World Cup 2010: 10 losers « Enemies of Reason

12Jul/1026

World Cup 2010: 10 losers

1. Adrian Chiles.

The man once memorably described by Stewart Lee as a 'toby jug full of hot piss' has had a miserably bad World Cup. Time was when Chiles was a rather matey counterpoint to the deadly seriousness of the BBC's Match of the Day dourness; now he just looks like a slightly bored lumpy cushion whose one-note schtick has run out of steam. Soon to be shunted onto a GMTV sofa to talk about cookery, diets, celebrities and all kinds of tedious wank instead of football, it's hard to see how the stardust has worn off in so short a space of time.

Chiles was so unappealing, and fronted such a desperately bad ITV effort, that he might as well have presented the final yesterday in his pants and vest - no-one was watching. This despite the rubbishness of the BBC - ITV always manage to go that one notch lower, and even Lineker's hackneyed trash was seen as being superior to Chiles's hackneyed trash. Dark days.

Is it just that anyone moving from BBC to ITV for the bigger bucks and the better break - think Eric and Ernie flopping on ATV, or the Goodies, or well just about anyone really - tarnishes anyone's career? Or is it just the pressure to be funny in those tiny spaces between advert breaks doesn't suit his style? Or is it just that pundits, presenters and analysts have been shown to be shite? Which brings me to number two.

2. Without exception, all pundits, presenters and analysts on TV.

Go on, name me one pundit you looked forward to seeing on telly. One. Just one. No...? No. Of course not, no. Fucking garbage, the lot of them. When they weren't blithely going through the teamsheets at the last minute to see if they'd heard of a Premiership player, they were wrongly predicting the results with a smug certainty reserved for those blokes down the betting shop who end up in grainy CCTV footage throwing chairs through windows when their sure things don't quite come off.

For the likes of Shearer and Hansen, they're like old-school stand-up comedians still going through the same routines they did in the 1970s, unaware that everyone in the audience has seen it. Yes Alan, the defending was scandalous; yes, the other Alan, he's got to hit the target from there. Andy Townsend is just all kinds of diabolical wrong. And then there's Kevin Keegan, a man whose optimism for England, in the face of their inherent shitness, reminds me of an excitable golden retriever with its tongue hanging out, waiting for you to chuck that tennis ball one more time. But they all ended up looking like mugs - unable to tell you what was going on, who was going to win, anything at all.

3. Team England.

Christ, they were bad. Really, hummingly bad. Incapable of putting two passes together. First touch bouncing out for a throw. Slagging off their own fans. Fighting among each other. You'd hope that this would be the prelude for the England management to take a flamethrower to the 'Golden Generation' and start looking to the future. But I don't think they will. Beckham will still be lingering around like Iago, and the same failures will be trundled out for the next set of qualifiers, and we won't learn anything. But somehow that sense of expectation will have returned...

4. Whoever did this graphic.

5. Anyone who advertised anything.

Didn't look too good, those endorsements by players who turned to cack as soon as they entered the southern hemisphere. Still, Messi, Rooney and chums have been laughing all the way to the bank.

6. Corden.

I don't want this to turn into an 'ITV were the worst thing in the history of broadcasting ever during this World Cup' piece, but fucking hell. I once tried to watch an entire half an episode of his World Cup show, just to see how bad it was. Christ! I couldn't have done it if I'd nailed myself to the floor - and even then, the pain wouldn't have been enough to distract me from the horror. Corden's ubiquity got to the stage where a device to banish him from the internet had to be invented.

Maybe TV is largely run by Ruperts and Tristrams, and they think Corden is what plebs are like. So they must think we like Corden, because he's one of us. Except it's not a class thing at all - he's just fucking atrocious, in every way, in every sense. Please, for the love of all that's good in the world, for the sake of humanity, don't let him back in four years' time.

7. Interesting football.

I know Spain are apparently 'beautiful' because they can pass in triangles without ever getting the ball anywhere; and yes, compared to England's pisspoorness, they look like veritable footballing giants. But there were so many nervy matches, so many scaredycats unwilling to try and play the ball around a bit, that even pedestrian, ordinary Spain end up looking like geniuses. Where were the cracking games, the 4-3s, the 3-2s, the fightbacks, the comebacks, the dramatic wins, the stunning spectacles? Not really anywhere, and that's a shame.

8. Tyldesley.

Honestly, I don't have a vendetta against ITV, but fuck me sideways, that game where Jim Beglin got taken ill was the most gear-grindingly tedious affair ever. You don't see the point of Beglin until he's not there - but he provides a gap where you don't have to listen to Tyldesley for a few seconds. Some readers may be aware of 'pass the gap' games. Beglin's the gap. You don't think you need the gap, until all of a sudden you get more and more desperate for it. But that analogy would imply that Tyldesley is actually anything other than otiose drivel, and he isn't.

9. The Dutch.

Oh dear. I had kind of wanted the Oranje to win the final, to make up for those previous defeats, but they couldn't get the bloody ball in the net, and then went and blamed the ref for booking players who had made horrendous fouls. The blame lies with the Dutch team themselves - for once not kicking lumps out of each other, but taking it out on Spain in the final. It wasn't the 'beautiful passing velvety soft loveliness v ugly brutal Leeds of the 70s' final that a lot of people are saying it was, but still.

10. Sepp Blatter.

Made to look like a dick, as usual, for breezily dismissing the use of technology in football and then having on the same day two clear incidents that showed why its use is obvious in the 21st century. And just generally for being him really.

All other suggestions welcome...

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Comments (26) Trackbacks (0) ( subscribe to comments on this post )

magicman
July 12th, 2010 - 13:16

Why not write a ten winnder column to complement this creative bile ? I’m not knocking it, but it’s always easier to be negative

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- Anton Vowl
  July 12th, 2010 - 13:19
  
  Maybe – if you would be patient – you would see the ’10 winners’ one later. In imagining I wasn’t compiling a positive piece, it would appear that out of the two of us, it is you who is the most negative…
  
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magicman
July 12th, 2010 - 13:17

christ. 10 winners !!! y’know..

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Billy Gannon
July 12th, 2010 - 13:22

You should watch RTE’s football analysts. Dunphy and Giles have been doing it for 25 years. Look up Eamon Dunphy on Youtube.

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Doxie
July 12th, 2010 - 13:30

Paul the octopus could go in the winners list, whether or not you think he’s a precognitive. I don’t, but octopuses are cool.

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Miss Monkeh
July 12th, 2010 - 13:32

If Spain played beautiful football, then I’m Miss bloody World. Timid tippy-tappiness is not beautiful, it’s dull; I know Spain are capable of beautiful football but this wasn’t it.

The final was desperately dull; the Oranje running about like bull rhinos on heat, not an ounce of grace and subtlety, and Spain flinging themselves about like leaves in the wind. It’s been a poor World Cup in my opinion.

I still think Germany and Argentina were the best things about the World Cup, in part due to Crazy Diego and his rectangular suit.

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BenM
July 12th, 2010 - 13:43

To me Blatter is a hero.

B*llocks to the interfering TV busybodies and their useless, game-sapping “technology”.

The element that makes football the greatest spport on earth is its simplicity and the fact it is played in the same way from grassroots to world cup final.

I’m sick to the back teeth of the stifling interfer “technology” in my second favourite sport, cricket. The telly mandarins can go to hell and leave the sport alone.

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- Charlie
  July 12th, 2010 - 14:24
  
  Yeah, cricket’s really turned to shit in the last few years, hasn’t it? All those correct decisions ruining the game.
  
  /sarcasm
  
  Not really sure which planet you live on I’m afraid.
  
  Though I guess Blatter is a hero, if your heroes are corrupt, incompetent bureaucrats.
  
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  - BenM
    July 13th, 2010 - 07:52
    
    Cricket’s popularity has – not unsurprisingly – coincided with a very real revolution in technique and, probably more importantly, world class athletic fitness.
    
    If you think it’s down to poxy spirit-of-the-law disrupting LBW referrals, stop-the-game-for-5-minutes run out calls or witless powerplays, then it is you who resides on planet loon-ville.
    
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LeProf
July 12th, 2010 - 13:45

France should have made your top 10.

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BenM
July 12th, 2010 - 13:46

…and I’m not going to correct my typos I’m that angry!!!!

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Jason
July 12th, 2010 - 13:48

A couple of positives:

1) Clarence Seedorf wasn’t that bad. He wasn’t *amazing*, but he wasn’t bad at all. And he tamed the Jabulani before any actual footballers could manage it, which was impressive to watch.

2) The BBC’s 2130 slot of context reports from South Africa were actually really good, albeit undermined ridiculously by going back to the studio and “So Alan, can you imagine having lived in District 6?” “Shocking, Other Alan, shocking”.

And a quick point about ‘beautiful passing velvety soft loveliness v ugly brutal Leeds of the 70s’, which I don’t expect anyone not from Leeds to care for: There was no such thing as ‘beautiful passing velvety soft loveliness v ugly brutal Leeds of the 70s’, because if Leeds were faced with such loveliness they would just outlovely a team and beat them that way, just as Spain would on a bigger stage today. It’s just that the best way of beating Spain is by kicking Xavi and Iniesta up into the air, but if a team decided that their best chance against Leeds was to do the same to Giles and Gray (and it often was) then they’d tend to get outbrutalized instead. Because a lot of deficient teams went the second route, Revie’s Leeds has that reputation, but they would be better compared to a Spain (not *as* good, but they were different times) than to Holland.

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Stuart
July 12th, 2010 - 13:57

Eric and Ernie flopped when they went to Thames of course (although they didn’t do too well on ATV in the 60′s either)

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- Meurig
  July 14th, 2010 - 22:50
  
  Doesn’t the career of the great Rowland Rat cast doubt on this particular thesis?
  
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Mr Crocus
July 12th, 2010 - 14:01

And a worthy no. 11: ITV Live. Just awful, awful quality streams that kept stopping, restarting and playing ads for 3 minutes while you waited for the action not to start. Want to watch the last group matches simultaneously? Sorry. But luckily you could be kept entertained by the searing insight in the live chat box which *did* stubbornly keep going – because you couldn’t turn the bloody thing off.

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Ian Betteridge
July 12th, 2010 - 14:31

Hmmm, I actually liked Chiles – best thing about ITV coverage, which I know isn’t saying much.

Pundits-wise, Clarence Seedorf was worth his money, if only for his utterly fantastic voice. Otherwise… meh.

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Mikey
July 12th, 2010 - 14:53

I thought Jürgen Klinsmann when wheeled out, was quite insightful with his analysis, before the others roundly turned and mocked him, as if being the only one in the room that not only won the thing, but also managed in the last one was clearly a barrier to actually knowing what was going on in a World Cup. Personally I think it was shameful that both BBC and ITV didn’t have a single pundit in the studio that was either Dutch or Spanish, as if some white British guys are more knowledgeable about the teams from watching La Liga and whatever Champions League games they’ve managed to wank over.

The biggest losers of the tournament though has to be the poor sods in the townships, who despite managing to eek an existence without electricity, clean water, medication, and hindered by poverty, AIDS and poor education. Had to put up with the patronising, embarrassment of TV crews, football pundits and millionaire footballers wandering around their homes making platitudes about their existence both in front of them and in the studio, which just conveyed the stereotypes that they had before going there. They deserved better than what they got and were promised by this World Cup.

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- Arthur Eld
  July 13th, 2010 - 06:42
  
  Holy shit! British pundits must be really bad when you think Klinsmann was good! Dunno what he said on British TV, but on German TV he was… overwhelmingly horrible. Even compared to all our other extremely shitty pundits he stuck out like a turd in a pool of diarrhea.
  
  BTW – where’s Italy in that list? Or maybe they should be on the winner’s list, ’cause they brought so much joy to Germany with their performance…
  
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Souperman
July 12th, 2010 - 15:19

I can name one pundit who was worth it, but he only got about ten minutes during the whole world cup (on telly at least).

Danny Baker. Love him or loathe him, in a ten minute spell one evening he showed up all the other Beeb morons for the cliche-spouting-money-guzzling tot they were.

And as it happens I love Danny Baker. Not sexually, headmaster…

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- Anton Vowl
  July 12th, 2010 - 15:28
  
  Good call on the Bake. Enjoyed listening to his radio show during the tournament.
  
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El Gordo
July 12th, 2010 - 15:24

You forgot the French team…

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- Anton Vowl
  July 12th, 2010 - 16:30
  
  They’re in the ‘winners’ section, though not for being winners…
  
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George Allwell
July 12th, 2010 - 16:11

Danny Baker is always outstanding on the radio (sat morn) – not got the looks or slickness of a Lineker and, erm, Chil…. OK, just Lineker – but is funny, knowledgable, and integrates analysis and participation with anecdotes, games and interviews.

Not sure why Spain are getting so much grief here Anton, but the England problem is not ability its a combination of the factors Spain have now managed.

England forgot how to keep the ball.
Spain kept the ball, even if not always going forward that, surely, is the greatest lesson we can learn? Teach our players, from a young age, to keep the ball?

England were tired, physically and mentally.
Spain play a similar number of games in La Liga, but have developed a strength of character and winning habit. They also play as a team. Big names are dropped, and the system overrides anything – hence Fabregas, Silva and Torress can find themselves on the bench even though they all play in this wonderful league of ours.

England were tactically naive.
The players wanted to ignore the manager, and then just forgot altogether versus Germany. Gung-ho attacking football (so popular under the Keegan days), a style that served us and Argentina so well against the Germans, is a thing of the past; or at least if current trends continue. Attacking with pace like Arsenal and Real Madrid is wonderful to watch but so difficult to execute and easy (ask Lyon and Man United) to pick off the space. Spain keep the ball, don’t up the tempo unless they see an opportunity or necessity and control the game.

It was a shame Holland decided to ‘park the bus and start a fight club’ because they have the players to take Spain on, and the winning habit; but they obviously saw the footballing lesson Germany were given and focused on stopping Spain controlling possession. Massive shame.

I watched some of the Corden Show, and the show with Andy Murray rapping was funny. So were Arshavin and Davids on Sat night (both had clearly been on the smoke) but out of, say, two hours total watching, I laughed maybe 5 times so not the worst comedy ratio but it was utterly painful at times (especially when the token wag spoke or Corden danced with JLS and is less painful than reading the Mail comments board or HYS;which I’m pretty sure is the only other leisure activity available to me).

Anyway, the Enemies of Reason World Cup Coverage excelled, and with only another million hours till the next one, in fucking Brazil – surely the tactics will have changed by then, with Gary Neville and Jamie Carra as pundits and the world will be a better place; oh, and Wilshire will be too tired and Gary Cahill will have been shagging Adam Johnson’s Mum or something…

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Jonathan Walsh
July 12th, 2010 - 21:45

re point 1: and Jonathan Ross to come

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Malcolm Armsteen
July 13th, 2010 - 00:18

Beckham was like Banquo, the ghost at the feast. Iago was a self-serving, scheming sly bastard who told lies about his boss and in the end made him think he was shagging his wife. So not like any England player at all, really.

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Graeme
July 13th, 2010 - 20:01

Never mind just Tyldesley or just ITV, ALL commentators (with the notable exception of Jonathan Pearce) had a shocker. Little England, no knowledge outside of the Premier League, patronising bollock-spouters to a man.

If I had control of the Science & Technology budget I’d spend it all on cloning a young Barry Davies, locking him in a room and making him commentate on all football, for ever.

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