Not Up For The Cup

I was born in 1964. I had gained consciousness of a sort by 1970. Like most boys of that period it was largely through football. At age 6 I plumped for my parochial team and have maintained a relationship with them that exceeds in duration any other I have had in my life. This team were not local to me, did not even come from London where I was born and resided. Somewhere in there was the first step however unarticulated, on my road to self-assertion and independence; I eschewed supporting my father's team. No father and son bonding on the same terraces for us as I prematurely supported Oedipus Disunited.

In the early 70's, there were barely any games televised live from kick off to final whistle. The FA Cup final and the Home Internationals was about the sum of it. Oh and every four years of course, the World Cup brought to us in grainy pictures as befitted countries with inferior technology, as our parochial commentators never tired of telling us. In 1970 it was Mexico, where we learned about the concept of playing in the thinner air at altitude. The exotic nature of such events were butressed by things like the sticker albums. I collected the F.K.S World Cup Soccer Stars 1970 and was confronted with Romania's wonderful large V-necks, Peru's single thick diagonal red stripe that looked like a sash, and researching where El Salvador was. Through such material, we were granted a window into the rest of the world.

Boys are collectors. or at least back then we were. Just look at our obsessive record collections for evidence. (Music, that second ubiquitous developmental stage of the male of the species. See this blog passim for evidence. Now when a boy's ipod or phone memory is full, they just drop some tracks for good to replace them with new proto-ringtones. Sacrilege to our completist mentalities). The act of swapping doubles was a social one. It honed our powers of memory and perception as we recalled that we already had Sabas Ponce of Mexico, but still needed his compatriot Enrique Borja. We learned the value of things, the laws of supply and demand, albeit relative to the ephemera of football stickers. Those that were harder to get which everyone seemed to need for their albums being more highly prized and for which you might be able to extort 20 stickers in return.

In a few days time, the latest World Cup will start. I've never missed watching one - usually every possible televised game, viewed at work, or through flexible working practices. However, I don't think I'll bother much with this one. Even my twin boys' collecting energies are desultory. They (we) are doing the Panini sticker collection. They wanted to do the Panini Trading Card collection, but that's not to be confused with Topp's Match Attax Trading Card Collection, or even Topps' Match Attax England. What's a poor grandmother to do when she goes into WH Smiths and is faced by the gallery of all these sticker/trading card sirens calling out to her? Buy some Hannah Montana stickers and flee the shop sharpish.

My boys know every player who will be at the World Cup through their exposure to PS3 games. They know that Wilson Palacios is Honduras' star player, but they couldn't tell you where Honduras is on the globe; they won't put in the preparation that I did as a boy. There is nothing exotic left about it anymore. Over-familiarity breeds contempt, as I think only dear old closed society North Korea don't have at least one journeyman player plying his trade on Britain's shores. The boys know the kits. Some of their mates probably have a Spanish one or a Brazilian one in anticipation of nailing their allegiances to the likely winner of the tournament. (I myself have a Uruguay shirt from the 1986 when they were the most violent and underhanded team for quite a while, having a player sent off after just one minute of the game against Scotland, but satisfyingly still held the Scots to a goalless draw). Sadly for the younger generations wearing Brazil/Spain shirts, they don't really do irony like my generation. They just do winning.

And therein lies my disillusionment with the sport. Football is uncompetitive, money has seen to that. Yes the best players in the world are widely spread by birth and therefore national team qualification across the globe, but they are so worn out by the demands made on their bodies by the top European teams, few will shine or live up to their potential. Out of 64 scheduled games, I confidently predict only 5 will be worth watching and the Final will not be one of them. The commercial overkill means all the media outlets are already trumpeting this as "64 earth-shattering" games (Talk Sport Radio trailer). Here's my tip for you, don't make a date with New Zealand Versus Slovakia or Greece versus South Korea.

My sons know everything there is to know about football through the fantasy of their PS3 games. They can manage Lionel Messi better than his real life manager Diego Maradona. I don't play Console games. Yet I know everything there is to know even when I no longer care to, through the saturation coverage in every media outlet. I never wanted to know what the players of my parochial team did of a Friday night when they actually should have been tucked up eve of a game. So long as they performed on the pitch I didn't really give a monkeys how these lads' lads chose to lead their lives. Unfortunately that is no longer tenable. becoming multi-millionaires at aged 19 and not knowing what to do with the money while having too much free time on your hands is a recipe for thinking yourself to be untouchable. A lads' lad today involves spit roasting young groupies, a cocaine habit, gambling debts with some serious heavies etc etc. And it's all shoved under our noses on the front pages, the internet, fans forums and the like.

There's no escaping it, as there is also no escaping the game wallpapering every home, pub and restaurant by being on a screen in the corner. Football from somewhere around the world is being televised for your viewing pleasure round the clock. Out of our season, you can still watch the US League, or The Copa Americana. Transworld Sport ensures we keep up with football in Indonesia which is handy. Veterans football. Youth Football. Pro-celebrity football. In fact anything but park football, which would at least deliver some interesting characters unlike the anodyne professionals they pitchfork in front of the cameras with half an eye on their post-playing career as a pundit. (Oh yes, the TV panels, another reason I won't be watching. Oh for the days of Brain Clough baiting Malcolm Allison).

I'm not even going to talk about England's national mania. Let's just sum it up by taking a nanosecond to conceive the design of the cheap plastic bowler hats the Sun will give out for you to wear at the giant screenings. There's nothing quite like the sight of thousands of people shouting at a outsized projection screen to make one despair of your own race. And then going on the rampage when England get knocked out by some refereeing myopia. Also don't forget to predict the precise nature of offense caused by the newspaper column "10 Things you didn't know about Algeria". Still we only tar and feather our players in the Press. We don't murder them when they fail and in doing so spite the huge bets of cocaine barons like they did in Colombia. Only a game? Andres Escobar, scorer of an own goal against the USA in 1994 RIP.

Saturation of the sport has made me fall out of love with it. Commercial, celebrity lifestyle and financially determined outcomes have all eroded my once great and first love. Cheryl Cole's input to team preparations by suing for divorce may be as significant a contribution as any tactical innovation our manager comes up with. Football is now so bloated a fatted calf, it will inevitably go off pop and smear us all in bloody entrails. It ought to come with a Health & Safety warning. Now, anyone got any Italians or Ghanaians from this year's Panini sticker collection? My sons' have got lots of Paraguayans they can offer in return...

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