Football Crazy!

It's football season again. Actually, to be more accurate it's World Cup football time, and that happens only once every four years, but for me that's more than enough. Am I the only person in the planet who is not enthralled by all the activity on and off the field of play, by the top world's football teams?


It is salt in the wound when Scotland didn't even qualify. They didn't ever look close to getting there. Maybe that would have given me a little more incentive to check now and again, how they were doing. I doubt if I would have watched a full match anyway, but I might have had a little more than just a passing interest.


I have been thinking what it is that makes the world so interested and passionate about football, and especially the pinnacle of the World Cup. I have to give it to the teams for their passion, hard work, intense training, teamwork, rivalry, competitiveness, national pride, and all of these things spill over into the supporters.


So what's the other side of this competition? I watched a friendly spat between England and another team, where Wayne Rooney was cautioned for swearing and foul language. That's probably just the tip of a great big iceberg. What will happen when the World Cup starts for real? Now for the down side to balance all those good things said earlier. These 'role models' (and I am especially thinking of our England team) will be seen and heard to be (the media are everywhere), bad tempered, foul mouthed, non-sportsmanlike on and off the pitch (how many Scots want anyone at all to beat England?), petty, argumentative with the ref, foul, dive all over the pitch, pull, punch, kick and drag their opponents if they think they are not being seen, and that's not to mention the tears and tantrums if they get beaten. The closer they get to the final, the worse all of these things will get.


Well, maybe not. After all, according the UK media, our national team, England, have won already anyway, and they haven't even started the tournament yet! There is a certain level of arrogance there! The point of all this is to highlight the fact that this round of world class football will ignite low-life passions in a lot of people, and not all those passions will be good ones. Our national role models will not help our youth to tell the difference between winning and sportsmanship. Should we be worried? I think so.