Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "tim-howard"

The women of the Middle East are about to save me from the greatest banality known to man. I’m counting on them to care as little about the the World Cup as I do and to keep me entertained until men can once again talk about something other than Wayne Rooney’s groin.

Though I’ve long loved to play soccer, I scorn the watching of its endless buildup passes, the constant disappointment of a game which can be won with a single lucky goal, the sport’s failure to rein in rampant cheating and other pathetic behavior by its pampered players.

George Orwell wrote in one of his best essays that international sports – and he meant, mainly, soccer – was a disgusting tribal experience that was intended to keep us filled with nationalistic hate until it was time to have an actual war and go off to kill each other again in earnest. Living in the Middle East, where nationalism is such an incendiary factor and is so often in bloody evidence, I find I have no tolerance for the stupidity of sporting nationalism.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.