Beautiful game turns off Yanks

THE uniformed official at immigration in JFK recorded my fingerprints, snapped my photo, studied my visa and then, with a look of puzzlement, slowly took in my appearance which, after the rigours of a long-haul flight, was only slightly more dishevelled and unimpressive than usual — all scuffed shoes, jeans, t-shirt, scraggy hair, bulging lap-top bag with broken zip and, to top it all off, the haunted, not to say desperate, look of a helpless addict who hasn’t had a smoke in ten hours and would very much like to indulge his foul habit right here, right now, if not sooner, please.

But you don’t mess with US immigration and so I stood by patiently and offered a nervous smile as he checked my passport again, checked me out again.

“You a doctor of some kind?” he finally asked, in a what-the-hell-is-the-world-coming-to tone of voice.