World Cup 2010: A few Things that should be banned
With just about a week left for the big day, let’s run down a few things that should be banned from this years’ World Cup in South Africa. How about we start with the disrespectful concept of corporate seating? If you have ever been to a pre or post match corporate dinner party, you would know that a large percentage of corporate guests at the World Cup are not exactly ‘football fans’ per say. They stuff themselves on food and champagne, talk about business and yachts, and shamefully take their seats 10 minutes after the kick-off of the match or during the half time break. They then spend most of the game reading The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Economist. It’s a disgrace to the game and all sport lovers alike.
Then we’ve got those rowdy English fans. The Premier League successfully managed to overcome many of the fan-related problems that blighted English football in the 1970s and 80’s, but when the ‘Three Lions’ supporters travel abroad, locals still fear the worst. Fans don’t expect to get a good night’s sleep if they are staying in the same neighbourhood as a group of young English football fans. And when these rowdy fans step into a bar, that bar owner and the millions he would make would immediately be lost on repairing the broken glasses and chairs. Of course, not all English fans are this bad, most of them are excellent. But sadly though, that tiny minority ruins the fun for the larger civilized majority.
A certain instrument known as a Vuvuzela must surely be banned. It is understandable that it is only right that the local culture is respected, and South Africans will argue that they deserve to do what they want in their own country. But, the sound produced by a Vuvuzela can cause more headaches than listening to George Bush sing in the shower. The Kuduzela was introduced as a replacement for the noisy vuvuzela but all it achieves in doing is poking and deafening the person on the right hand side.
The term used across the globe to refer to super star soccer players wives is ‘wags’. Fine, they are usually very good looking women, but why they show up at the matches and create their drama, is very hard for fans to understand. Yes, we get it. Ninety-nine per cent of footballers’ wives are pouting, coat-hanging, money-grabbing, talentless, bright-light seeking superficial wannabes, but, for just four weeks after every four years, they should just stay at home and count the millions of shoes that they own. When the World Cup is on, no one except maybe some people in the media, care about you getting drunk, dancing on tables, having affairs with team-mates, and strolling down the street like a former commoner-got-lucky carrying a shopping bag paid for by your rich husband.
One other thing that needs to be changed is the lack of technical investigation into the decisions made my referees. We are not in the 18th century and technical advancement does allow us to manoeuvre around human error. Why the concept of third umpires is not adopted in football refereeing is fairly hard to understand. Italy had five good goals disallowed in three games and as a result were eliminated by an Ecuadorian referee. He was later suspended for playing 13 extra minutes of injury time. A Serbian received five yellows until he was finally given the red card. Germany’s goalkeeper did a flying kick onto a centre back from France, knocking him unconscious, but the offence went unpunished. Argentina’s captain was sent off for “violence of the tongue”, even though the German referee speaks no Spanish. Despite all these officiating disasters, Sepp Blatter declares that “the refereeing has been of the highest order, and the occasional human error will always occur.”
And last but certainly not least, one thing fans really hate is synthetic footballs. If you want to destroy football, and eliminate skill and creativity from the game in favour of a 100mph playground kick-and-rush, what do you do? You replace leather footballs with synthetic ones, and every World Cup makes the balls lighter and more plastic.
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