Finally, the World Cup is here. Do I sound like I’m excited? Of course, I am! What in the world is wrong with that? I’m not a fan of any particular team when it comes to the World Cup. I’ll tell you what I do to make it a little more interesting. I support the underdogs in every match. I mean why I should cheer on a team I now will probably win easily. No action there. But with the underdogs you can forget about their winning and the very spirited fight they put up with the ‘big boys’ is enough to make the match worth watching. If they lose it will not make any news. “So, what else were you expecting?” But if they win that’d be ‘breaking news.’ “I told you that the chess board is fast changing and the big boys of yesterday are no more invincible!”
Professional football should be where you could teach the kids, “Look, that’s what we call great discipline. Remember football is about peace and brotherhood and not about chaos.” But alas, these days we see so much indiscipline on the fields you wonder what really is happening with those rich young guys. Of course they are young! And rich too! What do you mean Ronaldo is knocking on the door to forty! Yes of course he is. That’s what makes him real ‘young!’ you need some class to be still wearing the jersey at that age. Well, I’ve to admit he’s almost a shell of his best days, but the guy still shows flashes of those magic skills of him!
I’ll tell you what makes me uncomfortable watching EPL and other leagues. The breakdown of discipline and the mob-like actions of professional players acting like village toughs. Every time they aren’t happy with the referees’ decision they refuse to accept it without creating some chaotic scenery. The referees are practically mobbed. It’s stupid as stupid can be. The full back almost breaks the legs of the star striker of the other team and when the referee stops play he’s mobbed by eleven players.
Even the VAR shows details of the horrific foul play and they still try to deny it! What is it with this rich guys anyway that makes them think they deserve special treatment and rules are for ‘the masses!’ Off field the actions of team managers and coaching staff are no better. Their players commit fouls which should have made them shrink with shame but they still try to play the ‘card of innocence’ and give the fourth referees some hard time. For all practical purposes professional football should do something about the increasing disciplinary excesses on field and off it.
We had our bad days back here as fans of various EPL teams try to make their statements with fists and knives! There was this hotel which aired weekend EPL games. It was a nice hotel and the crowd was the likes that mind their own businesses and leave others to their businesses. For some reason often times a meeting between the Reds and the Gunners never ended with the fans calling it a day and going to their homes. Skirmishes and group punch-ups were common.
One day the skirmishes turned into all out bottle and chair throwing mayhem and entire glass walls of the hotel were turned into dust. Things sometimes were that bad. People even knifed each other because thousands of miles away some Ronaldo missed a penalty; or some Messy scored a hat trick. Some confrontations have even turned fatal. That wasn’t about football.
So you’re forced to ask is all this really about football or is it about the money! The shocking amount of transfer money being spent on players leaves you wide mouthed. The transfer fees in professional football seem to have reached a stage where you could safely use the term “crazy!” Hundreds of millions for players who sometime turn out to be total disasters! As citizens of this side of the not affluent world you are pardoned to think “How many hospitals would a hundred and forty million pounds made us
Is there anything as overexposure? I mean are we really having too much of football especially the English Premier League! Is there any such thing? Well I’ve come across people who think exactly that! They think the media coverage is too much. Well that too is a little problematic to quantify. But all this talk of players bagging hundreds of thousands a week sometimes seems to affect some young souls.
I’ll tell you a story. There’s this kid who this year is in junior high. He’s also a very good student; most of the time finishing top of his class. The kid is also good at football. That’s where the real story begins. His career goal is to be a professional footballer. More shocking is his reason for such a decision; this is what he said to his parents; “Do you know any job that pays two hundred pounds a week!” I mean he might be good, but he’s good at the village level and has to a long way to go even to join a lower league club, and also he isn’t getting any younger.
Those around him had put wrong ideas into his mind. Now his folks are doing their best to take him across the Atlantic to continue his studies. “Yes I’ll go.” that’s what he says. But once he’d stay for and fly to England. Why? Of course, to be a professional footballer and land his two hundred thousand pounds a week job! This writer, too, tried to talk some sense into him that he should at least first finish his college education and only then he can decide what to do with his life. He didn’t budge.
Coming back to Qatar World Cup we only hope politics won’t spoil it! Signs from some circles indicate that there are groups planning to take their controversial agendas to what should supposedly have been the most peaceful event in a world with unlimited hatred and hostility. The sad part for global sport is that it has already been politicized so much so that innocent sports men and women are suffering for whom they are. Look at the hundreds of Russian sportsmen and women that have been kicked out of global sport. And that country produces some of the best!
The World Cup is about peace and brotherhood; trying to make it anything different would be disservice to the sport and mankind as a whole! They say when in Rome act like Romans.
The bottom line here is, when in Qatar act like Qataris!
The Ethiopian Herald November 13/2022