Football for albatrosses


28th July 2010


During the World Cup, I wanted to ask:

- Why do footballers spit? When you’re sweating, surely you’d want to keep water inside your body?

- Why are goalkeepers the only players with a water bottle within easy reach when they’re also the players who run around the least?

- Why do footballers hold hands with little children when entering the pitch? Should they be bringing minors to a battlefield?

- Has arguing with the referee ever worked?

- In women’s football, do players exchange their jerseys after a match?

- If both teams wore the same strip, would the players still be able to recognise their teammates? Or would they end up passing the ball to the other side?

- Could we organise a game with everyone in the same strip? In the spirit of scientific inquiry?



During the World Cup, I learned that:

- Footballers fall over a lot.

- Players from the other team help them fall.

- Footballers don’t actually need that much help to fall.

- One-touch play does not refer to a player keeling over from one tap by an opponent.

- A fallen footballer can recover surprisingly quickly if the referee’s call goes in his favour. Or if he doesn’t get any attention in the first place. This could have important implications for medical science.

- It’s hard being the goalie. If the ball spills out of your hands and into goal, you will be compared to the worst environmental disaster ever to befall the United States.

- Goalkeepers fall over a lot too.

- They have to fall over without any help.

- Footballers look very different from footballs. But not to members of the opposing team, who take every opportunity to kick both.

- Most handballs are armballs.

- A vuvuzela beside your ear is louder than thousands in the TV.

- Giving someone your sweat-soaked jersey after a match is a friendly gesture, not a request for laundry assistance. And you get a jersey soaked with someone else’s sweat in return. Everybody wins!

- Sometimes, a player wants a jersey so much he doesn’t wait for the match to end but starts pulling at it during play.

- Football enables a man to pat another man’s rear in public without anyone getting punched. Or arrested.

- There is more drama in a month-long tournament than there is in a year-long soap opera. Except that no one in the tournament seems to have shot J.R. Maybe next time.

- When the ball flies into goal, time slows down. This phenomenon can be observed more easily in video replays.

- If you score, your team-mates will jump on top of you. For this reason, it is advisable to remain standing or at least upright.

- That offside thing sort of makes sense now!

- ‘Rooney’ in the hands of a Japanese commentator sounds like ‘Looney’.

- ‘Penalty kick’ in Japanese is peekay.

- ‘Quarter-finals’ in Japanese is besuto eighto.

- Holding both hands up is universal language for ‘I didn’t do it, ref!’

- Once every four years, this planet splits into two universes – World Cup World and Non-World Cup World. In World Cup World, an octopus pronounces on the fate of nations and receives death threats when it has the temerity to be right. In Non-World Cup World, people do not threaten octopuses. They simply eat them.

- If I support a side, it will probably lose. I am as lucky an omen for a team as a dead albatross. Well, I knew this from previous World Cups but I thought that the jinx might have faded over time. It hasn’t. I backed a team in 11 of the 21 matches I watched this tournament. In one of those 11 instances, the, er, favoured side drew. In all the others, it lost.

So a few apologies are in order: Sorry, Spain. I really thought you’d be okay against Switzerland. Sorry, Brazil. I won’t do it again. Sorry, Argentina. If it makes you feel any better, I rooted for Germany in their next game. Sorry, Germany. I did try to make it up to you by not watching your match for third place. Even though I really wanted to. (Before you ask, I’m not responsible for what happened to France and Italy.)

- The tournament makes you wish it were safe to support a team without fear of bringing it down. It makes you wish that because of another thing I’ve learned from the World Cup.

- Football is fun. Even for albatrosses.


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Postscript

After this piece was run in The Straits Times, reader Colin Lim sent this in:

In line with FIFA’s aim of promoting football in the world, allow me to answer your questions:


1) Footballers used to hold the hands of their WAGs (that’s wives and girlfriends to the uninitiated) when entering the pitch, amongst other body parts. That proved to be too much of a distraction, especially for the England team, so this practice was abandoned in favor of this more family-oriented option.

2) No, arguing with the ref has never ever worked. But footballers still do it. That’s why they are footballers.

3) In women’s football, players do change jerseys after a match. But only in the filthy minds of the fans. And it’s often in slow-mo with multiple replays.

4) If both teams wore the same strip, footballers would not be able to recognize their teammates. Same if they wore sunglasses or changed their hairstyles.

5) Yes, we can have a game with everyone in the same strip. Or in any matching attire for that matter. But Nike and Adidas will cry foul over the loss of business opportunities.