Is there anything edifying about the World Cup at all?
If sweeteners were distributed and consumed by FIFA officials when the competition was awarded to Qatar, it doesn't seem unreasonable to suppose that Brazil did its fair share of palm-greasing to get the competition too. We then have the tawdry spectacle of a country whose citizens mostly live in conditions which justify outrage spending billions to build the necessary infrastructure, that infrastructure being shoddily done and in some cases unfinished by the time the football started last night.
Ah, but the football, you say. It's all about the football.
OK then, the football. After Croatia get a slightly fortuitous early goal, a Brazilian player elbows an opponent in the throat and escapes with a yellow card. Then after the hosts have equalized, a Brazilian forward, Fred, throws himself to the ground in the area, but instead of booking him for a dive the referee gives a penalty. Because after all, we can't have the hosts faltering at the group stage can we?
The World Cup is a tournament funded on the backs of the poor, organised by the corrupt, played by cheats and refereed by the incompetent. The whole thing is squalid beyond belief. Only the mentally-negligible, to adopt Wodehouse's phrase, take any interest in it.
Which possibly, soberingly, explains why when England line up against Italy tomorrow night, I will be there, beer in hand, perched nervously in front of the TV.
