The Footie

So here we are, back on familiar territory: England scrape through against inferior opponents thanks to a dose of luck, with some dubious managerial decisions, a poor second half performance, and the old excuse of the heat. But at least we can relax now and enjoy the carnival ("at the end of the day we got the three points and that's what matters.")

Can anyone doubt that the World Cup's the best sporting contest in the world? Over the past couple of nights we've had Poland v. Ecuador, with Japanese officials. It doesn't get more international than that. Then, Argentina v. the Ivory Coast (shame about the result - I'd really fancy the Ivory Coast's chances in a weaker group), Sweden v. Trinidad & Tobago. Iran and Mexico on at the moment. It's a footie fan's paradise, and a politician's wonder.

So, why is the World Cup so much better than its global rival, the Olympics? Let me count the ways:

* The taint of 1936 has somehow never left the Olympics. There's something undeniably Leni-Riefenstahl about all this striving for perfection.

* You can't harness football to political ends as you can with athletics. The Olympics used to be all about the US v. the USSR, and in Beijing will no doubt be all about the US v. China - with all that unpleasant striving to show which is the greater superpower. Pour money in, and you get results. The Communists were always good in the Olympics, where a controlled populace provided a good breeding ground for a new race of heroes - for instance with all the strangely masculine East German women, training relentlessly from the age of three and a half. Football's anarchic by contrast - you can't plan a national team (though France's efforts, culminating in the '98 triumph, came pretty close).

* The Olympics is not only about racing against other competitors, it's also a race against the drug-testing rules. The whole event is fatally compromised by drugs. With football it's not even clear what drugs would be appropriate: given the history of the sport, probably booze and fags.

* Football's always got an element of chance. It's just 11 men against 11 men. In the long run it's the best teams that win, but in the short term anything can happen. Small countries like Senegal can always have their moments of glory, beating France in 2002. Olympic events, on the other hand, are drearily predictable. If someone's got a best time of 9.756 seconds, and someone else has a best time of 9.823 seconds, you know what the outcome's going to be. And you can be pretty sure they'll both be from the US.

* If football does have a superpower, it's Brazil - and who could have a problem with that?

* World Cup matches have a great atmosphere. Somehow (and yes, I'll even include England - you'll not find the knee-jerk anti-English-fan reaction here) the patriotism on show is fun. No one takes it too seriously (the patriotism, that is, not the football). The Olympics - well, ten seconds of action followed by half an hour of nothing, with endless national anthems and ceremonies. Doesn't sound like fun to me.

* Frankly, who cares if A can run 100 metres faster than B?

* Footballers are normal guys who just happen to be very good at football. Olympic events are full of tree-trunk-thighed weirdos.

* The World Cup arouses genuine passion across the globe, especially in the poorer countries, whose citizens are entirely unconcerned about the 800-metre hurdles, or showjumping.

* Where's the pleasure in watching people running around a track, or trying to jump over a bar? Moments of beauty and grace are few and far between (excepting gymnastics, I guess, if you like that sort of thing). Football, though....a 90-minute ballet of athletic striving, as I always think to myself after a Saturday afternoon in January watching Doncaster Rovers.

* Football's a team game. It's not just about individual effort. Yes, the Olympics do have a few team games, but they're silly ones like curling or hockey.

* I am second to none in my anti-anti-Americanism. Great country and all that. Where would we be without them? But I can't help seeing it as a plus that the US basically don't give a shit about football. I can imagine a number of alternative worlds - where the Nazis won the Second World War; where Iran had a Zoroastrian woman president; where string theory made sense - but imagining a world where the US are soccer-crazy: nope, can't do it.

* Um, that's about it. Iran have just equalised! Must get back to my seat in front of the telly.

Comments

[dearieme]

"Can anyone doubt that the World Cup's the best sporting contest in the world?" Me. I saw a Scotland vs England Quoits international as a lad: knocks the World Cup for six.

[dearieme]

Talking of "six", the last Ashes series. So there's two events that were better.

[Sluggo]

I agree that soccer will never be big in the states. We'd have to be good at it for it to be popular and to be good at a sport there has to be a national need for it. It has to satisfy a specific national characteristic. On those occasions when we want to watch people in skimpy togs bustle around pointlessly, we have beach vollyball.

Arf. Just kidding. Seriously, it's easy to see rugger and soccer playing to the same audience, but baseball and soccer will never reside in the same heart.

And a nation that will watch qoits will watch anything.

[dearieme]

But Quoits encompasses the interesting bit of Grid-Iron - i.e. the accurate tossing of an object - without the boring bits.

[Sluggo]

The US just got pantsed by the Czechs. What non-ethnic interest there was for the WC here will be all but gone by tomorrow.

I don't think it's the theatrical quality of the violence in soccer that puts off Yanks. After all, most of us would recognize that getting into a badminton game with a Dane or Indonesian is virtual suicide. It's probably the fact that there are no refrigerator breaks so you have to line your beers up beside you before the match and replenish them at half-time. We like it cold.

I've no doubt that competition level quoits requires skills that are rare. It's just that there seems to be no possibility of violence. Even darts has you holding a sharp object.

[P. Froward]

Never got beaned with a quoit, eh?

[John Barr]

Darts, now there's a man's game. One Hundred and Eighty!!!

[Linda Evans]

Scotland Vs Wales quoits competitions still occur annually, hosted alternately by each nation. The 2006 competition will be held in Prestwick, Ayrshire on 29th July. If you're looking for something after the footie's done and dusted...............