Stay awake! It's a beautiful game. Zzzzz

.

David Sherman

Yes, t'is a beautiful game. Perhaps first played before the technology of clocks that stop and start, hence the concept of “extra time.” All part of the beauty. You get to guess how many minutes are left in the game. As, it would appear, do the players and the announcers. It might have to do with the last time the ref hit the urinal but guessing is part of the beauty.

As are pink shoes. It was decided by the five or six shoe providers that it was important footballers’ feet look good on camera and provide a pleasant contrast to the green of the field. Pink it is. Chartreuse may be next.

And it provides a pleasing contrast to the blood that flows when a player uses his pink cleats to grind an opponent’s calf to ground veal. The closeup of a player’s face, twisted by pain as he rolls around on the svelte green carpet of grass, can also be a thing of beauty, especially if you’re casting for an action film.  

Once he’s grimaced and writhed, a beautiful performance, and had his closeup, he jumps back into action, hugged, patted or caressed by other players, some of whom play for the team that tried to amputate his leg. Sometimes it's the same player that tried to dismember him. It’s part of the beauty: maim, hug, forgive and limp.

In hockey they would just pummel, spear of cross check each other and then retire to the penalty box to sit in their sweaty gear for two minutes of penance. Maybe four.

In hockey there are sticks to eviscerate your opponent, skates and ice to fly on, walls to get crushed against and small hard pucks travelling at more than 100 mph that great players can put into the tiniest hole from 30 feet away. Players put their lives on the line by throwing their bodies in front of slap shots. It’s called “sacrificing your body” for the good of the team. Broken face or bones be damned.

But in football your head really counts. Hockey players have to use their heads to think of what to do with or without the puck in a blink. Football players can take a nap and decide when they wake up. In football, your head is kind've similar in purpose to a hockey stick, except sticks are discarded, heads develop concussions and CTE but it's a beautiful thing to watch.

In football, penalty kicks are met with a line of opponents with their hands protecting their crotches. World Cup is a premier event but not as premier as a man’s testicles.

In the beautiful game there are more dire threats. The referee might take out the dreaded yellow square of cardboard and wave it in the air.

If a player gets two yellow cards waved at him, he can no longer writhe on the field or use his head to advance the ball and the brain damage.

For followers of the beautiful game, this can bring on the vapours. But, it’s not as bad as the dreaded blood-red card, This informs player and audience the offender is done for the game and the next, depending if you’re a friend of Donald Trump and his cohort, the head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino. 

Infantino flies from game to game in a private jet and scrapes by on an annual salary of $6 million, plus jet fuel, suites, gourmet meals and the other beautiful trappings, not counting what it cost to give Trump a beautiful peace prize and rent offices from him. Two beautiful birds of a feather.

If the offending player is unrepentant, the “card” can also be used to administer paper cuts, hence vanquished by a thousand cuts. 

Especially beautiful is FIFA’s revenues for the World Cup, this year estimated at $13 billion. Good thing because it seems their expenses are listed as $12.9 billion so they’re barely breaking evening. Curious with ticket prices anywhere from $2,000 to $33,000, not including parking or hot dogs or $25 beer. FIFA also controls the ads in the stadium, the naming of the stadium and broadcast of the games, selling images to any network who can pay the bill.

Hence, each broadcast must have a close-up of Infantino enjoying every game. It’s verboten to show him with cell phone lest we think he is not transfixed by what’s happening, or not happening on the field.

Infantino’s World Cup tenure has been riddled with lots of beautiful controversy but I’ll leave that for Google to talk about. In truth, we know, like his friend Trump, everything he does is for the good of the game and players around the world and suggestion of corruption, graft and malfeasance is the malevolent, left-wing, Commie, fascist press spreading lies. 

Not only is it a beautiful vision to see players help each other out, give comfort when a loss prompts tears, the ball is a riot of bright colours. Players are also of many colours and only a few are subject to racial invective.

Watching the beautiful ball launched from one side of the field to another is like watching a giant ping pong game and is a thing of beauty. For about three minutes. But it does serve as a sleep inducer.

With the temperature on the field often hitting 100F or more. FIFA, concerned for their players, added hydration breaks, known in other sports as commercial breaks. 

FIFA is an impoverished organization and every last dollar is needed, though they don’t pay players’ salaries which go from a couple of hundred million a year for Cristiano Ronaldo down to a few tens of millions or less for the mortals.

For us older folk raised on hockey, it is a curious sport that has 22 men spend a lot of time walking or standing still or screaming at referees in short pants who ignore them.

In soccer or football or foot or fut, players don’t shoot or hit a ball, they strike it. It’s a big, lively ball and the net is the size of a house trailer. The anticipation of a game is all about whether anyone on either team will get the ball near the opposing net. Better yet, maybe into the goaltenders hands or maybe, shocking but true, into the net. 

A goal is a major accomplishment, often driving players to chew their shirts, even though there’s a chance the goalkeeper, like some of us at home, has fallen asleep. He might not have seen the ball for 20 minutes. Players play 100 minutes, give or take writhing time, and may never hit the net, the goaltender or even the ball.

Sometimes players fool you beautifully. You think they’re sleeping, members of both teams are splayed on the field or pitch, as those in the know call it, looking like mass casualties from a poison gas attack. 

Players are required to writhe. Anguish must be displayed in closeup by cameras on drones or wires.

When that is all done, the player is helped up by someone from either team and play resumes.

Sometimes it seems like a good time to take a little break and garner sympathy by lying in the cool grass and grimacing. Even if an opponent hasn’t tried to purée your leg or “head” your head into another time zone.

Yes, t'is a beautiful game and will be even more beautiful when hockey season returns.