Those Were The Days

And so, one of those not really anything to with local matters blog entries, save for the nuisance factor that is Spanish television. The European Champions League final (and expect another detour from the norm in a few days time when the blog pays its annual tribute to Eurovision).

To the football. So Man United won. The best moment of the game was Drogba's sending-off, a delicious slice of Schadenfreude heaped on a fine player but one who, if one accepts the rantings of the anti-Chelsea brigade on the likes of 6-0-6 and most of the media, is a pariah to whom a plague should be wished on both his houses, or however many he owns. Except ... What did he actually do? Gave Vidic a bit of a slap. So what?

I blame the Americans. Though I have been challenged in this assertion, to me it was the 1994 World Cup that changed football for the worse. In seeking to make the game more "attractive" to an audience ill-versed in the game, FIFA introduced all manner of rules contradictory to the spite and malevolence that used to once grace the sport. Moreover, the 1994 tournament spawned the embarrassment of the Bebeto baby-rocking celebration that has continued to blight all manner of sports since.

Go back, let's say, to 1978. Argentina. Still then a country of fruitbat military rulers and with a team from both the gods and from hell. Need to qualify against neighbours Peru? Stick an Argentinian in the Peru goal and then score six. They don't make games like that anymore, and more's the pity. Somewhere lurking on the Internet must be Argentina v. Hungary from that World Cup. Dastardly and dirty the Argentinians might have been, but before the game the Hungarians must have feasted long on tapes of the water polo clash against the Soviets some 22 years before.

Go back a bit further. The late '60s and Celtic v. whoever it was from Argentina. How many were sent off? Seven? And this was in the days when a player had to almost commit murder to be ejected. Well if not murder then something akin to GBH, as in when John Hughes kicked the goalie in the stomach. Couldn't do that now. And any old little cuff will suffice. Off you go.

When the football nannies stopped the sport being a more entertaining form of Rollerball, not only did they take away its very soul they also paved the way for the cheating that now exists. Enter Didier Drogba. This is not to say that there wasn't cheating and diving before: there was. But once it was no longer acceptable to hammer into a forward at breakneck speed from behind, so the cheating took over. Back then if a player was tackled, he usually was genuinely hurt. Players didn't give mere slaps, they issued the full bare-knuckle fist. The argument is that, having more or less banned physical contact from a physical contact sport, the more adept footballers can show off their skills. Who are they kidding? Go back again to that Argentinian side - Kempes, Luque, Ardiles, Villa. That some Hungarian might have tried to maim them didn't stop them playing. But fundamentally, the game was more exciting, it was also far less just; if you saw England being kicked all over the park (as in 1970 v. Romania) and the ref doing nothing, a great swell of Kafka-esque impotence rose from the stomach. It was theatre, war, drama, however you want to describe it. Not now. And the very rarity and therefore high drama of a sending-off has been so undermined by its regularity that it no longer holds any force. It took till 1968 for the first England national player to be dismissed (Alan Mullery), which given that two years earlier no one had got round to telling Nobby Stiles about Anglo-French detente is all the more surprising. Stiles could not only kick for England, he kicked for the world.

And then there is Spanish television. It may have escaped your attention that Spanish TV is currently in the naughty chair with the European overlords regarding the excessive amount of advertising per hour that can be broadcast. And rightly so. They don't miss a chance. They don't miss a chance, moreover, to waste the advertiser's penny or centimo. Whose bright idea was it to divide the screen up with adverts in one part and scenes of Man United post-victory in another? Was anyone taking any notice of the ads? Of course they weren't. It was both annoying and misguided. Now, they really do deserve a Drogba slap.


QUIZ
Chain - Heaven 17 did "Temptation", The Temptations did "Papa Was A Rolling Stone"? Told you it was easy. And from that record, how do you get to McGuinn and McGuire? Yesterday's title - The Dave Clark Five. Today's title - who?

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