Footballers

Though I fell in love with football only recently (circa 2003), it has not taken me long to hate footballers. Generally, of course. There will always be a few shining lustruous pearls amidst an ocean of shite. Now I hate them because most of them now have absolutely no loyalty whatsoever to the club. Those bygone days where footballers were proud of their clubs, even if they didn't win anything, and stayed on year after year in the hope that they did is now becoming the type of ancient history that doesn't make it to the history books. For example, even though I hate Manchester United and think most of their fans are a bunch of twats (except for Art, of course *chuckle*), you gotta respect some of their players like Ryan Giggs who spent his entire career at the club. I don't think we are ever going to see the likes of him anymore. More and more, I see footballers who have one singular good season (despite the earlier ones being shite or mediocre) being proclaimed by the English press as the next Pele or Maradona and then because of all the bloody media attention, they get poached by the Italian or Spanish leagues (read Juventus, AC Milan, Inter Milan and Real Madrid or Barcalona, respectively - bunch of non-English speaking twats). To use the Manchester United example again, in the last season 2007/08, Cristiano Ronaldo had by any standards an outstanding year. He won the European Championship and the Premiership Championship this year. He's 23. So he's got a lot of years left and you would think, he would stay with Manchester United which is as much as I hate to admit it the top club in Europe right now. But then as usual those fuckers Real Madrid then screw all these footballers up by indicating that they are 'interested' (I've got beef with them as well because they are making it a yearly habit to declare their love for Fabregas, may you never leave us!) and the worse part is these footballers then become 'unsettled'. How you can have a 4 year contract or whatever with the club, play so well for a few years, get on with everybody and then at the mere mention of an interest become 'unsettled'. These bastards are paid something like upwards of 50,000 pounds a week and they are unsettled. You pay me that kinda money, I settle wherever the fuck you like Mister and I love you long time oso! And of course you be nice to me then I no reason to leave sorta shite.

Sure you get the usual argument like - footballers have a limited earning time period - about 10 years or so, so they have to make the most of it. So we have to understand that even though they signed a 5 year contract, if some other club is willing to pay more and buy out their contract, they should be allowed to leave so that they can have enough for their retirement. What happened to loyalty? What happened to the contract which basically is a promise in exchange for obscene amounts of money that they would stay at the club for the duration of their contract? A footballers contract is now so meaningless - you can sign up for a 10 year contract, but if the player wants to leave and the buying club is willing to fork out the money, they are sold. And what happened to professionalism on the footballers part? Being professional means that you honour your contract instead of (i) claiming you want to play for your childhood club (do it after you finished your contract asshole) and the engineer to leave (ii) try to buy out your own contract (which apparently is now allowed). Professionalism for a footballer should not be limited to the football field, where most of them fail this test too. So often do you see big strapping lads with limbs like timber diving like a happy dolphin on the ground at the merest touch. Then they are usually clutching their legs or face or wherever it was there were last touched and clutching it and rolling around like a shot gun blew it off complete with the agonized looks. And after their supposed offender is shown a yellow card or reprimanded they're up and about like a happy lamb and back to being their usual arsehole selves.

So where does this leave us when more and more footballers adopt such attitudes - an utter lack of professionalism both on the field and in their contracts? I think it will in time turn off 'neutrals', those who just enjoy watching good football. Clubs and football then will be crushed by the financial expectations of men who really are paid obscene amounts of money for kicking the ball around on a field for the display. They do not create food. They do not solve people's problems. They contribute nothing to science (and being a subject for medical/sports science is not a pro-active contribution but a mere passive one). They do not contribute to the intellectual progress (and on the contrary by their very actions tend to hold back this sort of progress). They kick a ball well and make it enjoyable for us. That they are paid so much for so little, (especially in terms of professionalism), really makes me wonder what our priorities are as a human race. It would seem that pure entertainment is our priority instead of encouraging each other to do as good a job as possible and getting along with one another.

Arsenal

The truth is for the most part of my short life, I generally didn't like football. I was one of those men that other men looked upon strangely and thought of as homosexual because I did not seem to profess rabid allegiance to any club in particular or knew anything about the topic. For example, if somebody were to ask me before the 2003/2004 Premiership League season whether I was an Arsenal fan, I would have very likely told him that I abhor violence and have no interest in weapons. If I were particularly grumpy that day, I might even mount my moral high horse and take round a few turns whoever it was that asked me that singular question that betrayed my complete and utter ignorance and give him a chunk of my mind about the evils of warfare. Before that fateful season, the name Henry would still be some generic English name and not one said with a silent 'H' in a French like manner in rapture, awe and frustration and clasped hands with eyes averted to the heavens.

Now I used the word 'generally' because though I paid no heed, if not wilfully ignored, the matches played by the clubs in England, Italy and Spain, a strange passion gripped me during the World Cup. Suddenly, I knew most of the players in the national teams, their worth to the team in general and amazingly had a fairly workable knowledge of their abilities. Don't ask me how, I just knew. Now why my passion to watch grown men in shorts kick a ball around should only be aroused to a intensely fevered pitch every once four years escaped me. Maybe group dynamics and sociology may have the answer, or perhaps I really did like to see grown men in shorts kick a ball around. Perhaps it was the whole idea of a contest between the finest players from each country competing mano a mano, or more accurately, pies a los pies. One must understand of course, these were the feelings and thoughts of one yet to be introduced to the genius of Arsene Wenger, the manager of Arsenal.

Now with these state of affairs and the natural inclination for most Malaysian males towards football, one can certainly appreciate that after the topics of sex, movies, sex, women, sex and sex have been thoroughly exhausted after a long, hard and a titillatingly penetrating discussion, the topic naturally drifts to football. It is inevitable. It is useless to fight against it. It is like trying to fight with gravity or argue with your own mother. You will never win. Resistance is futile. And if you knew nothing about football, you might as well have transformed into a dark maroon wallpaper with hideous purple polkadots, because that would be the end of your participation. The conversation would be thick and fast with a host of English and foreign names being thrown about, the table would be banged on occasion spilling some drinks, voices raised, fake smiles broaden to accomodate the bullshit, highly unfair comparisons before any disagreements are finally uneasily settled with a bet when their respective teams met next time. And I didn't understand any of it. For almost a quarter of a century of my life.

It was sometime I think during the early part of 2003/2004 Premiership League season that I recalled the words of one of my parents' family friends. What he told me was in the context of food. He was this incredibly fit Scottish eighty year old man who would visit us on occasion in Malaysia and could eat just about anything you threw at him. He was not fazed by the spiciness of the local fare. He did not care about the filthy stalls we sneaked him too when his wife wasn't looking. He loved to roam around with my uncles to look for interesting and novel fare wherever he went. He didn't need to know what it was called or care at how unsavoury a dish looked. It was in this context that I asked him how he was able to eat food so foreign and alien to him. He told me that if someone was of the opinion that a particular dish was good then it meant that there was something tasty about it in there and it was for him to understand and discover what it was. Each new dish he discovered was like an adventure for him.

It was in this spirit therefore I approached football. If there were so many people mad about the game, surely there was something in there that made them be so. It was for me to discover it. Feeling somewhat though not even remotely close like Dr. Livingstone, I set forth on my football education. My father was a football fan but he never really discussed the matter with me. Perhaps due to my lack of interest. And so it was to him I asked what team he supported and requested advice on what team I should watch. Being an Arsenal fan since his University days, he naturally recommended the same team and told me when I could catch them next.

One must also understand that the 2003/2004 season for Arsenal was particularly noteworthy because it was the season that they went through an entire season undefeated in their league games breaking a 115 year old record, played some of the most spectacular brand of attacking football on the planet and possessed some of the best players in the business. Of course I didn't know all this at the time. As far as I was concerned, I was going to turn on the television, watch grown men kick a ball around and then try and keep myself receptive and open to the experience.

So there I found myself one evening sitting in front of the television waiting for the match to begin. Feeling like a virgin again, not quite sure whether I was doing was right since the experience was all so new to me. I felt I should have had a beer in one hand and a pack of crisps in the other but I thought best to skip lest it distract me from the game. Then it began.

And from the moment the game began, I was mesmerized. The sofa, my ignorance, the darkness of the living room, the reality outside that screen discreetly fell away as gracefully as a space shuttle parting company from the Mir Space Station. My eyes were charmed, hypnotized and compelled like the Wedding Guest that was singled out by the Ancient Mariner to hear his tale. I could not help but hear, but in this case see. My eyes were transfixed to the television screen not daring to look away less I miss some mind-blowing pass by Patrick Viera, some quick though fancy footwork of Robert Pires, the solid defence marshalled by a soulful yet tanklike Campbell and the safe though occasional mad hands of Jens Lehmann.

Above all, I was in complete and total awe of a 27 year old french forward named Thierry Henry who stole the show as he gunned the goals. Whenever he was close to the ball, I felt excitement. Whenever the ball fell to his feet, I felt something like an electric shock. But it was those unbelievable runs, those supernatural turns, those death defying dummies and his sheer genius with the ball that made his solo goals approaching the equivalent of what I feel best described in sexual terms as having the dinner, foreplay, wild sexual act, dirty talk, bed breaking orgasms with the post coital cuddle all in that two minute physical soliloquy of scintillating sublimity. The intensity and command of his performance sealed it for me. If his team made me fall from ignorance into the usual senseless rabid loyal fan, then Henry was the huge boulder that crushed me completely and sealed my new role.

They have been playing badly since then. Sometimes they are too painful to watch on occasions these days. But I pledge my allegiance to Arsenal not because of their heritage but because I think if it were not for watching Arsenal during that halcyon season, I would not have fallen in love with football so deeply and readily as I did then.

Live Telecast

Whenever the television is left on and I have no particular interest one way or the other what to watch, I would usually choose whatever is showing live. I don't care whether they are showing darts, pool and cricket (which I would ordinarily would not watch, my favourites being tennis, golf and football which I would take the trouble to watch live), or its monster truck madness, or news, whatever - as long as it was live.

Why, you may wonder, hypothetically of course? (I do not expect you to trouble yourself even for a moment with such inane peccadilloes!) The reason is twofold. Firstly, there is this sense of shared togetherness that both those people doing their thing on the screen and I are sharing this time, if not space, together. We are both existing and playing out our moments before each other, instead of the usual out of sync, recorded and played back (like how most of television is). And in that, there is a sense of company and kinship no matter how tenuous when the television is on when there is a live thing going on. It also reminds me how beautifully different many of our lives are and that in all our differences we exist together and have to learn to deal with that instead of trying to suppress one another or fight about who is superior.

And secondly, because I think of live and recorded programs especially in relation to sport (of course not those series and movies, etc.) are comparable to that of freshly cooked food and reheated food. It's always better to eat freshly cooked. And even if you don't want to eat anymore and have to, at least it's fresh. As with all general rules there are exceptions. I, for one, wouldn't mind and in fact welcome reheats of my favourite football team, Arsenal, in full flight. Yummy.