The World Cup starts in just four days’ time, but England games apart, I shan’t be watching. Instead, at the same time that the games are on, I’ll be heading back forty years to rewatch the 1986 Mexico World Cup, courtesy of my old VHS videos.
There are plenty of good reasons for diehard football fans to give this year’s tournament a red card. Ignoring the principle that more is less, the tournament has been ludicrously expanded to 48 teams – meaning it’ll drag on for six long weeks. Do we really want to spend three hours of our lives watching Jordan v Austria and Uzbekistan v Colombia in the group stages?
What we have this year is an over-bloated greed-fest. Admission to the 1982 World Cup final in Spain cost just £4.15, the top-priced tickets for this one are £24,500. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s also a Super Bowl-type concert at this year’s final, meaning that the half-time break will be a sacrilegious 45 minutes long. The stars headlining include Madonna, Shakira and BTS. (No, I haven’t heard of BTS either.) So instead, I’m going back to the simpler days when half time meant the reassuring presence of Jimmy Hill and Des Lynam and not a gyrating American pop singer in sight.
