football crazy

The soccer World Cup in South Africa has begun.
A cursory viewing of the games shows the malaise into which association football has sunk.
International soccer shows a chronic absence of sportsmanship, fair play and creativity.
Players are aggressivised, violent, unskilled and prone to infantile tantrums.
In fact these supposed stars of the sport are nothing more than overpaid prima donnas shouting at each other, pulling jerseys, feigning injuries, and bawling at referees.
And they're not worth the money they're paid.
Of course they're not.
Fifty grand a week can only be paid to someone by a company for whom that person is generating at least fifty grand a week.
But soccer clubs are all losing money.
Hand over fist over ankle hack.
Most soccer clubs exist in a state of perpetual bankruptcy, shored up by idiot banks who have gone bust themselves precisely because of their unwillingness to say no to the likes of Juventus, Man United or Real Madrid.

And the malaise in international soccer goes deeper.

Even the officials charged with stewarding the matches are corrupt.

Referees and match officials have been bought by mafia gambling syndicates.

The whole morality of soccer is debased.

The emperor is naked and there is a grotesque mole on his penis.
Soccer has become a crass negation of positive human values.
What has prevailed within the sport all over the world is a spirit of anodyne fervourless cynicism.
The effect of this on the game has been cataclysmic.
The beautiful game no longer exists.
Soccer is bor-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-ring.
Any player who can play well tends to spend most of his time dodging kicks at his ankles.
The jersey pull from behind is the most skilful and consistent move practiced on the field.
The most entertaining games feature eighty nine minutes of ankle hacking and then if we're lucky one minute during which a random player, wandering on the edge of a melee, flukes a goal.
This is not new.
Look.
The greatest players to emerge in world soccer over the past fifty years were Mr Pele of Brazil, George Best of Northern Ireland and Johann Cruyff of the Netherlands.
These players could entertain.
Unfortunately they spent thirty years of their professional careers having their ankles hacked from under them.
They spent about five minutes each out of the thirty years playing the exciting visual style of football which might have made soccer worth watching had it not been all but stifled by the cult of hack and slash football.
The strategy that prevailed among football managers all over the world is Safety Soccer.
Hack the good guys down.
Then do nothing for ninety minutes.
Then maybe just maybe, snatch a goal.
That's what soccer has become.
The managers compelled their players to play a violent dishonorable cheating fouling game so that any potentially entertaining players were unable to function at all.
The strategy has resulted in the cult of Nil All and One Nil football.
Safety first.
Ten men defending goal.
One man vaguely waiting to snatch a goal if he gets lucky.
Ninety minutes of this debased nothingness.
Ninety minutes of boredom and one goal at best.
That's their business model.
This won't wash.
Soccer is all but dead.
It's been killed by the cynicism I've just described.
It's been killed by Hack And Slash soccer eliminating the capacity of good players to play.
It's been killed by managers advocating the unimaginative uninspired obduracy of Safety First Defend Defend Defend For Ninety Minutes Then Snatch A Goal.
Soccer is nearly gone.
The tragedy is that in every tournament such as the World Cup or the European Cup or the British Premiership, in every tournament I say, you've got thirty teams playing Bore Fest Hack And Slash Safety Soccer, and you still get just one winner.
The other twenty nine teams lose just as surely as if they had actually taken a chance and tried to entertain us.
Here's what to do.
Reduce the teams from eleven to seven a side.
Safety soccer can no longer be played with just seven men on a team.
They'll have to actually play the game if there are fewer players on the field.
Stigmatise the strategy of hacking good players to the ground.
Make it genuinely a shameful thing.
Hold it in contempt.
Stigmatise the jersey pull.
Stigmatise the feigned injury.
Put ten referees over each match instead of one.
It will not be as cost effective for the Mafia to buy referees if there are ten of them on the pitch.
Use video replays to prevent dubious decisions by referees in the pocket of the mafia.
Send off the players who try to reassert the old debased values which have nearly killed the game.
Shoot John Fashanu and Bruce Grobelaar pour encourager les autres.
End the off side rule.
Foster the notion that a soccer match should consist of a spectacular display of soccer skills by soccer teams who are actually trying to score goals against each other while providing inspirational life affirming entertainment to the general public.
About thirty goals a game should be the average.
Let's make this thing worth watching again.
Let's save soccer from itself.
Let's bring back the beautiful game.