Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

“I’m a professional cynic, but my heart’s not in it”.

It’s a great lyric from a revoltingly twee song which I obsessively hated, because it incisively exposed an undesirable personal trait of mine.

The video for “Country House” equally grates, with the hypocrisy of millionaires, or soon to be, lampooning the hierarchical class system built on inherited and generational wealth that they would soon join. Lily Allen’s dad gurning away and being his usual wanker self. Him who was George Dawes on Shooting Stars. It also managed to capture many of the dismal facets of the nineties; Cool Britannia, Blairism, Britpop, sycophancy, overt sarcasm and cliché, corporatisation, privatisation, fomenting an obsession with displays of affluence, platforming bullshitters such as Damien Hurst and Tracey Emin, the prominence of the insufferable London media intelligentsia, that much of it was a pastiche of the late sixties and early seventies with shitter haircuts. Most irritating of all was how it was hyped up at the time. Sure, compared to now it seems a golden age, especially by todays fifty somethings who were there – don’t you know. Most are sourly nostalgic in their middle age at the era’s hedonism and sense of idealism.

Applying this attitude – that it’s all hype, fuck this shite – to this World Cup is a tempting misanthropic. But there was no need to apply any cynicism in the tournament’s build up. The vibes were not good, there was scant enthusiasm, excitement or hype. It was, kind of, just happening.

But why? The cost of attending was made so punitive that it was yet another example of economically cementing the have and have nots in their places. It was hard to refute this impression when tickets were being “dynamically” priced, with Donald Trump cuntishly opining “That’s just how it goes”. Everyone has observed over the last two decades that the World Cup has increasingly been abused as a cash cow for the shareholders of corporate behemoths to further enrich themselves. A Somali ref was denied entry into the US for the crime of being from a shithole country, and FIFA bent over on that one. The sheer cringe of Gianni Infantino’s obsession with status, requesting security details and limos as though he’s a head of state, and of course his obsequiousness, with his bullet dome rammed up the Orange One’s filthy cancerous ringpiece. Then there’s the double standard of the USA, currently at war with Iran, hosting the tournament while Russia (rightfully) was banned from qualifying for invading Ukraine.

But then the games started and the momentum shifted.

It would’ve been satisfying if my epiphany was instant. But I’d be lying. After the first match, which wasn’t good, I lamented the thought of being bombarded by all the dirge that comes baked in with following a World Cup. Try as best you can, over six weeks it’s hard to avoid certain undesirable aspects; Gary Neville scowling, Ian Wright looking stupefied and Roy Keane’s misery loves company schtick in his state of permanent hyper-critique. We’re getting hydration breaks now, not for player safety, but so the sponsors have a further opportunity to saturate you with adverts. Many games played at walking pace by exhausted players in stifling heat. The abomination of the expanded format, with some seriously subpar matches during group phase, and the greed that’s driven it. Constant updates from the England camp, which even the England fans aren’t interested in, by ITV and the BBC during coverage of every single non-England game. The Sun and Daily Mail being racist, jingoistic and xenophobic about England’s opponents in the knockout stages. England fans with their shite patter and throwing plastic furniture after they get eliminated. I could go on.

Thankfully, the positives still outweigh all these irritations. Foremost – a gavage of summer football with multiple games a day. It brought back memories of a youthful naivety about how little time I, we all, have and that watching a preposterous number of football matches and obsessing over completing Panini World Cup sticker albums seemed like a constructive use of it. I can even thank the algorithms. Shorts of iconic moments from the 1970 final (Carlos Alberto’s fourth goal) and 1974 final (Gerd Muller on the turn), highlights of games from Espana 82, Mexico 86, Italia 90, USA 94 (shoutout to Diana Ross missing the pen) and France 1998 started appearing in my recommended videos feed on YouTube. Yes! Of course I’m invested.

A moral rebuke wedging itself in your consciousness – that by watching this you’re advocating for those who stand to benefit from it and the geopolitical cliques and conflicts they support, with the tournament’s nefariously overt commercialization – is akin to the Messi versus Ronaldo dispute, in that it really isn’t one. You can make anything a referendum on moral sanctity, if you please. What was Jane Austen’s observation? That even the worst despots can have virtuous characteristics. The World Cup is flawed, certainly. But equally flawed is the inability or willingness to parse and compartmentalize elements of something worthwhile, simply because it’s imperfect.

That said, to be emphatic and hypocritical, given what I’ve written in the previous paragraph, choosing Cristiano Ronaldo is a sign that you’re lacking, deeply insecure and are incapable of appreciating what you have if others have it better. Cristiano Ronaldo, it should also be noted, is often the choice of the neo-liberalist swine. Inverted snobs. Twitter aggregator accounts with crypto and gambling sponsorships. IShowSpeed. The Sun and Daily Mail readers. The professional naysayers. The Brexiteers. Little Englanders. Tommy Robinson. Zionists. Entrepreneurs with podcasts. Tech feudalists. Holocaust deniers. Homelander. MAGA. The cunts, the scum of the earth who ruin things, basically. Messi is the choice for the sane, that have not fallen foul of the “tall poppy syndrome” and who actually have any clue about the game and why we consume it, despite how it’s been mistreated and abused. You’re nodding, right? Yes, be glad. Don’t apologise. Lean into it.

I advocate we all lean into this World Cup. Why allow the brazen greed of scumbags to ruin it? Imagine issuing a decree to some enthusiastic eight-year-old, who has never experienced a World Cup finals before, that they’re forbidden from watching any of it. Just because you feel the need to virtue signal your political purity to your mates or, even more redundantly, strangers on social media. You’re not staring down Soviet tanks in Prague in August 1968 brother. It’s not even holding a Palestine Action sign on the grass outside Westminster. Nobody cares.

But let’s recognise there is a tension that’s palpable. It’s frustrating that the corruption at FIFA is the same self-serving, compromised strain of political leadership that has given us a fraught geopolitical climate, the decaying state of secular democracy and decency, that we’re subject to the political whims of the rich, and the sociological instability that comes with increasing economic bifurcation. Suggesting that boycotting the World Cup as means of changing any of this is delusional. Nothing is ever that simple.

How can anyone who’s not nihilistic be opposed to nations such as Cabo Verde, Haiti and Curacao, who are there for the first time, and in particular those fans who have taken out third mortgages or sold one of their kidneys on the black market to travel and buy a ticket, having a chance to live it up and party. Why be against the Tartan Army charming the city of Boston, boosting the revenues of its bar and restaurant sector threefold, or hoping the Scotland team can make us proud on the biggest stage? We’ve won our first match at the World Cup finals since 1990! Objective achieved. If you’re against any of this then you’re siding with curmudgeonly bastards. Specific to Scotland it’s characterised by a disdain of shows of national pride and our self-deprecating humour. Why would you want to align with such a malignant outlook?

So, my message to the cynics and haters, those in the trying to be clever by being contrarian crowd, is to consider whether Scotland will ever qualify for the World Cup finals again. Or, rather, will Scotland qualify again in your lifetime? I’m posing these pessimistic questions having firmly arrived at midlife myself, but, and to widen the scope, will any of us be here in four years? Scotland’s inability to qualify for the World Cup finals for most of my lifetime has taught me there are no guarantees. In 1998, the last time Scotland qualified, my Mum and Dad were still around. Now they aren’t. Yes, it’s the cycle of life, time flies, but it’s a reminder of how events, even something frivolous as a World Cup, shape your experience, conceptualisation and rationalisation, even assist your memory of life. Never assume you can get the next one.

It’s easier, perhaps wise, defaulting to cynicism about anything these days, but when the World Cup’s on, my heart’s simply not in it. Even with all the misgivings the vibes are too good. Enjoy the ride, just have a laugh with it, especially as the opportunities for most of us to do either seem to be ever dwindling.