What else is on beside the daily jamboree in the WC?

by Tony Attwood

There are articles on some of the web sites of the English national media that have been on their sites for weeks.  They are kept there to make it look as if there really is some new news around what Barney Ronay in the Guardian calls “the ceaseless clamour around an ever-more engorged global beano.”   

In fact his article, in which he takes lines from a few Bob Dylan songs and applies them to his experience as a journalist covering the world cup, is very amusing.  It’s called “Tangled up in queues: Fifa’s World Cup media scrum spotlights obsession” – and it is worth a read if you enjoy that sort of writing.  And more so if you know your Bob Dylan.  (Untold also runs a blog “Untold Dylan” which if you ever type the name of a Dylan song into Google may well turn up on the first page of results – sometimes even at the top.).

And yes it is also amusing to read that journalists have discomfort and difficulties too, and it is not all getting drunk and then making up a report that fits with the media’s preferred interpretation of events.

Of course much of the time the English media (I can’t say the UK media because I rather suspect the media in Scotland is now focused on “Rangers 6 Bury 0” and the news that “over 40,000” turned up to watch the friendly ahead of the Europa League extra preliminary first round match that Rangers are playing Skhupi on Thursday 12th.  Of July) the view is that we are a) idiots and b) need help in turning on the TV.  Hence the Telegraph’s banner headline “How to watch England vs Sweden live in the World Cup today.”

And that is the level that it is at.  There is also an article on the same web site, “What is VAR, what are the rules, and how is it being used at World Cup 2018 in Russia?” and really, if you don’t know what VAR is well why bother with it now?  I mean, you’ve missed most of it, and anyway we don’t have it in the PL next season because it is a funny foreign thing and we have proper referees in the PL.

Back in the Guardian they get down to more serious topics with “Is it fair for pubs to charge 50p more for a pint during England matches?”   As far as I know of course it isn’t fair, it’s capitalism.   Capitalism is about the rich getting richer and the poor get poorer.  I thought the Guardian might know that.

And there is serious news around, but it is buried under a pile of gibberish.   George Ormond, paedophile football coach was jailed for 20 years, but who needs to know, when there is a world cup on?

So we are told that anyone who takes a penalty is one of the great brave heroes of our time and should be uplifted into national honour.  I mean, forget the lifeboatmen who work Britain’s shores and the scandal of the fact that we have lifeboats only because of charitable donations to the RNLI (and in a maritime nation too), no the real heroes are the penalty takers.  Glad we have that one sorted.

But actually it isn’t all glory and wonder because “There is a cloud hanging over this World Cup and Fifa must not ignore it,” according to Stuart James also in the Guardian, who says that the cloud is “Play-acting”.

This, we are told “has become a cancer in the game, not just a stain on it,” and “Fifa needs to find a cure”.   A cure for cancer.  Yes, there is just time for that after the adverts and before our “team of experts” get going.  Actually mate if there is a cancer in English it is paedophila, but that is now off the agenda.  Apparently people don’t like to know about it.

But the writer persists, “Either football’s world body confronts it head on, by introducing tougher penalties and urging referees to adopt a zero tolerance approach, or we hand over control to the players and resign ourselves to the fact that shithousery is now “part and parcel of the game”. What a depressing thought.

And what is “shithousery”?  I guess I missed that one.