Fantasy football of the worst kind
However, Fifa have already showered the world with blessings in the shape of a soon-to-be-released cinematic treat: Fifa the movie.
At first, I have to say I thought this was a joke, some kind of spoof to be unveiled later as a post-modern jest at our expense, a sophisticated trap for the unwary.
It now appears that this is real, however, for which much thanks.
I have only a sketchy sense of the movie’s narrative, based on a slick if nonsensical trailer: A large chunk of it focuses on a bunch of men sitting around a table coming up with Fifa as a title and seem to think of that as a good day’s work. The more you think of it, this seems not so much screenplay fantasy as documentary description of 9 to 5 at the organisation’s headquarters.
Personally I see this as a continuation of one of Sam’s early breakthrough roles, that of Damien Thorn, the literal spawn of Satan in Omen III: The Final Conflict (“You, my disciples will truly inherit this Earth!”), though Sam will clearly be projecting a good deal less charm as Mr Havelange.
The reason this movie will bring in the awards, though, is in the casting of Tim Roth as Sepp Blatter.
Roth is the English actor who made a splash for himself, oh, just the 20 or so years ago, in a couple of Quentin Tarantino movies. He was also one of the apes in Planet Of The Apes more recently: an angry gorilla, I think.
In the few seconds I saw of him impersonating the Oily Creep who runs Fifa I couldn’t quite remove the memory of Mr Orange from Reservoir Dogs, but hair and make-up certainly seemed to produce an eerie facsimile of Mr Blatter.
Is it destined to become a cult classic? I think not, based on the slim evidence to hand: too much CGI crowd in one scene, while Sam Neill’s knowing grin looked just a little too self-aware in another.
Based on that, I wouldn’t be advising anyone to lay out their hard-earned cash seeing it.
If you do, you could end up like Mr Orange in the famous coffee-shop scene: “Hey, he’s convinced me. Give me my dollar back.”
The title for this Fifa extravaganza is “United Passions”. You have been warned.
Yesterday the Munster hurling championship began, or as I like to call it Christmas without the bizarre Judeo-Christian shamanism.
After last season there’s a sense that hurling is thriving at the moment, in particular when you see the widely-anticipated Sky Blue procession to September in Gaelic football.
Cliché thought it might seem, though, it’s when an organisation is at its absolute height that steps must be taken to safeguard its future.
There are a few issues worth addressing in the game, and one of them is a classic trap I fell into half-a-dozen lines above.
The sheer difference between football and hurling strengthens rather than weakens the attraction of suggestions such as Davy Fitzgerald’s (pictured) recent advocacy of a second referee in hurling.
Those charged with promoting the small ball game would do well to act on such suggestions for a couple of reasons: leave their applicability to be decided on a case by case basis, but taking the initiative when it comes to innovation would serve to separate the two codes significantly and prevent lazy insertions of football disciplinary developments into hurling.
(The fact that the black card hasn’t been introduced into hurling isn’t the point here; the surprise that it hasn’t been introduced into hurling is the point.)
There are other challenges for hurling both large- and small-scale.
The difficulty in marketing a game whose greatest exponents are masked, for instance; the visibility of those exponents in an era of paranoid managers; the continued vexed question of Divisions 1A and 1B and the equally continuing question of what can be done to bring second-tier counties up in standards; the sheer difficulty of refereeing the hand-pass when performed at intercounty speed, which brings us back to where we checked in, with Davy Fitzgerald’s two-referee suggestion.
The fact hurling had a terrific 2013 isn’t a sign pointing towards future decline. Course not. But neither does it mean the game is destined to flourish forever. Hurling is too valuable to too many people not to take steps to improve it from a position of strength, surely.
The other great thing about the World Cup is nowadays you have a modern variant of one of Myles na gCopaleen’s category of bores.
Myles relied on the Man Who Has Read It In Manuscript (“His new one? Oh...”), whose equivalent when you were in school was to produce a Panini/Match Attax card with the likeness of Johnny Rep/Careca/Carlos Valderrama, apply as per age group.
His present-day incarnation is as a social savage who trawls (not trolls, take note) the further recesses of the internet to get a handle on the third-choice left-full on call for Algeria.
It’s a pile of work, a commitment beyond anything you’d hear on the altar, but it’s not done out of any genuine love of the game.
No, those lonely clicking hours are spent on the off-chance a conversation can be directed, at some stage, towards the shattering denouement when our monster says; “Yeah, I noticed him there last year on Eurosport Seven/The Food Channel/MTV Interiors.”
Inevitably some fool will bite and ask if it was the Africa Cup of Nations. The knockout punch comes when our man makes a face as though he’s drinking vinegar through a dirty sock and responds with: “Well, the Confederation of African Football Orange CAN U17, but I suppose it’s much the same...”
Just remember one thing: no matter how you react to this beast, no jury in the world will convict you.
I believe in America.
Those are the opening words of The Godfather, a firm favourite in this household, and many others.
They’re spoken in darkness, at the very start of the movie, by Bonasera the undertaker, whose face gradually emerges from the gloom.
That darkness was the hallmark of the great cinematographer Gordon Willis, who died last week. I wish I could crowbar in a sports reference to justify his inclusion here, but it’s The Godfather. Gordon Willis, okay? Put it this way, Gordon wouldn’t have had anything to do with Fifa’s United Passions. Even if they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
