05 December, 2009

The World Cup: it has started

The World Cup Football (soccer) tournament does not begin until June but like the commercial institution of Christmas has been started artificially early. Six months early, for last night was the draw to decide who plays whom, when and where.

Similar in style to an Italian game show, there was a celebrity (David Beckham) a pretty girl and a Frenchman (how is it they always seem to get involved?) with a microphone attached to his ear, doing nothing for the supposed independence of the draw. The girl called out numbers, the wired grenouille something unintelligible. Somosas! (why is it when we can’t understand a Frenchman we assume he is talking about food?) And there was another little chap running around with rolled pieces of paper like you find in Christmas crackers. So the long evening wore on. ‘Six two’ said the lovely. ‘Petits Pois’ cries the froggy.

As a televisual spectacle this was buttock clenchingly awful, trying to manufacture excitement where there could be none – we might have simply read about it in the morning papers.

There again, this is not about sport.

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