‘Beautiful game’ is just an illusion

JACK MILNER

Germany, who rarely have a bad World Cup, returned home as champions after beating Argentina, another tournament stalwart, in a tight final. Hometown favourites Brazil struggled their way through to the semi-finals and, having lost key scorer Neymar through injury and captain Thiago Silva through a suspension, wilted tamely to Germany.

At the bottom end of the scale England once again suffered an early exit ignominy. I am always amazed how the British media play up their squad at each World Cup, only to watch them fall on their swords in the early rounds.

They were simply shocking, but then defending champions Spain were not much better. After their performance, we now can understand how they lost to Bafana Bafana. 

Perhaps one witty tweet put it into perspective. It read: “England have finally achieved one of their goals, they are now as good as Spain.”

There were the usual unsavoury incidents of biting, kicking, elbowing, diving and many more. And then I have to listen to garbage about soccer being “the beautiful game”.

It is an expression that drives me into a wild frenzy of indignation. There are lots of words I could use to describe the game of soccer – “beautiful” is not one of them. There are very few sports that can be described as “beautiful”. Three that do come to mind are gymnastics, diving and synchronised swimming, but only when performed at their very best.

So, I was delighted when an article appeared in the Sunday Times a few weeks back, headed: “Is the ‘beautiful game’ a limp cliché?” Argentinian novelist Jorge Luis Borges may have been a little harsh when he said: “Football is popular because stupidity is popular.”

George Orwell may have also been somewhat flippant when he commented: “There’s enough real cause of trouble and we need not add to it by encouraging young men to kick each other on the shins amid the roar of furious spectators.”

I also discovered that Brazilian footballer Pele is credited with first using the term “beautiful game” – or, as it is in Portuguese, joga bonito. Like most people, I have oodles of respect for Pele and wondered, perhaps, if something got lost in translation.

Investigating what the expression actually meant put a whole different spin on what Pele meant. He might be quite happy to hear it used in its current context but the Portuguese expression, literally translated, means “play pretty”. It’s a term used to encourage teammates “to play with honour, pride, respect, strength, and as a team – to remove cheaters, hackers, and divers”.

The whole point of sport is that it is competitive. People play to win and sometimes to do that they will bend rules and are even prepared to cheat. That is why sport cannot be described as beautiful.

What Pele was talking about was an ethic, a way to keep the game as clean as possible. That ethic I support, but sadly, as far as soccer is concerned, have rarely seen in action.

I also want to mention a man by the name of Ilan Smith. For those of you who watched Sunday’s final on SuperSport, you may have noticed a guy wearing a kippah, who predicted the outcome of the final.

His prediction was placed in a box and locked in before the start. At the end of the show Ilan came back into the studio, unlocked the box, and pulled out the piece of paper, which had been signed by somebody in the studio, and there it was: Germany would win 1-0 with Mario Götze scoring the winning goal in the 113^th minute.

English presenter Martin Tyler commented that he had seen British illusionist Dynamo do similar things. Ilan was delighted to be compared to Dynamo, but for the record the British illusionist was way ahead. 

Dynamo also predicted the Germans would go on to take the title, and that they’d do so with a late 113-minute goal from a young player. The street illusionist made the forecast two weeks ago when he appeared on Sky Sports News. He sealed his predictions in a brown envelope, announcing he would reappear on the show after the World Cup final to reveal just how accurate he had been.

He returned to the show on Tuesday morning and invited the hosts to open the envelope, which contained a CD. Upon playing it, they learned that he had recorded that either Neymar, Messi or Ronaldo would be forced to leave the tournament due to injury.

Neymar was ruled out of the World Cup due to injury following Brazil’s quarter-final clash against Colombia. Dynamo correctly guessed it would be due to a back injury.

His next guess was that a European team – either Germany or Italy – would go on to face a Latin American team in the final. He predicted that the Latin American team would be Argentina.

His last forecast was the winning goal, which he said would be the only goal of the final match. Dynamo successfully guessed that it would be scored by a player on the pitch in extra time after 113 minutes, and that the player would be one of the youngest.

Dynamo signed off his predictions with a telling “Auf Wiedersehen” – “goodbye” in German.

Remember, they are not soothsayers – just illusionists.