So the World Cup is almost here again. The newspapers and magazines are swelling up with fawning profiles of usual famous names – Ronaldinho, Henry, Gerrard, Ballack et al. But you might as well throw all those away. Judging by recent tournaments, the eventual heroes of this World Cup won’t be the superstars. They’ll be plucky US college boys, scurrying Mexican wing backs, pacy Angolan strikers and a lot of other people no-one has heard of.
Take the first game of the last World Cup. Henry and Zidane played off the park by El Hadjj Diouff – or Who Who Who? as he was then known. That set the tone for a competition where the finest playmaker wasn’t Beckham or Veron but some prematurely balding Turk. Or the European Championships two years ago, dominated by a lot of Greek defenders and a podgy Scouser with tragically fragile feet. What happens to all these stars nowadays? Do they under-perform or are they just not all that good to start with?
They have a standard excuse. They’re tired after a long, arduous season. Each and every one of them. The magazine When Saturday Comes made the point that there are actually less games in a standard season than there used to be. What has increased for the top players is their off-field commitments. The parties, the book signings, the commercial promotions. They’re part of showbiz now, after all, and that can be exhausting. And it does something to their motivation. Celebrities have their image to protect; and the activity which first made them famous can become rather damaging to this image after a while. Actors, once they reach a certain level, never play anybody in a film except themselves. Too demeaning otherwise. And the top footballers look uneasy about putting on silly shorts and kicking a ball around. They’ll carry on doing it as long as they have to but they don’t want to give the impression that they take it seriously.
Plus the fact that the World Cup is less of a giant supermarket than it once was. Clubs are generally too smart now to snap up a player simply on the basis of three to six games crammed into a month. Most of the big deals have already been done. Take Andrei Shevchenko: worth £35 million, yet to kick a ball in a major international tournament. But for the less famous players it is still a time for opportunities. Some of Shevchenko’s Ukrainian team mates will know they could achieve a little of his prominence next month. The likes of Togo and Angola will have noted the impressive deals the Senegalese won for themselves after 2002. These are the people who have a reason to try hard.
Of course, a few football-related motives still remain. The one big name who actually delivered in the last World Cup: Ronaldo. After a mysterious medical ‘episode’ wrecked his final in 1998 and injury most of his career since then. He had something to prove. As did his opponents in the 2002 final, the Germans. Written off by everyone as a bunch of useless journeymen, they pulled themselves through the tournament with an impressively bloody-minded belligerence. So perhaps that’s the way to get the stars to perform this time. A little less adulation beforehand and a lot more sneering.
Take the first game of the last World Cup. Henry and Zidane played off the park by El Hadjj Diouff – or Who Who Who? as he was then known. That set the tone for a competition where the finest playmaker wasn’t Beckham or Veron but some prematurely balding Turk. Or the European Championships two years ago, dominated by a lot of Greek defenders and a podgy Scouser with tragically fragile feet. What happens to all these stars nowadays? Do they under-perform or are they just not all that good to start with?
They have a standard excuse. They’re tired after a long, arduous season. Each and every one of them. The magazine When Saturday Comes made the point that there are actually less games in a standard season than there used to be. What has increased for the top players is their off-field commitments. The parties, the book signings, the commercial promotions. They’re part of showbiz now, after all, and that can be exhausting. And it does something to their motivation. Celebrities have their image to protect; and the activity which first made them famous can become rather damaging to this image after a while. Actors, once they reach a certain level, never play anybody in a film except themselves. Too demeaning otherwise. And the top footballers look uneasy about putting on silly shorts and kicking a ball around. They’ll carry on doing it as long as they have to but they don’t want to give the impression that they take it seriously.
Plus the fact that the World Cup is less of a giant supermarket than it once was. Clubs are generally too smart now to snap up a player simply on the basis of three to six games crammed into a month. Most of the big deals have already been done. Take Andrei Shevchenko: worth £35 million, yet to kick a ball in a major international tournament. But for the less famous players it is still a time for opportunities. Some of Shevchenko’s Ukrainian team mates will know they could achieve a little of his prominence next month. The likes of Togo and Angola will have noted the impressive deals the Senegalese won for themselves after 2002. These are the people who have a reason to try hard.
Of course, a few football-related motives still remain. The one big name who actually delivered in the last World Cup: Ronaldo. After a mysterious medical ‘episode’ wrecked his final in 1998 and injury most of his career since then. He had something to prove. As did his opponents in the 2002 final, the Germans. Written off by everyone as a bunch of useless journeymen, they pulled themselves through the tournament with an impressively bloody-minded belligerence. So perhaps that’s the way to get the stars to perform this time. A little less adulation beforehand and a lot more sneering.
