Day -838. WorldCup2018.
Phew. It's over. Today was exhilaratingly exhausting, keeping up with Fifa election news in between attempting to get a normal day's work done. It's also been a few days of scouring news reports in an attempt to get a quasi accurate estimation of how the voting would go. And after the news that the new president wasn't Sheik Salman sunk in, the relief turned to a bit of a so-what-happens-now anti-climax. Apart from the jokes about Gianni Infantino not only being Swiss like Sepp Blatter but from the neighbouring town, there is a feeling amongst those in the know that Infantino knew how to win an election by giving the electorate what they wanted, more money, which is what the old Fifa did. Infantino has promised each national association $5m over 5 years. And this when the Fifa accounts to be presented at the next Fifa Congress in May will show a loss despite Fifa's massive revenues from sponsors and television. At today's Congress the acting secretary general, Markus Kattner, revealed that the Fifa crisis over the last year has cost Fifa $550m. But right now we have to wait and see what the presidency of Infantino will bring. More importantly, it will be interesting and important to see the effects of the reforms package that was approved today. More of that to come over the next few weeks and months.
But this is not what I planned entry number -838 to be about. After my attempts in the last week or so to find out if there was a story behind the Maltese FA and Prince Ali friendship, and the expectations of today had subsided and conversations had been had, I came to a couple of realisations. Despite my probing I do believe that the relationship between the MFA president, Norman Darmanin Demajo and Prince Ali is a friendship of respect. The MFA backed Prince Ali in last year's election and saw no reason to not be loyal to that support this time around. That friendly match in Turkey will always remain as an odd event in my head but maybe it was just that: an odd gesture of appreciation from Prince Ali. The MFA, and Maltese football went through some testing times under it's previous administration, including the alleged "bribe" paid to the former president by the 2006 German World Cup bid team. The public war between the current and former president tarnished Maltese football. With Daramanin Demajo there is more talk of what's happening on the pitches around Malta than suspicions of where development money from UEFA is ending up.
The other thought I had today is that I probably should explain or justify my continuous reference to Maltese football. It's a small island with, to be honest, a league of not hugely competitive or high entertainment value. The national team is beginning to move on from celebrating a 1-0 defeat as a victory, but it is still an achievement to get more than a couple of points in a World Cup or Euros qualifying campaign. So why do I do keep coming back to it? I feel like one of those English football supporters, the kind you read about in a magazine like "When Saturday Comes", who supports their local, non-league team. Your friends go off and support the Manchester United and Juventus' of the world but you remain loyal to the team you inherited as a supporter from your father, who took you to the rickety old stadium and you were in awe of these football players who you would then see picking up their newspaper in the local newsagent's like anybody else. It's like watching amateur sport where players are playing simply to win and for nothing else. And you know the players, you played football with them at lunchtime at school, you played tennis with them when they were younger (true story, 3 I can think of) and you drank beers with them.
Is this a romantic view that doesn't exist anymore, even in Malta? With more overseas players playing there now who need a financial incentive and with clubs being more professionally run, maybe it is. But it is still local. While the joke, or reality, is that Manchester United have more supporters in London than Manchester in Malta every football fan has team in Italy or England that many are fanatical about. And, yes, I have a team in England that I follow quite religiously and who are causing me no little amount of heartache this season but in my years before leaving Malta I quite happily reminded my friends that if Sliema Wanderers of Sliema, Malta were playing in a league deciding final match of the season on the same day as the biggest match of the season in England I would be at the Ta' Qali stadium in Malta quietly enjoying the much lower quality football.
And the same goes for the national team. On a midweek evening in April 1985 I was at Ta' Qali stadium to watch Malta beat Jordan 3-1 in a rather meaningless friendly. But it was exciting, it was a win. Myself and the other two or three hundred spectators didn't differentiate between a friendly or a competitive match: it was a win and we don't get many of those.
Yes, now it's changed. There were days when the stadium was full for an end of season match, in the days before the official capacity was known, or if was it wasn't monitored. With the saturation of live football on television there is even more reason for the locals to stay home. "Ha!", they say, "who wants to watch that rubbish at Ta' Qali when I can sit at home and watch United-Liverpool". Me, I would love to go on that 30-35 minute walk from our house to the stadium, sit in the near empty stands, listen to the players shouting at each other and hear the coach barking instructions from the other side of the pitch and be entertained by the supporters occasionally breaking into song, a song either borrowed from what they hear on Italian or English TV or an old fashioned village marching band special.
It's entertainment of a different value. And that's why I will look forward to the World Cup in 2018 to see football at it's best but I will always be like Jim, from Essex, in a story in "When Saturday Comes" supporting Grays Athletic on a cold February evening and loving every minute of it.
(On a maybe contradictory ending note, but at the same time unsurprising aside to the above entry given the reasons for me keeping this up for 1000 days, I would hardly be opposed to being in Russia in 838 days, not because I have a burning ambition to visit Russia per se, but it is the World Cup. I'm sure Jim from Essex wouldn't mind either).
No comments:
Post a Comment