Nothing like that this time. The commentators have even been warned about making military allusions when Germany are playing. No blitzkrieg attack comments, careful how you phrase your observation about Germany’s territorial possession in the Poland game.
You have the suspicion that one or two of the pundits are perched on the edge of racism and would cheerfully jump over, given the chance. But so far they have resisted, constrained, perhaps, by a greater sensitivity and awareness of the world than in previous days, and also by their contracts and the delay button operated by fearful producers.
It’s all rather diminished my enjoyment of the tournament, frankly. When the Argies — sorry, Argentina — lift the trophy on July 9, the tournament will indeed be remembered for their wonderful, flowing football, but also for its newly acquired and rather self-conscious rectitude. The year that players were stopped from tackling each other, so that the “nice” things about football — moppety, pouting Latinos with Alice bands blithely skipping through challenge after challenge — can flourish. And a complete absence of animus towards foreigners, no matter how irritating they might be.
You can tell football has cleaned up its act by the extraordinary proportion of women in attendance. A few years back, the only women at World Cup matches were those awful Brazilian hags baring their breasts while executing a samba — and one or two grim-faced munters from Derby or Bolton in XL England shirts howling vituperative abuse in the manner of those tricoteuses who gather outside the law courts when a kiddie-fiddler is on trial.
Now the stands are full of women with attractively painted faces, except for the Iran games. It has become such a terribly inclusive tournament. That opening ceremony, with its bizarre array of floating women and horribly confident children, set the tone. I do not know what ill the world has done to deserve German hip-hop, but that World Cup slogan — barked out in a somewhat menacing Prussian imperative — summed it up: “A time to make new frentz.” For you, Tommy — for all of us — the war is at last over. The fans know it and so do the referees.
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Football has become very different from the game I remember, through a process of embourgeoisement that began at Euro 96. It has become something better, I suppose most people would argue.
In lieu of the nastiness, we have, from the commentators, a continual — and misplaced — priapism whenever Brazil take to the field; a 90-minute susurration of oohs and aahs, as if we were witnessing a firework display rather than a mediocre performance from a team with a dodgy defence, no midfield whatsoever and somebody resembling Peter Kay up front.
We were enjoined once again to share in Ronaldinho’s conspicuous love of the game. Call me a mean-spirited curmudgeon, but it does sometimes occur that his perpetual grin is the recourse of a half-wit.
My fondest moments so far have been the faint glimmerings of the sort of football I’m used to. Tim Cahill winning a game by himself for a rugged Australia side; Trinidad & Tobago keeping 11 men behind the ball and kicking out at anyone who moves, more than happy to settle for a goalless draw in every match. The islanders play precisely the sort of football with which I’m familiar. Indeed, I’ll be watching a fair few of their number in League One next season, at Gillingham and Port Vale, for example.
And much as we tell ourselves that the World Cup is at its finest when the underdog wins through against the odds, the profusion of red and yellow cards accrued by Trinidad & Tobago suggests that the authorities wish to eradicate such joyous eventualities in 2006; heroic, desperate, last-ditch defending and crunching challenges are not really wanted. But football without the gritty tackling ends up a bit like basketball, a silky, rapid, unhindered canter from penalty area to penalty area — which is what we witnessed in Argentina’s beautiful demolition of Serbia & Montenegro. Prohibited from playing their normal game and penalised every time they attempted to, the Serbs simply succumbed. The point of closing down players is to eventually put your foot in and harry the opposition attackers off the ball, but you’re not allowed to put your foot in any more, so the closing-down process becomes almost pointless.
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The old Italian catenaccio teams of the 1960s and 1970s would not get past the group stage now. To which statement you might, I suppose, say: “And a good job, too!” But just wait until England play Ecuador or the reborn, exuberant Germans, and see how angry we get with the referee. I predict a red card, somewhere along the way.