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We need united team in green to banish the World Cup blues
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Big-time sport is now a business before it is a game. We enjoy the spectacle. But we pay the price.
Like the sadistic fiasco at the Stade de France in Paris last Wednesday, when the Irish were ejected from next year's football World Cup in South Africa by the captain of the inferior team on the night committing a double foul to set up the goal the French needed to stay in.
Nothing has been so revealing as the chorus of excuses for the French win: ‘The referee did not call the foul’; ‘Sure it happens all the time’; ‘The touch judge did not raise his flag.’.
The ‘winners' celebrated afterwards, but many of the French fans had the grace to confess they were deeply ashamed.
From the episode we learn three things: that there is now little sportsmanship left in professional sport; that big money talks; and that the volatile French are bad losers.
The money, of course, comes first. What else? David Beckham, at my last count, was on £3.3m a year at Los Angeles Galaxy. Cristiano Ronaldo formerly of Manchester United, bought a Bentley last year for £350,000 and then spent £150,000 to buy his CR7 number plate. (Seven was his shirt number.)
Those who know say he spent more than £2m on cars in his six years in Manchester. But for the stars to be able to flash this sort of dough, the men in suits who pay them, and bid the transfer prices up, have first to make it; and this is where last week's unsporting disgrace in Paris comes in.
FIFA, the governing body whose members call the tune from their Swiss headquarters, would have regarded it as a major disaster if the humble Irish had made it to South Africa next summer: a major disaster, that is, if the price of Irish inclusion was to be the elimination of France. There is much more football money to be made out of the French, you see!
Figures are being bandied about. One is that the World Cup qualification is worth €1bn to the French economy, what with merchandising, airline tickets, hotels, television rights, the lot. The Irish take would have been much smaller, but still hugely significant. £100m is one estimate.
FIFA is selling match tickets for South Africa ranging from £120 for a seat behind the goal at the opening match to £543 for a pitch-side seat at the final. The injustice of the loss of a rightful share of this kind of money has fanned the rage. On Wednesday evening, the football correspondent of the Daily Telegraph was obliged to email his last early-edition copy to London when the score was still one-nil to the Irish.
Ignorant of the debacle to follow, he termed the French play “atrocious”, the Irish goal “superb”. The French fans booed their team off the field at half time — as well as their unpopular manager, Raymond Domenech, when his face appeared on the big screen.
But big money talks, does it not? Lacking fair means, the French captain, Thierry Henry, was prepared to win by foul.
There is an obvious way to avoid a repeat of this flagrant robbery and that is to provide for a video official to monitor the match, as one did in Dublin on Saturday, when the Irish rugby XV played Fiji, and which is the international rule in both cricket and tennis.
FIFA say they object to this on principle: what principle? The principle that the crass injustice and subterfuge of their present match arrangements should not be exposed?
Meantime, at home, heroic team or no, the FAI — already strapped for cash — is left to pick up the pieces in Dublin. It will now be deprived of the £13m it would have taken next year in the spin-off from World Cup qualification; and this just at the moment when it is having to meet its share of the £50m the redeveloped stadium at Lansdowne Road is costing.
Of course, there is a way out. There usually is. The FAI and the IFA in Belfast should compose their differences and merge, so that the green jerseys would play for all 32 counties in footie as they do — so brilliantly at the moment — in rugby.
This would ease the financial problem, enlarge the talent pool — and extend joy and fraternity among Irish fans. A long line of great players has favoured it: Pat Jennings, Martin O'Neill, George Best.
And it has happened before: the last time, regrettably, as long as as 1973 when an all-Ireland team ran the world champions, Brazil, believe it or not, very close: the score was four goals to three — at Lansdowne Road.
But the ‘Irish' team, organised by Northern Ireland and Wolves' striker Derek Dougan, had to take the field disguised as Shamrock Rovers XI because of IFA objections.
All a bit out-of-date you know. It would be great if the rudeness of the French management and the greed of FIFA could achieve something positive: an all-Ireland team for the next World Cup.
One way or another, I suspect the French will have some revenge coming their way.
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Comments
56 Comments
An all Ireland side would be great, but FIFA should allow for those players who may not wish to be a part of it to play for either, Scotland or England.
Posted by Sean Donohue | 10.12.09, 19:36 GMT
"Euska Herrial
WE EXIST - deal with it."
Who ever denied that you existed? Paranoia is quite a seriously problem Mickey, get it looked into - after all, one wouldn't like to see you stripped of the ability to daily torment these pages which your sectarian drivel.
Posted by Euskal Herria | 07.12.09, 16:35 GMT
Euska Herrial
WE EXIST - deal with it.
Posted by mark's nemesis | 03.12.09, 19:37 GMT
"I want to support my country at sports, it's as simple as that."
Not quite. If you want to support your "country" then support Ireland - or if you don't want to do that, then Wales, Scotland or England are all yours to choose from.
Northern Ireland, a truncated part of the province of Ulster, is not a country in any sense of the word, and never has been.
Posted by Euska Herrial | 03.12.09, 13:14 GMT
I'm not being bigoted or sectarian, but as an Irish unionist born in Northern Ireland I want to support my country at sports, it's as simple as that.
I am proud to watch Northern Ireland, as a small nation we have held our own, and I always hold out hope of qualification, and we have been close the last two campaings!
I wish Northern Ireland was recognised at the Olympics better, I don't like us being part of Team GB, I wish it was Team UK, but at the same time I accept it as being a historical lable, just as we are part of the Ireland rugby team, Northern Ireland does not get recognised and while I do not like the fact, I still see the Ireland rugby team as my team.
Should we have our own National Athem, yes, I think so, I don't like our use of GSTQ, but that is where we are.
But please, if you want to support the Republic, please do so, I do as my second team anyhow, but Northern Ireland will always be my first team and I for one would not want a joint RoI / NI team.
Posted by Steven73 | 03.12.09, 10:01 GMT
surely ,seeing as any footballer born in Northern Ireland is entitled to play for the republic ,we already have a de facto if not de jure All Ireland team.
Posted by kevin | 02.12.09, 22:04 GMT
"were the 4 provinces ever under central control, apart from when they were under British rule?"
Was England ever under central control before the Vikings invaded and Alfred the Great appeared? Was Germany ever under central control before Napoleon invaded and formed the Confederation of the Rhine? No, and...? What does that have to do with the Irish soccer team?
If you term the Republic a foreign country being that 40 per cent of the population (and rising) feels Irish, and Irish only, that you yourself as a Northern citizen are entitled to an Irish passport, and that you share the same island, much of the same culture and up until 1922 were part of the same country, then I can only think that you live in the realm of Unionist fantasy.
Imposed borders are just that, imposed. Tell the Alsatians that during 1870-1918 France was a "foreign country". While "rationalizing" as such might serve to justify your petty sectarian outfit, it doesn't render it any less laughable.
Posted by Dublin | 29.11.09, 16:49 GMT
"The only time i remember the Irish rugby squad playing in Belfast our national anthem was banned from being played although players from Northern Ireland have to stand for the Irish national anthem in Dublin."
Which is what the Ulster Branch asked for and when they got it they did not want it.
Posted by Bill | 28.11.09, 22:41 GMT
Its refreshing to hear a Unionist talking about Irishmen coming together in a green jersey to play the so-called beautiful game or is it backward game. there is such a thing as video replays, digital clocks and sovineer footballs for lucky supporters. Will this overated sport ever join the 21st century ?
Posted by maurice quinlan | 26.11.09, 19:48 GMT
Works for cricket, works for golf, works for polo, works for ....
Posted by Sport Billy Hey | 26.11.09, 13:42 GMT
Works for rugby. Works for soccer. Let’s do it and live it up.
Posted by GreenEyed Pea | 26.11.09, 12:53 GMT
Fair Play,
If you don't recognise the border, well that's your problem. It exists, whether you accept it or not.
It has no relevance to the modern age that the six counties of NI were once part of an ancient Irish province (by the way, serious question: were the 4 provinces ever under central control, apart from when they were under British rule?)
Borders have changed throughout the world over the centuries, and even in recent times the borders between eastern european states have changed, and do not always reflect "ancient kingdoms."
So again, why should I want my team to join with that of a foreign country?
Posted by Jeff | 26.11.09, 12:00 GMT
It's not bigotry to want NI to play separately - I would regard myself as a Unionist but have no desire to merge with England, Scotland, or Wales either!
Posted by steve | 26.11.09, 11:39 GMT
Mickey, wrong. There is no mention about "crushing Saxons" (of which you are not one being that you're not English).
The only mention comes in the third (unsung) verse which goes "out yonder waits the Saxon foe, so chant a soldier's song".
Northern Ireland has no anthem, and the only "official anthem" is a highly contentious one, unacceptable to upwards of 40 per cent of your own population.
The same cannot be said of our anthem in the Republic.
Posted by Dublin | 26.11.09, 11:36 GMT
Dublin, since it is mainly nationalists/republicans in NI who don't like the anthem used by NI, do you think they are sitting about coming up with more "appropriate" anthems? If not, why not do you think?
The Republic's anthem, doesn't "degrade any other countries"? I might be wrong, but isn't there some reference or other to 'crushing the Saxon foe'??
Posted by mark's nemesis | 26.11.09, 11:09 GMT
As for all those proud "Ulster-Scots", demanding that God Save the Queen be recognized as their national anthem etc.
Here's a few lines from that anthem:
"Lord, grant that Marshal Wade,
May by thy mighty aid,
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
and like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush,
God save the Queen."
Let's have an end to this tripe about GSTQ being the Northern Irish anthem, it's not. It's the English/UK anthem and a not inoffensive one either. Very easy to get up in arms over the Republic's anthem (which is a standard one as far as anthems goes and doesn't degrade any other countries) but when it's your "own", ah, then it's a different story.
Farcical.
Posted by Dublin | 26.11.09, 10:51 GMT
Couldn't diagree more. We're either a united Ireland or we're not. Currently we are not. So its 2 seperate countries arbitrarily joining for football matches. Why not mould a combined German and Austrian team, what about France and Switzerland, an all conquerring Brasil/Argentina combno?
Posted by Simon | 26.11.09, 10:45 GMT
Jeff
If you believe that NI is a country - and sadly you do - you must have had a misspent youth. It is in fact PART of the ancient Irish province of Ulster, never mind say Ireland.
Posted by Fair Play | 26.11.09, 08:17 GMT
All the nay sayers seem to be using the same old rubbish catholic/nationalist labels that have been going around for decades. The troubles have been officially over now for more than 10 years, those that perpetuate the hate years afterward are old, sad, and soon to be left behind with the times.
Posted by Sean | 25.11.09, 21:17 GMT
Not Convinced
Your sarcasm about sums up the whole north/south problem, and not just about football. As a citizen of the Republic I resent you and yours heaping relentless hatred on us. Ask yourself SERIOUSLY please, what harm have we ever done you ?
Faults and all, we don't need walls to keep our people from each others throats.
But ABOVE ALL I resent the notion that we are pining away without a "WEE" part of Ulster. Trust me at least this once. We rarely or NEVER give you a thought ! especially now that democracy has been forced upon "Ulster", and the place is imploding anyway, as all unjust (and artificial in your case) places do.
So knock yourself out with flags and drums and God Save Your Queen. Read my lips - we don't give a stuff !
Posted by Fair Play | 25.11.09, 20:34 GMT
56 Comments