The Heavy Sleeper’s 2014 World Cup Diary: Complete and Unabridged

 Monday, June 30, 6.00am
Costa Rica 1 Greece 1 – Costa Rica win on penalties

Woken up by the old man, and it feels like it must be 2:00am, even though I told him last night not to bother waking me for the early game. To my horror, it is actually close to 6:00am, and thus me and my recently resuscitated patriotism, barely breathing and with a weak pulse, get to the couch in time for the anthems, and I shall always recognise you by the dreadful sword you hold, as the earth with searching vision you survey with spirit bold, and whatever the Costa Rican anthem is, who cares, they didn’t invent everything important 3,000 years ago and then rest on their laurels waiting for the rest of the world to catch up to our greatness, our ancient and undying greatness which, while sullied by austerity measures and copping a goal where the keeper didn’t even move, and ’twas the Greeks of old whose dying, brought to birth our spirit free, at least saw parity restored late, late, late on thanks to eventually taking advantage of the fact that Costa Rica was a man down. And because this game went into extra time, I couldn’t change the channel and be patronised by a bloke who claims in every single episode that because he can cook a four course meal in 30 minutes, that I can, too, because all of us have every spice ever invented at our fingertips, exactly the right bags of the right stuff on hand at that moment at the front of the fridge to make that specific meal, a kitchen the size of a small flat, knife skills that will dazzle one’s guests and not send you or them to the emergency ward and those bloody wooden boards he uses in every single episode because plates are apparently so 1996. No, because Greece could not take advantage of their numerical superiority, I did not get the chance to be told that whatever he was doing was so easy that even a ravin’ idiot could do it, regardless of being a complete and utter unco, as he sprinkled freshly picked herbs from a great height purely for the aesthetic effect, and not bothering at all with who would clean up the mess afterwards. No, because we had to watch Greece throw away their chance at a maiden World Cup quarter finals appearance by losing in a penalty shoot-out, I did not have time to wonder how much it would cost and indeed where I could find a food stylist to make my meals look as good as the ones on this fellow’s show. Now with ancient valour rising, let us hail you, liberty, as I am freed from the ordeal of having to care primarily about the results of this tournament, and can instead now enjoy the spectacle on its own dramatic merits.

Tuesday, July 1, 6.00am
Germany 2 Algeria 1

Who knows what the problem was, but I only managed to get up at about 7:00, so I completely missed the first half of this game. The Algerians wanted revenge for 1982, but more than that it seemed like the rest of the world wanted revenge for them. The Germans tried their best to accommodate Algeria and the world by not winning this game in normal time even as they turned the screws slowly and painfully during the second half; but eventually they cruised through, aside from the very late Algerian goal. In the end, while no one left this game happy, everyone left this game happy. The Germans got through, and the Algerians still had their pride.

Wednesday, July 2, 2.00am
Argentina 1 Switzerland 0

Let’s not kid ourselves: the arrival of free to air digital television in Australia has not meant better quality programming (of course), and it has not really meant that much better quality sound and picture quality (and this is not a hipster lament for test patterns and the snow show, just a plea for Seven to broadcast footy in HD); but it has meant that we now have more or less well established syndication, which means nothing for people who have lives to live, but is gold for people who are trying to delay living for a few more days or weeks or months or years or forever. Of course syndication means a ton of garbage too numerous to single out, but at least I got to watch the good episodes of Homicide (everything before the moronic Kellerman-Mahoney storyline) and the rest of Star Trek: Voyager without downloading them illegally, with all the ads as nature intended. Of course, quality control and self-discipline then become an issue, so after watching the daily Seinfeld repeats, you may very well end up watching, as I did, World’s Craziest Fools, and your very identity as a high art connoisseur of free TV then becomes tainted. Despite trying to excuse it because of the snappy writing, and the bizarre one joke novelty value of it being hosted by Mr. T, there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s an even more low rent Australia’s Funniest Home Videos, as various drunks, uncos and morons attempt to injure themselves in hilarious ways, and you’re sitting there mouth agape as your brain turns to mush, and the one bit of your brain that’s still functioning starts to wonder how did it come to this, but you keep sitting there, paralysed by fear and shame. Still, things could be worse – you could be Lionel Messi. Now, I know what you’re thinking – who wouldn’t want to be Lionel Messi? The near unsurpassed footballing talent of his generation, millions of dollars, the adoration of millions of people around the world, all while you waste your life on the couch eating junk food, your youth a distant memory, your present a perpetual decline into monotonous mediocrity, your future a series of generic embarrassments waiting to unfold. But that’s totally normal. On the other hand, Messi has an entire football crazed nation who’ve attached all their self-worth to what he does or doesn’t do, and what’s worse, Messi has to carry not just the nation but also a squad of capable but much less talented players on his shoulders as well, all while being constantly compared to Diego Maradona, the greatest player of all time according to people who were born after 1979. I get to this game at the start of extra time or thereabouts, and neither Argentina or Switzerland have scored, but eventually Argentina do with two minutes left to play, and Messi’s in the middle of it somewhere of course. The Swiss throw everything forward and almost get that goal back, but really, like Mexico who were apparently robbed something shocking in the previous game, they’re here to fill out the numbers, a stepping stone on the way to finding out which of the usual suspects will take out the tournament.

Wednesday, July 2, 6.00am
Belgium 2 USA 1

Oh, to be a Belgian. Life must move so slowly at the centre of European and global bureaucracy. Being unable to decide whether to stay together or break apart, to move this way or that, to evolve or devolve, at one stage having no government for more than three years and somehow just floating on regardless without seemingly any dire consequences. If only real life worked that way, an anti-Zen and anti-ironic hipster rejection of purpose and meaning, where angst about the future becomes a question best left to necessity, or near unavoidable inevitability. The Belgians worked their way into countless scoring positions, but it took until the early part of extra time for them to finally achieve what should have been done in the original ninety minutes allotted to them, but that’s the public service for you, over time and over budget, all services and projects delivered or not delivered on their terms. The early extra time goal transforms the game, turning it from one way traffic to eight lane expressway, as both sides push forward with increasingly reckless abandon, and what was tedious transfixion became schoolyard hurly burly. The Belgians seemingly put this one beyond doubt with their second goal, but the Americans pulled one back and then it was a question of who would break first, Belgian waffle or American manifest destiny? The Belgians held on for what was psychologically a Pyrrhic victory.

Saturday, July 5, 2.00am
France 0 Germany 1

Because I somehow got roped into watching two episodes of the 1997 adventure series Conan the Adventurer – think Hercules or Xena, but with about 1/10th of the budget, awful plots and the guy who played Mickey on Seinfeld as comic relief – I leave it a bit late to go to bed, and make it worse by turning on the radio just quickly to get the footy scores. North are leading by about four goals early in the last quarter, and the ABC commentary team reckon Lindsay Thomas’ attempt to get a free kick was straight out of the World Cup. I can be indignant or I can take their word for it, so I choose the former, with the option of not making a big deal out of it. Perhaps due to the aforementioned dithering, I’m late to the next day’s game, getting on the couch just in time to see the replay of Germany’s – and the game’s – only goal. It’s like arriving late to a party, and missing out on the one joke that carries the night; but if it is a party, it’s a pretty sober one, eleven vs eleven duelling chess players who know each other’s game inside out, so the margins for error are minute, and consequently significant errors are rare. This is football as scientific theory, doing what works until proven wrong. It is football as rigorously studied deadlock, a nearly zero sum game almost obligated to end up in stalemate, were it not for the cosmic order which says there must be a result today. There is no magic here, no faith, no mystery and no mystique – it’s athleticism as conceived rationally. It’s a game for the chinstrokers, a contest which seems to have offended the sensibilities of many people on Twitter, but don’t the chinstrokers need games to enjoy, too? Must it always be the all or nothing ideology of soccer as reckless abandon or else death to football? That the goal comes from a set piece is perhaps no accident, the ball sent in from out wide and perhaps willing itself into the back of the French net. Maybe because I have a reputation for being contrary – which some have interpreted as being wilfully difficult – I find myself strangely attracted to this game. If I knew about art, I would say this game was mannerist, but I don’t know about art. There is art here, of a sort, but it’s close to no art as the players – who are efficient, well programmed, and certainly not lacking in skill – negate each other, and produce almost no meaning, If that near total negation of outcome sounds like post-modern football personified, then so be it, but not every game turns out this way, and the players who played this game may one day meet again and produce a different kind of theatre. Or perhaps in Hugh Everett III’s many and infinite universes they’re playing every possible variation of this fixture, and while we can pine for any one of those games which may happen to be more interesting, all we have access to in this universe is the game that occurred in our part of this timeline.

Saturday, July 5, 6.00am
Brazil 2 Colombia 1

I doze on the couch for an hour, as NHK’s English news from Tokyo plays in the background. There are missing Japanese nationals in North Korea, and the North Koreans have apparently assembled a high powered committee to look into the matter. Meanwhile, at the Fukushima nuclear power plant they’re going to try and install a massive wall of ice to apparently slow the build up of radioactive water. Colombia are sitting too deep, they’ve sunk themselves before the game has begun. They’re in so deep they can’t get out. From an early Brazil corner Colombian concentration lapses and chaos ensues. During the half-time break natter, Ned Zelic will blame man on man marking compared to zonal marking for Colombia conceding, but Ockham’s Razor disagrees with Zelic’s unnecessarily complicated solution, where the answer can be simplified – all it needed was for the Colombian defender at the back post to do his job. After the break David Luiz scores with a swerving free-kick to just about ice the game, but a penalty to the away team sets up a tense finish, all of which adds to the degeneration of the game into a street fight; so much so that the Brazuca should be replaced by a tennis ball or crushed aluminium can, and the grass dug up and replaced by an asphalt lane. While the Colombians eventually reciprocate and end up putting Neymar out of the tournament, it’s the Brazilians who started it, hacking out pieces of James Rodriguez with the ref’s apparent approval, lowering themselves to the level of reputedly less talented and more desperate teams. But the world’s footballing public is as much to blame as anyone else for what Brazil has become as we, and Nike, demand the propagation of the jogo bonito myth. We know that style will never win a modern tournament, as much as we know that Brazilian domestic football is of a largely garbage standard and style; and that stereotypical national archetypes used to explain a country’s approach to football are inherently moronic – as moronic as John Aloisi agreeing with the notion put to him all the way back at the group stage that because Australia had never lost to the Netherlands, that it would play on the opposition’s mind, and no I haven’t forgotten – and yet when it comes to Brazil we use these assumptions and stereotypes to do exactly that. Did the Japanese play like conformist salarymen doomed to a miserable cycle of work, home, work before ending up living homeless in a box at a railway station? Have the Mexicans been playing like spoilt quinceañera princesses who will soon cross the US border illegally to pick fruit and then get deported before becoming drug lords? I recently caught one of SBS’s classic matches, Brazil vs Holland in 1974, and watched in horror as the two teams hacked each other to pieces – I must have missed the jogo bonito and totaalvoetbal during the ten minutes it took me to drive my brothers to the local train station. At the end of the day’s play, and I include the France vs Germany game in this, football died at least twice today, and yet will still continue tomorrow, just like it died in 1974 and kept going.