World Cup Manifesto

We take a break tonight from our regularly scheduled disease-ridden maunderings to discuss the most important event occurring in the world today, the 2010 World Cup of Football (or soccer to most US citizens). And we dare to ask the question, “Why is this World Cup so disappointing to the world-wide television audience?”

We are not talking about the football. The play has been interesting and even compelling for the most part. Both of the finalists from 2006, France and Italy, did not make it out of their groups. Combine them with England (also a casualty of group play) and all three looked old, slow and as if the game had passed them by. The upstart nations of Asia displayed quality play and two advanced to the knock-out round. South America reasserted its historic dominance and had the highest percentage of its entries make it clear of group play. Africa fell prey to disorganization and bad luck and sees only one team still alive in the tournament. The USA did as well as it should have winning clear of its group only to go down in defeat in the round of 16. There has been interesting attacking play, the usual number of terrible mistakes by players, refereeing both wonderful and woeful, and a fast-brewing controversy about the intransigence of FIFA regarding the role of instant-replay in international football.

All well and good, but when we are standing amongst a group of strangers in a tavern at 7:00 a.m. on the west coast of the USA, many of whom clearly came directly from their bed without a hygiene stop along the way, we want more than mere great football on the big screen as our reward.

We want cheesecake (and beefcake too for that matter).

What are we getting instead are endless shots of coaches pacing the sidelines, players grimacing after tackles and missed shots and the occasional celebrity fan close-up. Does anyone alive today honestly believe that we want to see a wrinkly Bill Clinton standing next to an even wrinklier Mick Jagger (who is beginning to look like he goes to the same life extension center for the undead as Keith Richard)? Hell No! We want to see beautiful Spanish women agonizing over a missed goal opportunity. We want to see muscular Ghanaian guys with six-pack abs waving their shirts over their head. We want to see bronzed Brazilian babes doing the samba after the best team in the world scores yet another goal. In order to prevent this travesty of television justice from ever happening again at the World Cup, two major areas of concern must be addressed in the most forceful terms.

The first is that the World Cup must never again be scheduled to occur in a country that has cold, or even cool, weather at world cup time. Beautiful young women and cute young guys are still beautiful and cute even when bundled into down jackets and knit beanies, but if that is what we want to see we can tune into the winter X-Games on ESPN. In warm-weather venues we can see the most beautiful men and women in the world in all their skimpily-attired glory. We can see them in the extremes of the agony and ecstasy that sports fans can experience and for this World Cup we could be seeing them in High Definition TV. Instead we see only the faces of the beautiful and handsome peeking out from beneath their wool hats and over the collars of the jackets they are huddling inside. Never Again!

The second is that any television director who allows a stoppage of play to go by without either a beefcake or cheesecake shot should be dismissed from directing the video of any further world cup matches. We are not talking about an out-of-bounds ball that results in a relatively quick throw-in or a foul that allows for a quick replay followed by the free kick, these may continue to be covered in the same way. But when a player is writhing endlessly around on the ground after a trivial foul, or a player is strolling slowly over to the sideline to be replaced or we are enduring the agonizingly exact preparations for a set piece off a free kick, we must be given beauty as a reward. Above all, we must be shown the celebrations in the stands after a team scores a goal. As it is now, we see the players celebrating the goal. Watching yet another striker run to the corner flag, slide on his knees and be mobbed by his teammates without also being shown young women shrieking in joy and young men dancing in the aisles and the celebration of fans who have followed their country’s teams longer than that striker has been alive must never be allowed to happen again. If FIFA will not address this, we need a new international governing body.

Here it is: The Heprat Manifesto for the perfect World Cup:

Warm Weather Venues and Compulsory Cheesecake.