Give the Octopus the Golden Boot

I watched Uruguay lose 2-3 to Holland at football and it came as a shock to realise that this match was one of the semi-finals of the World Cup.

It seemed such an ordinary game with the standard looking 22 blokes playing a match between 2 random countries and there have been so many of these routine international matches.

Slovakia vs, Chile vs, USA vs, Ivory Coast vs Germany, Italy, England - Greece. No Morocco or Canada, Egypt, Iran or Russia, or Scotland, but they weren’t missed or not widely. Australia vs Serbia. I could miss that easily, and not miss much at all and it happened. I might have watched.

Don’t ask me what the result was but I admit there’s curiosity, and to be honest, a touch of xenophobia. Wow never admitted to that before, it starts with an ‘x’! Really I must have known that but I’ve never put writing the word to the test.

Spain beat Germany with a goal that was described as ‘English’. For a moment I dreamt that England were still in the hunt. Football, though widely touted as universal, isn’t the same football everywhere as I’d thought. So I’m curious, and watching Koreans play football is about as close to either Korea I’ll ever get, and it makes me puff with national xenophobic pride to have an ‘English’ goal in the semi-final even if it was scored by Don Puyol.

What happened to Japan or Brazil, France and Turkey? How did Botswana do? How far did Sweden get?

Well, I don’t care. The World Cup looked like league footie of the standard weekly fare, but not of the best. Matches of mix-up, effort and disarray. The sort of late night footie for geeks and that last bottle of beer. Brothers played against each other in rainbow sides of players who could be Brazilian or Algerian playing for Germany or France.

This one plays for Blackpool or Man City but not for England, another for Real or Inter, but not for Spain or Italy. A Catalan playing for Spain scored an ‘English’ goal.

I have my team, I have my country and one team has to win and it isn’t going to be my team.

Hell I don’t care, I’m not mad for football, but the World Cup is . . . well, an event. All that spend of hope and money and I feel sorry for South Africa. One football stadium looks just like another. One match to go and does it matter where it is for it’s on TV. What time?

Oh yes, it’s in South Africa, umm . . . not planning to go . . . where so what?

I’ve been intending to blog about the World Cup, but although it has been going on forever, it moves on fast and soon will be all done.

Now, there is a blessed brief gap for reflection before the Culmination on Sunday and I’d better chop-chop, Sunday is short notice in my blogging timescale.

How I wish I’d put money on the psychic crustacean Cephalopod Mollusc (thanx DZ) and it really is TOO LATE NOW.