Everything Has To Come To An End!

It is the World Cup - again.  You don't have to be a certified genius to attest that I am less-than-impressed by this latest ''huge event'' - yet again!  All the media hoopla over it is enough to make one chortle and vomit: as we are all friendly competitors, brother and sister athletes, in the Olympics (where the most important thing is to participate...!) however, now, it is the near-antithesis of that, with all media fueling the animosity, historical or not, real or fabricated, between 32 countries..

Pardon - it all started with the qualifiers: like, when Portugal defeated Sweden not once but twice just to ''qualify'' for this big dance, IKEA was encouraged by some to stop exporting linen and kitchen ware made in Portugal just as others probably encouraged all Portuguese to boycott that store...!

In this day and age, the media and the message are ever more just one: but now they've merged with all of fandom, too, becoming one huge attention-grabbing monster that will not cease until weeks after ''the huge event'' has become old news, really...  (And it is so because of the ''next huge event'' hogging the spotlight completely by then...! Of course.)

Now, I have not cared about the Stanley Cup Finals this year (New York-Los Angeles: the two biggest towns in the USofA! ''Finally'' said the NHL. Bo-ring is what I said.)   Just as I neglected (outright boycotted) the entire NBA playoffs: seeing as the two most storied franchises were not even ''qualifying'' (the Celtics and the Lakers - duh) and so many abominations were happening left and right , on and off court -or parquet- (what else do you call Paul Pierce playing in Brooklyn, of all places? The Harlem Globetrotters I would have understood: but not the damn Nets, come on!!!) so, what was the point of supporting this farce, hmm?

I don't care much about the ongoing MLB season either: the only good thing about it is that, for the duration of it, those broadcaster and commentators will have no choice but to talk of the Boston Red Sox as the defending champions.  Alas, of course, defending champs have been chumps in the last decade or so, and it already not boding well for the BoSox here, so I might as well not watch henceforth...

NFL? Don't make me laugh now...  To me, it just as laughable as the AFL was as the CFL will always be: once a mighty Patriot, Chad Johnson now being ''so desperate to play football'' that he will align himself with a team called Alouettes...?  HaHaHa - that is nothing!  All those former Pats that became NY Jets and started badmouthing their former coach on the spot: now that is a shame!  And all those former (they should remain off the gridiron once they get to a certain point) NFL ''playas'' who do all sorts of unsightly things on their own time - mistreat animals, shoot people, beat up women...  The only respectable NFL guy has got to be Tom Brady - thanks to his hot wife, Gisele Bundchen!  (This stated virtual-tongue-firmly-in-virtual-cheek - of course!)

All of these ''major sports'' have this in common, too: they are all majorly pushed down our collective throat by the media!  Heck, in some cases, it is the media that gave them their ''huge event'' even going as far as christening it: such was the case for Major League Baseball's ''World Series''...   The ''Super Bowl'' really isn't all that super; and I wouldn't even prepare a cheap salad in that bowl; it could be used as another kind of bowl, mind you...!  (Ditto for the Stanley Cup; alas that NBA trophy truly is completely useless - too big to be used as a bookend and too unnecessarily complicated to be practical for anything at all, ultimately!)

And now - it's the World Cup.  Not a care if the fanatics are known to be hardcore, as we know they can be: rival groups can start the mother-of-all-brawls in the stands, during any given game. Only rugby fanatics -be they players or spectators- can be worse here... Fans have been trampled all over by out-of-control crowds and such extremes have been depending entirely on the outcome of the game they were attending and if their team won it or not... No, that doesn't matter as much as the fact that this is THE WORLD CUP... So, let's push the ultimate passion here: kicking a ball into a too-wide-for-the-goalkeeper's-good netting - and forget about the effects such a trivial thing can have on people.

I stumbled upon a fine documentary the other night: it was about the 1950 World Cup and how one counter-performance... one momentary collapse... one show of human weakness made all of Brasil come to despise those they were, beforehand, hailing as the greatest champions ever... the champions of the world... the greatest futebol players to have grazed a playing field...!

When Brazil lost to Uruguay (2-1 - no biggie. Somehow it was echoed, many years later, in 2004, when Portugal let the Euro Cup slip and Greece stole it right in their backyard; just as they did the Golden Fleece, eh?) they became uma vergonha nacional: the shame of the entire country. Mere minutes after the game ended, people had jumped from their upper seats, plummeting to their doom; it was that serious for them, yes!  They would rather end their lives, right there in the stadium, rather than come home and have to digest this defeat for the rest of their lives...  People were devastated all throughout Brazil; they were sad for a long, long time. They would never forgive that year's national selection of players for having let them down like that - after the huge build-up, that is (completed by a speech given by the mayor minutes before the game; a speech in which o prefeito speaks of the championship as if it had already been acquired; a fait accompli. The saying of it not being over until it is over had not gotten to this one's ears, apparently...?  Quereida!)

And the goalkeeper complained of it in the documentary: ''the maximum sentence here is thirty years. Me, I have paid the price for allowing those two goals for 43 years now - and counting!''

Wanna bet he didn't endear himself to anyone after coming out and saying that, either?  Bill Buckner was forgiven in Boston: but only after the BoSox reversed the curse...!   Brazil did win the coveted championship and then some, soon enough - but those who remember that 1950 desfeita simply will not forgive it, exactly because they cannot forget it, nor the terrible feeling that came with it...

Thus, with examples like that, given to us by recent history too (it could not be otherwise, for sports as we know them now are a recent human conception indeed!  Maybe it was less involving in the days of gladiator contests...? Maybe not!) - with sad, sad examples like these, do we really want to adhere to it?  Do we really want to buy into any of it now - buy into the ''huge event'' - inject all of our leisure time cash and pocket money into this type of great ''innocent fun'' (the worse it can get is if we gamble on the outcome of the game - right?)   Do we really want to bring our entire families to these places where sports events are taking place, surrounded by the rowdy crowds that could turn hostile in a split second, over almost anything, really...?  Do we? Are we foolish enough to?

There are 32 nations in the world right now chock-full of fanatics like those right now: the rest of the world would be mere ''observers'' - however, through lineage, some dalliance or some other unholy rite, we all have our allegiance, and as such, the entire world is ''engaged'' by this!  Who the hell said only religion could bring out the worst in people?  Who is the fool?!?  We can easily see or hear about, in these coming weeks, of any given ''nationalist'' breaking a bottle of beer over the head of another one such - all because of a penalty goal or well-delivered butthead on the field...!

How many freaking Frenchmen tried to emulate Zidane on a not-so-poor, not-so-unsuspecting, nutso Italiano, do you think - hmm?!?

The way I see it, it is a toss-up between too many countries when it is ''Mundial'' - and there are too many x-factors that can throw a monkey wrench into any team's chances...  Otherwise the same powerhouse ''system'' teams would always win!

A system can work once, twice, for a while - but there comes a time for it to fail, too.
And here we have Brazil, Germany and Spain as three persistent examples of that: they have won too much already (especially the latter one, in recent times) and the law of averages should come into play, finally, at this time...

Not that anybody wants to see an upset like the Greek Heist of 2004 again...

Still, the Netherlands, Argentina and Portugal - yes, Portugal, of course! - should be the ones to take over from the old guard.

Ultimately, however...  Isn't it all so darn ridiculous to have entire nations so passionate about a bunch of guys pushing a ball across an entire field and getting it past a certain line made on the grass (oftentimes not even real grass either!)

If all the nations of the world were equally passionate about the real issues in the world, in their own backyards: who knows what could be accomplished?  Poverty could be circumvented; children might not die of hunger or mistreatment; true justice may yet be meted out...

It would certainly be a greater accomplishment -truly of the media's attention now- than having pushed a measly rubber ball past a goal line; past a doomed-to-be-contemptible for the rest of his natural days goalkeeper...