The World Cup is underway, and under the spectre of the all seeing eye
World Cup Diaries: Day 1.
World Cup Diaries: Day 1.
Sunday 20th November 2022
QATAR 0
ECUADOR 2 (Enner Valencia 16, 31)
Well Bubba, we’re off. The carnival of the bizarre has commenced in Qatar and it took just two minutes for those soul suckers and bureaucratic basket cases running VAR to spoil everyone’s enjoyment. What larks! As television commentators around the world no doubt echoed the BBC and a hearty celebration for the “first goal of the World Cup”, after three or four minutes of everyone staring at their shoes they decided this goal, this very first goal of the World Cup had just been a trick of the light after all and a trick of the all seeing eye that decided in fact we hadn’t seen the first goal of the World Cup and that great piece of instantaneous, live sporting art and theatre simply had to be deleted. It just never happened.
Ain’t that just swell Bubba?
We can all point to the fact that the goal scorer of the non-goal, the now deleted, never happened, don’t believe the lying eyes that actually saw the ball hit the back of the net in real time goal, Enner Valencia, would score two further goals before the game reached its halfway point, but it’s still criminally against the spirit of the beautiful game to have disallowed his first “goal” and the very epitome of the slow decaying death of football worldwide. After the goal that wasn’t, Valencia, and the team he captained to an easy victory against this year’s host nation, all crowded together in a kind of celebratory prayer circle to toast the sheer joy of scoring the very first goal of an already horrifically tainted and distasteful World Cup. But the all seeing eye in the sky said no after much hanging around, and the killing of a once previously instantaneous and immediate game stone dead continues. Surrounded by their blue and red crayons of doom, VAR suggested a players knee (yes Bubba. His knee!) was offside, and rather than the majesty of the immediate joy of a goal and the spirit of a vibrant game, we instead all hung around waiting for a ghoul in a suit to press a few buttons and be the killjoy of a system that should be buried in the very centre of middle earth and treated as hazardous waste for all eternity.
VAR — The death knell of the beautiful game.
You know Bubba, VAR really mirrors the decadent decay of a dying empire and a societal system hellbent on sapping the fire and energy from the populace. Here, a sporting crowd (which seemed bizarrely and rigidly separated into a strict form of societal and sporting class, and crucially, far more than is normally accepted or expected) are not treated as fans or spectators any more but merely consumers and tourists, expected to cheer on order and look to the big screens and wait patiently whilst they disbelieve their very own lying eyes. No off the cuff fun here, just the organised fun of a despot intent on bureaucratic rules and order and correctness. Football is gloriously immediate, theatre, art and instantaneous sporting delight or dilemma. This ain’t football Bubba. This is puerile, sterile, staid and oh so bloody correct for the vampiric betting companies who will laugh all the way to the Bahamas by the time this ugly sideshow has left town.
I’ve tried Bubba, you know I have. To get the masses to consider the obvious truth at the end of their nose. That VAR is very definitely the death knell of the once beautiful game, sure, and another form of the game, a stop/start melange of mediocrity for a compliant and submissive audience willing to stare at their shoes awkwardly for five minutes whilst they await confirmation of whether or not their eyes are lying to them, will form and take its place. I’ve seen the future and this is its sporting destiny. But the uglier truth is that this horrid system (which should be encased in a mile thick of concrete before being placed into middle earth for all eternity) mirrors that cold, calculated, joyless, organised fun, lack of spontaneity, soul sucking, spirit crushing society being built around the eyes that dare not acknowledge it.
The football? All over within half an hour. Ecuador may squeak out of the group but Qatar were dreadful with a capital D and I can’t see them scoring let alone gaining any points from their matches with either Holland or Senegal, both of which will surely beat the piss out of them in the coming matches. Ecuador had far too much professional nous combined with a zest and energy sadly lacking from a host team who seemed as though they’d only met half an hour before kick off. Dreadful. With a capital D.
The competition will surely kick off in earnest tomorrow with England surely to demolish Iran (though I reserve the right to laugh riotously if they don’t) before the two most intriguing games later in the day. I truly hope Senegal give Holland more than a fright and Sadio Mane opens his goal scoring account in a win for the African nation before our near neighbours Wales take on the “Evil Empire” of the USA. I hope there are upsets all round but with my head ruling my heart, here are my predictions for tomorrow’s game, for posterity:
England 1 Iran 0
Senegal 1 Holland 1
Wales 2 USA 0
So we’re off Bubba! The World Cup is underway and VAR has already made a crunching two footed challenge in midfield and killed the joy of the beautiful game. Alas it is here to stay and won’t be making for the early exit along with the host nation and the thousands of privileged tourists who’d left the stadium long before the game’s finale.
It’s football Bubba, but we need to free ourselves from the shackles of the unnecessary, unwanted and bureaucratic monstrosity that is VAR.
It’s not cricket, sport. Not at all.
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