the Telegraph says, we are treated like plankton – or at least I would be if I bothered to watch any of this international stuff, but when I have done, it has only been out of fear that an Arsenal player would a) get injured and then b) be made to play on, thus making the injury worse.
Mind you, there was one other headline that caught my attention recently, and that was that “Manchester City have taken over the deal for Leicester City wunderkind Jeremy Monga, agreeing a £10m fee under the noses of his primary suitors Arsenal…” And it struck me that so fixated are the ManCs on Arsenal these days that if Arsenal say they are looking at signing Danny Drinkwater, or Rod Fani, or maybe the Dutchman Jizz Horncamp, then everyone would repeat it, true or not. But I suppose that is what a prolonged period of non-football does for one.
Especially when the news is circulating that England v Mexico tickets are currently changing hands for over £25,000 each. I wonder if anyone told the people paying that price that they can watch it on TV! Mind you, the inability of football authorities, especially international authorities, who have incredibly little to do for most of the year, to organise a fry-up in a chip shop is well known.
Tragically, the gross incompetence of these football authorities in organising a go-kart race without people being hurt means that we are not surprised when we hear three people died in Mexico City during the post-match celebrations after the country beat Ecuador. It really doesn’t have to be like this, and it would not be if only those charged with the job of running football took the games a tenth as seriously as those of us who choose to watch them do.
In this case, the tragedy followed Mexico beating Ecuador 2-0 in the Round of 32. Fifa of course, just say it has nothing to do with them, even though they were the people who chose to give Mexico the right to run the WC.
Here’s another newspaper quote. “In another incident tied to recent celebrations, a man who drove into a crowd of fans in Cabo San Lucas following Mexico’s earlier win later died from injuries sustained after being beaten by bystanders, local officials said.” Maybe officials should remember that when reporting on English matches.
The Guardian’s headline, “Mexico hoping football emerges from the chaos surrounding World Cup,” doesn’t quite capture the horror of what happens at the World Cup after World Cup. And yet not only does the WC happen every four years, the media constantly tells us to look forward to it, before telling us that the resultant deaths are not football’s fault. Yes, they are. If we didn’t have the World Cup, these people would still be alive.
Abnd that is not to argue that no activities that led to danger and death should be allowed. Rather it is to point out that we have had WC after WC and each one seems to be related to deaths. That is the problem: no one organising the event ever learns how to organise an event. So here is a rule for the future. Don’t organise a World Cup if your last World Cup resulted in deaths.
Images shared on social media at the last incident showed paramedics treating unconscious fans on the ground as the areas got more and more congested because the local authorities couldn’t be arsed to sort out proper crowd control for the post-match exodus.
Of course, the local mayor expressed condolences to the victims’ families. There were also calls for people to “celebrate with caution and responsibility” just as there were last time, and the time before, and the time before… If local and national authorities grant licences for big matches, they have the responsibility for deaths that occur thereafter.
And as ever, violence begets violence, as it is reported that “armed attackers killed at least two people and injured several others during a live broadcast of the same match, according to local officials. Authorities said the attack occurred at a neighbourhood football pitch crowded with families.”
There were more and more incidents, including the inevitable car drivers diving into a crowd of fans. The man was dragged from his car, beaten up and subsequently died. There is no evidence that the crash was intentional. Fifa has not accepted any responsibility, although they organised and licensed the event at that stadium. Maybe just once they should accept responsibility for something.
