Football is a “unifying force whose virtues can make an important contribution to society”. Who says so? FIFA, the organisation that controls world football. It adds that it has a “huge responsibility to reach out and touch the world, using football as a symbol of hope and integration”.
Well, it should cut out having World Cups, then. These four-yearly tribal gatherings unify nations about as effectively as a woman bishop in a synod. They breed hostilities, reinforce prejudices, demonise countries and revive bad memories. I was reminded of this by my Dutch chum Ed a week before the World Cup Final where, at that stage, it appeared the Netherlands could face Germany. The old sore of his dad’s bike re-emerged from the depths of family myth and memory.
“If we both get to the final and we beat them”, he said. “I’m prepared to forgive them for the war…”
“A generous, if belated, concession…”
I began.
“… but not for my dad’s bike”.
It seems that when the Germans occupied Holland, they not only subdued the populace, transported the Jews and starved the north – they also stole their bicycles. This latter crime is proving the hardest to forgive. It is approaching inhumanity to deprive a Dutchman of his bike. The invaders saw stealing bicycles as profitable for two reasons. The machines could be melted down to make bullets that could be used to shoot dissident locals in the sand dunes, and the occupied Dutch were rendered motionless. Without bicycles, the Netherlands became a land of statues, akin to the Antony Gormley sculptures at Crosby Beach. Little did the Germans know the bitter seeds they had sown. Ed’s family know every detail of his dad’s missing bike’s manufacturer, model number, overall mechanical condition and date and time of abduction.
For the British person to understand the scale of the affront, we would have to imagine an invader who hacked the legs off the populace.
However, that was almost 70 years ago and took place a good decade before Ed was born. The whole episode has been dormant for years. But the World Cup revived the memories with crystal clarity, bursting up again as fresh as a Uruguayan rice field.
Which brings me neatly, I fancy, to the question of the Uruguayans. Before the competition began in South Africa, no one had a word to say against Uruguay. It was the smallest country in South America, bar Surinam, grew organic vegetables and had the least corrupt government around. What’s not to like? Yet a short period of footballing global unification transformed it into a nation of thuggish cheats, a people devoted to handling footballs on goal lines and cynically depriving an African nation of a first-ever World Cup semi-final.
Thanks to football, Uruguayans have become social pariahs in a league with their Argentinian neighbours. The sole image of Argentinians during the competition was Diego Maradona’s hand helping the ball over Peter Shilton into the England net. We were left with the impression that they all wander the pampas practising slyly punching footballs. It was as if José de San Martín, Jorge Luis Borges or Bernardo Houssay had never drawn breath.
And what about the French? How come FIFA’s French? Who invented the game? Us, I think. The Brits. So why should the sport be governed by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association? What have they got to do with it apart from pretending to believe their Thierry Henry when he said he accidentally handled the ball in the Irish qualifying match? So was it an accident the first time he did it, or the second?
But this World Cup business doesn’t only destroy relations between countries. It lowers each nation’s self-esteem and depresses its populace. It’s an intensely negative experience simply on the basis that 205 teams enter the qualifying rounds and only one wins. So there were always going to be 204 losers. How good it that for national morale?
I couldn’t help wondering, either, exactly how much of an “important contribution to society” is made by the World Cup sponsors. Companies such as Coca Cola, McDonalds and Budweiser, for example. Unless you like your sportsmen with rotting teeth, weight problems and alcohol dependency, that is. My favourite sponsor – beacons of the international sporting ideal – was Pukka Pies. Honest. They were.
Committed to “helping sports athletes in a fun and imaginative manner” (pie eating), they officially sponsor the Pukka Pies England Band. This features celebrity trombonist Bernie Clifton who occasionally performs with a yellow ostrich. Neither is women’s sport overlooked by the pie people, who also sponsor Leicester Ladies hockey club.
And what about those supersized men waddling round with “Just Do It” blazoned on their chests? Just swallow a few Buds, down a burger or two, gurgle a Coke and scoff a brace of pies and the message changes to “Just Had A Heart Attack”.
The only positive message concerned cocaine use. We all knew it could lead to respiratory failure, strokes, seizures, convulsions, nausea, fever, muscle spasms and coma. But Maradona has now proved it also makes you a tactical football moron. So next time we’ll know to check Fabio Capello’s (Italian) nostrils. Unifying? I think not.
