By As a football fan, the World Cup always brings with it mixed emotions as millions of fair-weather supporters suddenly emerge, swamping your timeline like an army of cheery, ill-informed bots and crowding your local like… well... an army of cheery, ill-informed bots.
For the most part, this is totally fine. I don’t begrudge it. There’s enough World Cup for everybody. And in any case, it often gives you chance to feel all sage and paternalistic when these people ask you to explain things to them. Yesterday, during the England vs Panama game, my mum wondered if you had to be from the country you were representing, “like in the Olympics”? Or was it that each country just had to assemble the best team they possibly could, even if that meant hiring a load of Brazilians?
After absorbing this, I had to explain to her that Gareth Southgate hadn’t selected an all-South Yorkshire back-three just for a laugh. “Oh right!” she said, brightly. “Interesting!”. She then went back to watching the game with cheerful concentration. “Hey! England have scored again! That’s good!”
I can live with this. It’s not a problem. What I struggle with, though, are the Clever People Who Don’t Normally Care About Football Suddenly Pontificating About Football. You know who I mean: the irritating brainiacs who refuse to accept that, for once in their life they’re out of their depth, so instead double-down and make a big, chin-stroking hoo-ha about the fact that football is a “universal language”, that it is “the purest of sports, a real reflection of the human condition” and that it is “artform, almost like a dance… truly the beautiful game.”
Hangon, hang on, hang on, I always think. Stop explaining football to me Einstein. I know what football is. I actually like football. And I like football all the time, not just once every four years when the zeitgeist demands it. It’s one of the reasons I enjoyed England’s hammering of Panama so much. It was such a brutal, functional performance that it was impossible to intellectualise. It said absolutely nothing about the human condition, unless the human condition basically boils down to being battered by Harry Kane. There was nothing romantic about it, nothing artistic. If anything, it was algorithmic: if you’re a ropey team with bad discipline and run into a well-organised side with a collective fetish for set-pieces then you will, now and then, get murdered. That’s life! That’s football!
Still, for all the goals, I couldn’t help feel a little disappointed. I wanted Panama to be the plucky underdogs. I had invested in their unlikely World Cup journey, in their 37-year-old captain and, most especially, their 15-and-a-half stone defender Roman Torres.
When they began almost immediately to engage in rough, cynical, weapons-grade shithousery, I didn’t mind. I actually quite like that kind of stuff. But as a tactic, it has to work. And this - duh! - didn’t. There’s nothing more shameful in football than ineffective shithousery. Say what you like about Sergio Ramos, but at least the man gets results. The sight of the giant Torres feigning injury was the nadir, at which point I imagined myself to be Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator. Thumbs down. Finish them off lads. I watched both of Kane’s punitive penalties with icy detachment.
Actually, that’s not quite true, because I did feel quite strongly that Jon Stones should have been allowed to take the second spot kick in order to complete a first-half hat-trick. But then I suppose it’s reassuring to be reminded of what a psychotic thirst for goals Kane possesses. Just as a shark will eventually die if it stops moving, you do wonder if Kane might have some undisclosed long-term health condition that can only be kept at bay by a strict regimen of netbusters. But bit by bit, I’m warming to this team. I like Harry Maguire for the simple reason that he has what I can only term classic school face. In an age of flamboyant superstars, I enjoy players who look like an amalgam of everyone in my Intermediate GCSE Maths class. I was glad to see Jamie Vardy make his World Cup bow, if only because I’ll forever be obsessed with how wired he always looks upon coming on, like a man who’s been self-administering Monster Energy enemas in the dressing room toilets in the hope it might give him an edge.
But the clincher had to be seeing wee Jesse Lingard, sat on the bench after scoring his screamer, doing little keepie-uppies with a scrunched-up piece of litter. The expression on his face - excitement, concentration - made it look like, if he did 20, he’d win a rare Pokemon card off his mate. Anyway, Belgium next. Then we’ll see what’s what.
