On Sunday, July 8, 2018, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:
----(Anecdotal) Na true I wan talk again O ! Nowadays, football is politics, politics football with a dose of racism
No football today. On Sunday, the 8th of July , FIFA 2018 is enjoying some rest. It is their Sabbath.
Football brings out the worst emotions in some people. The very worst that has been reported so far about referee violence is from the wicked days of Apartheid South Africa when a White Apartheid referee ( son of gun) showed the African a player a yellow card, which the player refused to acknowledge; this was followed by a red card which the Brother refused whereupon there and then the referee took out his revolver and shot the Brother dead....
It's still the sad situation that the coaches, trainers, team managers or whoever it is that selects the players who should represent African nations continue to favour African players playing in the European Leagues over the current tough, rough and ready home-grown talent , killer instinct untamed and usually hungry to score and to make a name for themselves, whereas some of the millionaire class stars playing abroad despite being indisputably still nationalistic/ patriotic, are often too arrogant or lazy to take orders from their national coaches; after all the European League is where the honey and money is, where their bread is being buttered.
And what is to be said of the Dutch , German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian Leagues after the less than spectacular performance of those nations, this time around?
Maybe as a result of "Western Education" one of our problems is that we love hiring foreign coaches to train our national football teams. Nigeria was doing Okay with Stephen Keshi , just as Senegal has done spectacularly well with Aliou Cissé , even if on the whole, no matter the nationality of the referee, African teams have to play against referees and cross-eyed linesmen
Only the cameras do not lie and the camera as reliable witness does not have to swear on the Bible or any other book to testify that Colombia was cheated in that match against Japan ( a red card and a penalty when a yellow card and a doubtful penalty (maybe) should do. I read the sign today : it's sometimes Sense and Sensibility versus Pride and Prejudice...
The most conspicuous absence in the 2018 world cup : CHINA was not there. Holland and Italy were not there either, but must they always be there? It's only a matter of time before China will win the World Cup.
Unfortunately, we never got to see what both sides could have been anticipating: the mother of battles, a final showdown between Shia Iran and the sunny side of Sunni Saudi Arabia in the quarter finals , the Semi-finals or the dream final match for the world cup . No making of the sign of the cross, in such matches just a " Bismillah" and an "Allahu Akbar!" and an" InshAllah " may the best side win - as each side gets locked in mortal football combat, a minor jihad, with red or yellow cards awarded for minor or major infractions , minor or major sins in the sports Jihad division. If there is injustice as so often is the case , it so happens that then the best man does not win.
There was Brazil, Uruguay, Nigeria, Senegal , Morocco, Egypt ,Tunisia. Too painful to go into all the sorry details. When you are not awarded a penalty when you should be awarded a penalty and when without the slightest delay or hesitation or second consultation, a penalty is unjustly awarded against you, or a yellow card or a RED card is unjustly dealt against you, it is very painful. If I had refereed those games things would have been different . When I blow my whistle and I myself place the ball where it should be placed, for a penalty they would know that it's a penalty. They would have known that red is red, a yellow card is a yellow card just as some time ago they knew what it meant when they heard the song "Black is Black, I want my country back". They would have known that this is a just , no nonsense referee...
Japan which was a piece of cake for Jamaica some years ago, was not cheated. They and South Korea were not cheated.
Iran was also cheated - several times in that match against Spain; in the 60th minute the ball had clearly gone out of play but the referee decided to play the role Chief Monkey in the trinity or troika of the three wise monkeys and just like Blind Bartimaeus before he was cured by Jesus, he turned a blind eye on this or simply pretended that he did not see the ball go over the line and neither did his sidekicks, the linesmen their motto being "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" so the ball was allowed to continue " in play" - even when the ball had clearly crossed the Mason-Dixon line and gone to hell. From the referee's point of view it was probably a politically correct decision and easy to make, considering that if he had unfairly awarded a penalty to the Mullahs´ Iran ( Trumps enemy number one) or in a scenario where such a referee were to award a penalty - unjustly - against e.g. the United States of America - he could definitely rue the day - live on he may but that would have been the definitive end of his career, never again to referee a match , no matter how long he may continue to live his miserable life. With such considerations, these referees think more than twice before unjustly awarding a penalty against USA, England, Germany, Belgium, France or Japan.
As things stand today, it could turn out to be a politically correct dream final between Brexit's England and Belgium ( King Leopold's ghost) the political headquarters of the European Union which is nothing other the resurrection of Constantine's not so Holy Roman Empire. On such a politically dramatic plane fraught with all manner of danger and anticipating the unwanted possibility of having to endure humility by being humiliated in a FIFA World Cup final between Russia and the USA , knowing that the fallout from such a propaganda defeat would have been irreparable in the eyes of the global football community , the USA decided not to take such a temptation any further, so they wisely decided to stay home by not qualifying to be there; in fact from the very beginning they did not particularly wish the FIFA 2018 in Russia any special success. Not in God's name, not in the Founding Fathers' name, certainly not in the name of Football.
Short of Armageddon, a world cup final between Russia and America would have been a dream final - before the final outcome, a nightmare to both sides, both sides knowing that in a football final, only one side can win and there's no prospect of MAD ( mutually assured destruction)...
True, political fortunes do change, can swing from fortune to misfortune and do decline from fair to fair, that's why once upon a time, Imam Khomeini ( r.a.) passed what at the time was considered a last judgment when he said:
"America is worse than Britain, Britain is no better than America and the Soviet Union is worse than both. Each is worse than the other; each is more abominable than the other. But today we are concerned with this malicious entity that is America. Let the American president know that in the eyes of the Iranian nation, he is the most repulsive member of the human race for all the injustice he has imposed on our Muslim nation."
The Soviet Union is no more and of course in the eyes of Iran's current Supreme leader , with his eyes on Syria we can be sure that he does not believe that Russia is worse than America. There is a constant in the last judgement of Imam Khomeini and the emphasis may continue as true, at least for the time being; with Trump's sanctions soon to start biting hard, it's still the old wine in the old bottle and we may soon hear Iran's new Supreme Leader chirping with the Supreme Council of Mullahs chirping behind him, " today we are concerned with this malicious entity that is America. Let the American president know that in the eyes of the Iranian nation, he is the most repulsive member of the human race for all the injustice he has imposed on our Muslim nation."
True ; The world is round and so is the football. As true as the law of gravity that says, "What goes up, must come down"
True or false, there's also the chap who said, " 'I'm the smartest man in Africa - or in the world" ( World champion in smartness, I imagined 100 PhDs, a thousand indigenous Tower of Babel languages on his tongue and three hundred thousand footnotes in print ? ) At first I thought that he had said, " I'm the fastest man in the world"
In 2010, I watched the Greece- Nigeria match in a big hotel venue in Tallinn, Estonia. I was the only Black person in the audience and when the Negritude emotions got the better of me I found myself raising my voice like Soyinka's lone tiger . I did not pounce but how I wished for some reinforcements such as a rowdy battle-ready battalion of Lagosian football hooligans; then we would have jointly drowned the feeble whimpering & mini screams of the Oyibos and if it got to fighting a man to man showdown, we would have surely overpowered the miscreants by the fire-power lightning & thunder pistons in our fists, at the point when the miscreants almost told me (by word and gesture) to shut up / keep quiet and sit down when Greece scored their second goal. I was already much pissed off that in midstream Nigeria's Swedish coach Lars Lagerbäck ( lager beer) replaced Peter Odemwingie with Chinedu Obasi and I was convinced that the Mafioso had probably threatened him with a Don Vito Andolini Corleone type of offer : " I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse", to keep Peter out of the game as soon as possible. And yes I know that the Mafia is Roman, not Greek...
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." ( Keats)
And indeed, poetry is truth, truth poetry, although I'm not sure that Chidi Anthony Opara as poet, social critic and lately (Big Congratulations) crowned a certified Professional Fellow of The Institute of Information Management will duly & fully agree with me, that that is all we know on earth and all we need to know. Whether true or not, like the poet Fela, I love his radical oath-taking as a preamble to the holy intentions of telling the truth ( very radical indeed) for a people in denial -as the Englishman sometimes pleads to his fellow countryman, " Tell the truth and shame the devil !" - just this once...
"Well well!
Well well, na true I want talk again O
Na true I want talk again O
If I dey lie O
Make Osiris punish me
Make Ifa dey punish me O
Make Edumare punish me O
Make the land dey punish me O
Make Edumare punish me O
I read dem for book ee-o
I see so myself ee-o
Well-ee well-ee O
Well well… well well!" ( Fela: I.T.T.)
As far as I'm concerned, the the incontestably truest part of the lyric is this:
"Na European man, na him dey carry shit
Na for them culture to carry shit
During the time them come colonize us
Them come teach us to carry shit
Long, long, long, long time ago
African man we no dey carry shit
Na European man teach us to carry shit"
With all of the above in mind, think and ask the reason why at this point we realise that it's now all politics, racism and football again : Israel can't play in the Middle East zone because no Muslim majority country in that dangerous neighbourhood can guarantee the Israeli footballers and their fans any safety, before, during or after the match; Africa, Asia and South America have all been knocked out / kicked out of the FIFA 2018 World Cup tournament and now only Europe remains: England, France, Belgium; Croatia. But Europe is not a colour and does not only consist of "White"people. Today, France has seven players who are African or of African descent , playing in their national squad , playing for La France, whilst Belgium has eight players of African extraction., mostly from the Congo...
England. The truth : England Without Immigration: Click here
And of course #Windrush played a part in tonight's great #Worldcup2018 win!
Raheem Sterling(Jamaica)
Kyle Walker(Jamaica)
Danny Rose(Jamaica)
Ashley Young(Jamaica)
Ruben Loftus-Cheek(Jamaica)
Fabian Delph(Guyana)
Marcus Rashford(St. Kitts)
Congratulations England and glory be to Dele Alli ( Yoruba man) who scored England's second goal against Sweden , thereby puncturing and punctuating Sweden's hopes and dreams of further advancement in the tournament with England's goal number two versus Sweden's Zero goals reality. Congrats Dele ! Everybody in Sweden knows your name today. It's almost like when Senegal beat Sweden 2 – 1 in the FÍFA World cup, 2002 , everybody in Sweden then got to know that there's a very dangerous guy in this world, that he is Black and proud ,comes from Senegal and goes by the name Henri Camara, the scoundrel who punctured Sweden's net with Senegal's goal number two ! Of course some of the racism usually comes out inevitably , barking savagely showing their fangs , especially the Oyibo who do not espouse the Jesus ethic of " love thy enemies" ( In the year 2007 of the common era Professor David M Crane , the then Chief Prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone did inform his audience in a speech he delivered at the Holocaust Museum in Washington that "the devil is alive and he lives in West Africa" but he was only referring to Liberia's warlord Charles Taylor and not any of the former or later European warlords ...
As I wrote on my English friends Facebook page after English victory last night :
"I had volunteered to lead the congregational prayers before the match started, but the Swedish chairman of our local committee said he would only let me into the room where the match was being shown on a big screen on one condition : that I wrap the Swedish flag around me. After seeing you so proudly draped in full national regalia ( the English flag) I plan to complain to the chairman : I'm sad to hear that St George just slew the dragon ..."
Fact is that Swedish hysteria had soared beyond fever pitch; the day and just hours before this fate-ful match was boiling over into a sustained & unified national crescendo, the media choir singing with one voice that with a little bit of luck and with Thor and Odin on our side we were all set to crush Merry England , in the Friday morning edition , Dagens Nyheter's sports enthusiast Johan Esk wrote "One of the World Cup's best midfield combinations will ensure that England is forced into a Brexit out of the World Cup" In Dagens Nyheter's Saturday morning edition there was a full two page centre page devoted to Sweden's coach Janne Andersson titled " Kung Janne of Jante " which translates as " King Janne of Jante" , with a photo of him sitting on the throne. Here's the article translated into English : If Janne wins today he becomes a King Gustav II Adolf
Of course , we were much more convinced by self-hypnosis in the 1990 World Cup showdown between Sweden and Costa Rica - which Costa Rica won 2-1 ,prior to which there was not a single Swedish Soul ( maybe apart from some Swedish Costa Ricans) who may have believed that this was not going to be a walkover for Sweden. Just before the kick-off the Swedish commentator was saying ( with sympathy dripping from his voice ) that Costa Rica, a poor third world country didn't even have a single level playing field. It was ditto in the 2006 Fifa World Cup match ,Trinidad and Tobago vs Sweden : the Swedish commentator, his voice droning on with barely concealed contempt was heard saying that the T& T team was a "jumbo" team mainly composed of second and third division players in the English League. I watched the match on a big screen at the Central Station in Stockholm ( had to order a big plate of fish and chips to secure a table) and to my great consternation, most of the people – foreigners watching the match ( some of them with Swedish citizenship others with residence permits, were wholly hollering for Trinidad and Tobago. The heroic T&T fought tooth and nail. From a Swedish point of view, the match ended in the second best possible diplomatic outcome : a goalless draw.
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