I’m not sporty – and I always had sympathy with the small child in the Alan Partridge sports headlines on The Day Today and On The Hour who caused turmoil at major sporting events by pointing out that golf, for example, was just a load of men in daft sweaters knocking balls around with sticks. The crowds dispersed in dismay that they could have been so easily duped. I also like Jasper Fforde satirising the national obsession with sport by imagining a world where literature has tribal fans.
The FIFA business got me thinking though. Football seems like a bit of fun – not for me, you understand, but if people want to spend their spare time playing it, I think that’s great. I understand why people would want to do that. Even I can see that you might want to pay a few pounds to watch a local team of talented, committed amateur players play the game against another team. But pay thousands for a season ticket and kits? Nah, I don’t think so.
Sport is entertainment. It relies on a mixture of skill and an element of luck to pull people in – the luck is important. I can understand the thrill of watching a minor league team have an amazing FA Cup run, getting to Wembley. I get that. Although some think even luck is not enough:
But corruption, of the whiff of corruption, undermines sport’s entertainment value – or it should do. If there’s more to sport than skill and luck – why bother watching it?
I used to follow F1 – until I got the sense that a certain team used to get a suspicious number of judgements in its favour. It seemed like a fix. Its entertainment value evaporated for me. I suspect cycling lost its appeal for many a few years back after doping scandals. Athletics?
Will the same happen with football? Will people wake up and realise that organised, professional sport has failed. Sport should be a hobby, best left to the amateurs.
So much about sport on the global scale is broken. It’s not too long ago that the International Olympic Committee faced problems similar to those at FIFA. From what we’ve seen so far it appears that the IOC have done a better job of purging themselves. This morning FIFA have missed a real opportunity to show us that they were ready for change.
Yes – a missed opportunity indeed. Seems so short-sighted to realise that a coronation looks so much worse than an election against opposition.