Foul smell penalising football’s showpiece
ALL VIEWS ARE MY OWN . . . James Belfield on sportsmanship.
UP until Tuesday it had been great. Up until Tuesday it had been pulsating, gripping – a colourful and skilful display of all that’s great about a truly global, beautiful game.
The opening matches of the World Cup had seen upsets (go, Costa Rica!), heaps of goals (who doesn’t like the Dutch?), a strangely attacking version of England (even a loss seemed fine) and controversy limited to whether anthems were sung on time or whether goal-line technology was working properly (it was, people just aren’t used to it yet).
And then a German player dived, a Portugese player had a rush of blood to the head, and the same German player dived again – just this time from a sitting position (no mean feat – maybe he ought to enrol for the Olympics).
Thomas Mueller went down clutching his face after a seemingly innocuous challenge from Pepe – but then Pepe, obviously no fan of the Hollywood treatment, went to remonstrate. He thrust his head towards Mueller’s head, made contact, and took World Cup football back to its usual realm of play-acting, posturing and the politics of sour grapes.
Serbian ref Milorad Mazic had no hesitation in red-carding Pepe in the 37th minute, effectively ending the contest after the Germans had already gone ahead from a hugely debatable penalty, and sparking Portugal coach Paulo Bento to suggest Mazic was What do you think?
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email biased in favour of Germany .
‘‘These were the two things that seemed to show bias and they were both decisive,’’ he told a news conference.
Football, for all its glitz, glamour and gazzillions of dollars, has a tough time with its image. And Fifa certainly needs a grand specatacle in Brazil to deflect interest in the inquiry into fraud surrounding how World Cup hosting rights are handed out.
The bigwigs in the Fifa corporate boxes must have winced to watch their grand spectacle turn into the more familiar theatre of cheating, diving and yelling abuse. Around the same time as the trouble in Brazil, New Zealand inboxes were pinging with the viral email showing a bloodied photo of All Black Sam Cane with a caption along the lines of ‘‘The difference between rugby and football is that football is about spending 90 minutes trying to fake an injury, whereas rugby is about spending 80 minutes trying to show you’re not injured’’.
Leaving aside any issues about head injuries and concussion, the clear indication in New Zealand is that rugby’s a sport for real men and football’s a game for cheats.
Which goes to show that Fifa has to clamp down on diving as much as foul play. Strange though it may seem, German and Portugese players diving and head-butting in Brazil has a real chance of derailing a great participation sport on this side of the globe.
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