Tom Dunne: Chris Martin and co have no place at a World Cup final
The half-time show for the World Cup final at the New York-New Jersey Stadium. Picture: Martin Rickett/PA Wire
The World Cup half-time music performance re-opened one of the great music debates. In fact, it ended it. It was settled the minute Chris Martin appeared wild eyed and joyous amid a sea of replica shirted children. Coldplay: they just aren’t cool are they?
You know cool when you see it. Mick, Keith, BB King, Ian Curtis, Weller, Bob. You don’t need to describe it. You just point at one of them. Not cool is a longer list. Basically, it tends to be “most others”. Terminally uncool? Look no further than Chris.
It was always a stretch to expect anything he was involved in to be “cool”. And don’t get me wrong, I like his music. It’s brilliant, but he isn’t cool. And anything involving the World Cup should be cool. The tournament that gave us Pele, Cruyff and Beckenbauer should be coolness personified.
The music should have been the Sultans of Ping performing against a backdrop of the Wedding Present’s George Best album cover. Nick Cave could have joined them in a 1968 MUFC replica top to perform a Johnny Cash medley. That would have been a result.
Corporate America would have been aghast, but those of us raised on a diet of half-time Coke and crisps — people often referred to as ‘football fans’ — would have been happy. I may even have tried to convince you Chris is cool in some kind of odd way. But no. It is what it is.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. My earliest experience of “half-time entertainment” came on the terraces at Richmond Park supporting St Pat’s in the late 1980s. It was where I realised a League of Ireland terrace had a wisdom all of its own.
The first half would have been watched with ‘muted tension’. The opposition was pilloried, but our team wasn’t given a free ride either. Failure to deliver, to be honest, to try, to play for the shirt wasn’t taken lightly. Tension was palpable, broken only by half time.
It was then it became clear that some on that terrace knew more about the game than the rest of us. Men who had played to a decent level before injury, fatherhood, responsibility, bad luck, or cigarettes and alcohol had ended it all. They knew things and somehow, via Chinese whispers, it was communicated to all of us.
“Watch our number seven,” they’d say. “He’s new, but excellent.” Or we’d be told our number nine was “biding his time”.
The second half would often play out as predicted. There'd be a flash of quality, a moment of class, some heroic defending. A game would arrive.
There was nowhere to hide out there. Chancers — “spoofers” as Eamon Dunphy would say — were found out. It was honest graft, a bit of skill, an occasional glimpse of something few others could do. Enough moments over a season to know you were watching the Beautiful Game.
The evolution of the game from that to the corporate, advertising-heavy, bloated hulk it has become started in earnest with the Premier League and Sky Sports. A 90-minute event with a break for a hot pie wasn’t enough. It needed to be family friendly and a day long. Food and drinks, replica tops, music.
How far it has fallen was epitomised by the overturning of the USA red card. The commandant in a WWII game between prisoners of war and the camp guards wouldn’t have stooped so low. His own players would have stopped him.
And then came the music. We were told it wouldn’t interrupt the game. It did. Twenty-seven minutes. I was going to walk the dog. I’d say the players would have walked theirs if they had them. That might become a thing by 2030. The players walking pets at half time to avoid the music.
It took Wayne Rooney to cut through the baloney. The classic street player and Stereophonics fan. A man who knows his Northern Soul from his Southern Comfort. “That was crap,” he said. Expert punditry from the tournament’s top pundit.
He’s right. It was a crap idea, crap fit, crap length, crap execution, crap line-up, crap curation and a crap message. Crap at home. Crap in the stadium. The Americans call it soccer; we call it football. The difference has never been so jarring. One is a beautiful game. One isn’t. As Roy would say: “Muppets.”
