A couple of mornings ago I had the TV on as the nominations for this year's Academy Awards were being announced. And I thought, "oh yawn". And it wasn't just because it was 5.30 am in Hollywood and I felt sorry for those poor people who had to look their best so early in the morning and be the bearers of this exciting news. Maybe they hadn't had their Starbucks yet but there was strangely very little excitement in their announcement.
The bigger reason for my reaction is that I've never been a huge fan of the Oscars, so listening to the list of people who might win was hardly going to get my heart racing. After all it's just a bunch of people who think they live a superior life to the rest of us and they get paid an obscene amount of money to be in a film which many of us are going to spend way too much money on to go watch in a cinema. Or that's my opinion of them anyway.
Now hold on, I hear you film-loving readers say, isn't that also true for footballers? Yes, indeed. Many footballers, as agreed on by many supporters and non-supporters, make way too much money for what they do. They act like celebrities, and we pay way too much to see the best players play.
However, I will admit I do see another similarity. The actors winning Oscars are being rewarded for being the best at their skill, just like the footballers who win World Cups. And just as I count the 880 days to the start of Russia 2018, there are many more people who are eagerly waiting for this year's Academy Awards ceremony. To each their own and all that. So I call a truce on my dislike of all things celebrity, of the film star variety. Well, most of them.
And if I can look beyond the shenanigans at Fifa I will go back to what I set out to do- to record the events happening around the world over the 1000 days. Russia's dealings with Ukraine is one of them. It's all been a little eerily quiet for a while. Observers and those in the know of Vladimir Putin's modus operandi say it's his way of controlling the "war" and he will escalate it when it suits him. Syria is still sadly in the news. It's been in state of civil war since 2011 and where will it be in 2018. And as I write this militants have attacked a hotel in Burkino Faso and killed at least twenty people.
Yet we still watch the films and support the football teams. It's a good distraction from everything else going on around us. It's also true that in some of these war-torn countries, (Iraq, Syria, Ukraine) football has been seen as an opportunity for hope in the despair. It is also used as a political tool and a way to promote nationalism.
With all this going on it is sometimes almost unfathomable to imagine that a World Cup will actually take place in just over two years. Ironically, and maybe that's not the right word, it will more likely be politics at Fifa that will derail Russia 2018 rather than Russian policies in Ukraine or Syria.
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