The World Cup. Boooooring

The world cup is always a strange and frankly depressing affair for me, a male non football fan. It's the biggest party in town you're not invited to. Admitting to disliking football as a bloke (a northern bloke of course. Which is worse as most of the biggest teams are north of Watford Gap services) still brings out looks of incredulity in some people. At worse you will be asked the stupidest question in the entire universe that isn't a Daily Express rhetorical headline. "Are you gay or something?" (Happened to my cousin last week.) Yes being a non footie fan is a bit of a soggy fart in a pint glass, over the world cup season. Only this Saturday I felt a pang of sadness as I walked into my local pub and watched solemnly and incomprehensibly at almost the entire clientele in their England shirts, on the edge of their seats, glued to the telly on the wall. They were wrapped up in a world I can never enter, and it dawned on me that I will always be doomed to travel alone, the marginalised outcast.

I have actually tried to get into football. I've actually been to two stadia. The first is Aston Villa's one. I was so bored I ended up spending more time working out how the tidal flow system worked on the Aston Expressway, than I did as to what was going on on the pitch. As well as dodging out the way when an aggrieved fat Brummie kept sounding off, who looked like a third Mitchell brother who had not just eaten all the pies, but the pie stand and the pie man; his pie wife, and their children as well. Let's just say he had a bit of constructive criticism (i.e calling him a blind fucking wanker) in regards to the referees decisions, at various points in the match. I also watched a match at Bolton Wanderers old stadium. I don't remember anything about the match (Oh I do... It was in Bolton.), but I do remember you had to urinate in a drain pipe. So I mustn't have been to bowled over with the game itself. And that leads me to my main source of bafflement about football. How did such a boring game ever catch on in the first place to become what it is today? Why am I the weirdo for not liking it?

Football is set up all wrong. At it's core soccer is about maintaining the status quo, until a set time (whistle blows.). It's an attrition based game. One team of competent men, have to prevent a ball from being launched into their territory by another group of equally competent men. Thus you get 99% standoff tactics to maintain the status quo, and 1% action when the balance of favour tips (which has the added insult of resetting the staus quo, if a goal is scored.). It's long periods of boredom; punctuated by a few seconds of excitement. That doesn't often make for interesting viewing. Would Star Wars have been as good if the rebels had a Death star as well? With the rival battle stations trying to find each others weaknesses to secure some kind of victory? No! It's the underdog against massive odds, it's exciting. Or in "Gladiator" when Russel Crowe kicks the Germanians asses. It was a one way fight, but it was bloody exciting. The action never slowed. Would Gladiator have been such a hit if it had consisted of Richard Harris and some big smelly man with a beard sat in a tent in a muddy forest, hammering out a land border? Of course not. So why not extrapolate this logic to football then? If it's getting bit boring out there, take inspiration from the Gladiator film and unleash a few tigers and lions onto the pitch? "OOH and Rooney has taken a hell of a mauling from a Bengal on the offside!!" I'd watch it! Or take inspiration from those power ups you used to get on the Arkanoid video game, which changed the rules. At random intervals you could have three balls in play at one time. Or a goal post that randomly changed size. Or arm the players with planks to hit the opposition with, over an allotted 5 minute period? Or fit those 9 feet tall spikes in the ground that you used to get on Mortal Kombat, to randomly pop up on the pitch, to skewer unsuspecting players? Or better still, if it comes down to penalties at the finals - use those vuvuzela trumpets that are pissing everyone off for good use. Someone could toss a coin, and if it lands on say heads (for it to work, the players wouldn't know which caused which); then the player taking the shot has to have a toot from someone honking a vuvuzela (preferably dressed as a comedy mascot. It would be ten times funnier.) right in their ear before they hit the ball. It'd be bloody hilarious!! More than the Jackass golf course sketch with the air guns. Imagine the reruns of the hil-arious scenes of the players being put off at the crucial moments. Iconic viewing. It'd give Chiles his own DVD to front. "World Cups funniest penalties"

I'd watch it anyway.