The Beautiful (?) Game

Contrary to everyone’s stereotypical image of Brits, I actually do not like football.

I’ll give you all a few moments to recover from the shock. There. OK now? Good..

Call me an old-fashioned snob if you like, but I have always considered football to be a rather rough game played by over-paid primadonnas with a massively over-inflated image of their own importance in the world. Football, in my humble opinion, is not something that should be followed by intellectuals like me. Probably why I am here in Malaysia, not home in the UK where football and evidence of its worship are stuffed down your throat all the time.

I think my ambivalence toward Britain’s Second National Religion goes back to my childhood when, being the only big boy in the class, I was usually put in goal during school football lessons. Now imagine the lack of logic in this management choice. You put the biggest boy in the class in goal. Now why would you do that? Because the ball won’t go past his body? Well think again, because I am pretty certain that I let in more goals than, well, the current England goalie!

Thing is, I couldn’t dive. You need to be able to dive, as well as having twenty foot long arms, to be a successful goalkeeper. And, seeing as I had none of those attributes, my goalkeeping days were short and bitter and humiliating.

So, gentle readers, my love of football nowadays only runs to the World Cup. And that’s only if England or Italy are in it. I don’t support any club in the English Premier League (which everyone in Malaysia calls EPL) and couldn’t give a flying fig whether Arsenal or ManU or Chelsea are top of the table because to me they are all the same, with different coloured shirts.

Anyway, I happened to be surfing the web on the phone the other day when I stumbled upon quite a shocking story on the BBC website. It concerned the sudden sacking of the England Manager (not Coach please, this is England!) Steve McLaren because, it seems, England failed to qualify for the Euro 2008 tournament.

Now, even though I hate football, it doesn’t mean I can’t discuss it like any other topic – after all, I am a responsible blogger who respects his audience! So, I started thinking about why on Earth England think they have an automatic right to qualify for the European Cup when the British government can’t even make up its mind whether or not to join the EURO currency. Surely, if their players aren’t up to the mark – which seems to be the case – then they deserve to be left out of the draw. Work harder – get it right next time!

Then, I thought of how utterly stupid it was to fire the manager who after all had only been in the job for 18 months. Wouldn’t it be better to give him a chance to improve his own management techniques, learn from his mistakes and motivate his players to stop thinking about how much money they are making and how many yachts they are going to buy next week or how many models they are going to sleep with, and actually PLAY BETTER FOOTBALL!!

But that’s not how the world goes these days is it? How naive and stupid of me?