THE WORLD OF $OCCER

ONCE AGAIN, THE HIDEOUS HEAD of the football “World Cup” is occupying the sports news and other TV shows throughout the world. Several years ago I remember I had occasion to write about the unusual case of seeing South Korea reaching the “semi-finals” of this competition, in an obvious case of cheating, or bribing referees. At the time it was claimed that the Koreans achieved this feat through taking ginseng supplements in order to give them greater vitality. Although it is no doubt true that ginseng does increase one’s ability to perform, I suspect that a few hundred thousand dollars has an influence on referees’ performances as well.

THE “WORLD CUP”, FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW, is a football or “soccer “ tournament which starts off involving all of the countries in the world and which, after a “knock-out” system, is reduced to Germany, Brazil, Italy or Argentina, from whom the winner is chosen, except when it is played in France or England, when the host nations are also allowed to win. Unimportant nations such as Ireland, Costa Rica, the Maldives, Nigeria and Japan are allowed to compete in the early stages in order to give the competition its “world” flavour, unlike the Baseball “World Series”, in which only teams from New York, Boston, St Louis and Chicago are allowed to compete.

THIS TOURNAMENT OBVIOUSLY INVOLVES large amounts of money for televising the football “matches”, and for sponsorship, but the real cash to be made goes to prostitutes and bar-owners. Thus the logical situation is to make sure that the “fans” who attend these events are those who will spend large amounts of money drinking alcohol and in whorehouses. This left FIFA, the governing body of the sport, and its head Sepp “Slapper” Blatter, with a difficult decision in the play-off match between the Republic of Ireland and France last night -- a straight decision between Guinness sales and Viagra. But no doubt the enormous amount of money that French men spend in brothels because their wives are more interested in fashion accessories than having sex with their garlic-smelling husbands swung it in France’s favour.