I have to report that following my blog on 14th June,World Cup Fever™ has still not quite gripped me. It could be that I am slightly disconnected from THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH™ because I am away at the moment, in a place where life goes on unhindered by just about anything else. I have access to any games I want to see both in my accommodation and the odd bar but, apart from when England are playing, the relentless TV coverage of games between countries who don’t have a hope in hell of winning the tournament so far leaves me cold. In this instance, as I am fond of saying, less is more.
I am not one of the internet attention-seekers who claim total apathy about the World Cup. God knows I have seen enough of them. If you really don’t like football at all, it is unlikely that FIFA’s bloated World Cup, and its overblown media coverage, is going to change your mind. But if you do like football and you tell me you couldn’t care less, not even a tiny bit, I’ll find it hard to believe you.
I think I am getting there, albeit at the pace of a geriatric snail. Having watched the first half of Scotland’s defeat to Morocco – I went to bed at half-time in order to spend more time with Harry Pearson’s book Slipless in Settle (very funny, by the way) – I have taken my interest a step further by ploughing through the calculations of who we might play in the round of 32. I would not have done that had I been totally apathetic. As things stand, we could end up playing Portugal, led by the almost completely immobile Cristiano Ronaldo, and facing down the barrel of an early exit. Meanwhile, Scotland could be lining up against Germany. We could be down to no home countries before the round of 16. Apathy would be a complete understatement for how I might feel after losing to Portugal.
But looking at all possibilities, as I am doing, means there is something going on, something that will drag me away from an apathetic World Cup state of mind to something closer to obsession. The group stages to this tournament are simply excessive, in my view demeaning the tournament by rewarding, at least in the early stages, mediocrity.
Given the debate about the World Cup qualifying stages and now the groups always include a selection of no-hopers, which FIFA seem set to amend by putting the minnows – you know, your San Marinos, Andorras and of course Wales – into pre-qualifying sections so the actual qualifying games are more competitive and contested by countries that actually have a chance of making the final stages, it seems odd that we now have more countries, more groups and more games that don’t matter. At a guess, could it all be about the money, money, money? I think so.
It is with that in mind that I will not be arising from my slumber to watch tomorrow’s 1.00am kick off between Ecuador and Curaçao or the 5.00am clash between Tunisia and Japan. The greatest tournament in the world should feature underdogs – after all, we, England, have been occupying that role pretty well since 1966 – but not in tomorrow morning’s case four of them.
In my view, the World Cup should not be in America again, especially not Trump’s America, the ticket prices are a disgrace, the TV coverage in the UK is being marred by some of the worst commentators, co-commentators and pundits I have ever had the misfortune to listen to and it’s less to do with actual football lovers of the world and everything about corporate piggery. But that said, I am not going to pretend that I am not, at least a little bit, interested and by the end of next week I could find myself, as I have been many times in the past, utterly obsessed, before England’s campaign fizzles out long before we dream it might.
No matter what the authorities try to do, it is still the World Cup and like it or not it’s the biggest sporting event on the planet. At some point, there will be a classic game, possibly involving England. If you’re English and you like football, why would you not want to be watching that?
