Football - So Dull...

[ToraToraTora]

Is it just me I'm watching the England v the dutch game. I want England to win but these days I find it so dull so boring. How is something so mind numbing so popular?

[New Judge]

Football is a notoriously dull game in general. However, these competions (such as this and the World Cup) seem to sink to the occasion and manage to produce a series of matches which seem to be even duller than normal.

This competition took 36 matches to shed eight also-rans. England, the winners of their group, managed to score two goals in 270 minutes of play. In the six matches in that group, there were five draws (two of them goalless), seven goals in total with no team managing to score more than once.

I support England and English competitors in every sport - except football. The game is a complete joke. Fit and healthy players mysteriously seem to get blown off their feet by the draught from an opponent passing six feet away; decisions on goals are pawed over on TV for ten minutes by "assistant referees", often with goals being allowed or disallowed because one player's toenail is a millimetre beyond an opponent's; cheating is rife with officials being intimidated regularly. Quite why it has such a following is one of life's great mysteries.

[ladybirder]

You are so funny NJ, I would love to hear your commentary on the next match.

[Khandro]

^^ A rather jaundiced view NJ, yes there is many a coup de théâtre - particularly from those Latin types, and the new technology is spoiling the game - I'm of the opinion that, the referee may not always be right, but he's always the referee (not unlike a judge really!).

We didn't find the game last night dull at all. Some of the long passes from the English side were brilliantly accurate. How a player can pass a ball over such a long distance to the feet of his team mate I find incredible.

Of course the ball is quite a different object from what we played with as boys. My daughter is here visiting from England & I was explaining how football were made of leather panels with a rubber bladder inserted through a slit & laced up with a leather thong. The hole thing was dressed with 'dubbin' & weighed many times more than the contemporary ones.

If when heading it, you caught the lace on your forehead, you really knew about it.

 

[Clone]

Probably an age thing.

 

 

[10ClarionSt]

Football lives inside its' own bubble and has done for quite some time. How people tolerate the ridiculous prices is beyond me. Then there's the outrageous transfer fees and the wages to follow. In a world where we are constantly told about how difficult things are for people, football is totally outside of that. 

I mean, even £1 millon is enormous amount of money but we often hear ridiculous comments such as "he was a bargain for only £15 million". 

I've said for some time now that the bubble will burst one day and people like Mansoor and the Glazers will just sail off into the sunset and leave football in the gutter. And people will be wondering "How did it come to this?"

[10ClarionSt]

Khandro, don't forget having to re-new your studs - take them to the cobblers and they'd be hammered in on the last. Then get the dubbin on them. Some boots had leather bars underneath, not studs. And you used to put the Daily Mirror inside your socks to act as shin guards. I did this when I used to play with Brian Kidd on the local red wreck. At the end of Holland Street. That for the benefit of PP, in case you're looking in!

[ToraToraTora]

Daily mirror? namby pamby liberal rag....Socialist worker...surely

[vulcan42]

I think over the years the emphasis has changed. It's no longer we must win, it's now we musn't lose. This leads to negative football.

[DTCwordfan]

The Dutch national team visited a Ukrainian orphanage in Germany before heading back home.

"The sight of the empty, hopeless, and sad faces deeply affected us," said 12-year-old orphan Ivan Vayushew.