A beautiful game? Really?
June 2010 |
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The British press have, as always, been hyping the nation up by claiming that we have the best team in the known universe and England can do it and this is going to be our year and blah blah yawn. When we inevitably get knocked out the backlash will start. Heads will roll, they will demand Fabio Capello's loins on a silver platter and Wayne Rooney will be sent back to the Zoo.
Let's face it, footballers are just over-hyped and over-paid pretty boys. They all have the IQ of a blade of grass and the social grace of a mentally retarded chicken. England footballers spend far too much time preening themselves in front of a mirrors, having affairs and generally acting like idiots in an attempt to make themselves headline news rather than focussing on the job they're paid an obscene amount to do.
Now I've never really liked football. I did try getting into it when I was a kid but I could never see the point. It just seemed like such a waste of time and energy. This was made even worse by the fact that the other children at Junior School used to take their lunchtime games in the playground so seriously. Fights would break out if little Johnny No-mates missed a free kick or Billy Hermit couldn't grasp the concept of the off-side rule. It was probably one of my earliest signs of the lack of intelligence needed to be a football fan.
I once played a 5-a-side game for sports day at Junior School and, my god, some of the parents! You would have thought it was the world cup at stake by the way some of them were shouting and screaming. I swear one kid's dad nearly gave himself a haemorrhage. His face was so purple he looked like a giant Oompa Loompa with a heart condition!
My dislike for football became even worse at Senior School. We used to play football in PE and, on the rare occasions the ball came into my possession, I would hear this chorus of "over here", "down the line", "cross it" and various other incoherent requests from my so called team mates. Now first of all I could never quite figure out which line they were talking about and I generally never carried a permanent marker on my person so couldn't put a cross on the ball. In fact usually I was standing right in front of the goal mouth and used to just ask whether or not it might be more beneficial if I put it in the back of the net.
I took PE as one of my GCSE subjects and had no choice but to take football. Firstly, I hate the fact that football is played in the middle of winter so why, in the name of Saddam’s soiled underpants, is the attire shorts and t-shirt? I guess footballers are simply lacking the intelligence to register the fact that frost bite is eating away at their manhood - or perhaps they just don't have a manhood to eat away at.
Anyway, I digress. It wouldn't have been as bad if I was actually allowed to move but, despite my obvious athletic ability, I was always put in defence while the Neanderthal of a PE teacher focused on the kids who already knew the rules.
Now I mentioned a few months ago that I went to a rubbish school and this was another example of that. There were some good players at our school – in fact one of them plays in the Premiership now - but the teacher never paid any attention to the rest of the class. So much so that once I actually walked off the pitch mid lesson, got changed, walked back across the school field, walked into town, spent an hour wandering around the village and came back just in time for lunch. The teacher never even noticed I had left. Tremendous powers of observation there sir!
The other thing about football players is they are such pussies. I played rugby for a short time as a kid and violence was everywhere. Because I was a fast runner I used to be put on the wing. Basically someone would throw me the ball from the scrum and I would run down the pitch and score before anyone even got close to me. Once, a silly boy from the opposing team made the mistake of trying to tackle me. He came running in on my side and made a bee-line for the ball so I elbowed him in the face. He came up to me in the changing rooms afterwards with blood still pouring from his nose and congratulated me on a well executed hit. Compare that to football players who fall over crying the moment someone accidentally touches their perm.
Now I thought I would be able to escape the first-hand ridiculousness of football when I left school but sadly that hasn't been the case. In various sporting and business roles, I’ve had the misfortune of dealing with people in the football industry. I've had ties with a number of clubs and players and not a single person I've dealt with has anything that could be even remotely described as intelligence or lateral thought.
Firstly every player I've met is mind-numbingly stupid and you can almost see the tumbleweed blowing through their head when you speak to them. They all have the vocabulary of a two year old and don’t seem to be able to grasp even the simplest concepts. Added to that is the fact that I can never understand a word that comes out of their mouths because they still use Caveman speak and say "you know" and "like" every other word.
I once had to spend a day with a manager of a club and it didn't take long before I wanted to punch him in the face. The first time we met, he spent the entire day calling me Andy and got somewhat confused when he asked what football team I support and I told him I didn't. He then got rather offended when I told him I preferred motor racing because that is a sport where you need two balls. Like all football managers, he's also one of these idiots who thinks people will do things better and more efficiently if he shouts at them, which I know I should put down to his unfortunate inability to express himself other than monosyllabically but he tried that tactic on me once.
It’s amazing how brave some people become when there is a phone line separating them from the other person. Had he spoken to me like that face to face, I would have floored him like a piece of cheap Ikea decking in the sure and certain knowledge that I wouldn’t be given a red card by a camp referee.
As Google has yet to invent a means of digitally punching people, I instead had to resort to patronising sarcasm and gently point out that the longer he waffled on at me, the longer things would take to get sorted because his ranting was preventing me from doing my job. I also suggested to him that perhaps he would prefer it if I stopped dealing with him altogether because I’m sure that would go down like a poo flavoured sandwich with sponsors, investors and fans. Once the hamster wheel had turned a few times in his head, he came around to my point of view.
So this month's rant is over. I hate football, I hate football players even more, I want to punch a football club manager in the face but I wish the England team the best of luck in the World Cup this year.
